UPDATED: CNN is reporting that the Conference of German bishops is demanding that Williamson must go. Would that they'd grow more balls and challenge some of Benedict's other lunacy. Here are highlights:*
Germany's Catholic bishops are calling for the expulsion of a bishop, recently brought back into the church by Pope Benedict XVI, after new reports that Richard Williamson denies the Holocaust. . . . "Mr. Williamson is impossible and irresponsible," Zollitsch, chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, told the magazine in an article published Saturday. "I now see no room for him in the Catholic Church."
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The German publication, Der Spiegel, has a lengthy and anything but flattering article on Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI which among other things suggests that Benedict may be kept in a cocoon much like that in which the Chimperator liked to remain. The result, of course is that he's utterly out of touch with the reality of the outside world - not to mention being locked in a Medieval mindset. The rehabilitation of Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson combined with the ongoing cancer of the world wide sex abuse scandal - at least to me - indicates that the Vatican refuses to understand that we are no longer living in the 12th Century where the Pope/Church can in essence tell the world to go screw itself.
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Preaching the same old tired "natural law" mantra despite ever increasing advances in medical and mental health knowledge at some point will drive away those who represent the Church's future. True, the Church's membership is growing in ignorant, uneducated parts of the world (Africa in particular), but it is falling else where, especially in the modern western world that provides most of the cash flow that supports the entire structure. If Papa Ratzi isn't careful, he may do to the Catholic Church what the Chimperator did to the USA. On the other hand, perhaps only a free fall in Church membership and severe drop in monies will force change on what has become a very corrupt and out of touch Vatican. Here are some highlights from the Der Spiegel article:
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The decision by Pope Benedict XVI to reinstate the bishops of this brotherhood of St. Pius, who were excommunicated in 1988, has been the source of astonishment, disillusionment and outrage both inside and outside the Vatican. . . . What triggered the scandal, as SPIEGEL reported two weeks ago, was the fact that one of the priests brought back into the fold, Bishop Richard Williamson, is a notorious Holocaust denier.
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During a visit to Germany only two weeks ago, the British cleric told Swedish television: "Not a single Jew died in a gas chamber." . . . With a single, perhaps imprudent gesture, Benedict XVI has reignited old fears among Jews the world over, fears that the Catholic Church has in fact never really shed its old anti-Semitism. . . . And then there is the question that has the entire world worried: How can it be that a German pope, of all people, is pardoning a Holocaust denier?
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"How can such a liar be granted the protection and pardon of the leader of the Catholic Church?" It is a question that many Catholics are asking themselves, especially in the pope's native Germany. "People here are simply dismayed," says Klaus Mertes, a Jesuit priest and rector of the Maria Regina Martyrium Church, a commemorative church for the victims of the Nazi era in Berlin's Charlottenburg neighborhood. This sense of outrage, he says, is reason enough to speak out on the incident. "There is outrage over Bishop Williamson, on the one hand, as well as over the decision coming from Rome.
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In the northern city of Münster, where Joseph Ratzinger was once a theology professor, almost the entire Catholic faculty signed a sharply worded letter of protest and criticized the shift in the Vatican. . . . Some German Catholics have already made their way to their local registry offices to officially leave the church. The mood among many is reflected in the succinct words of Helmut Reinhard, a 62-year-old Munich Catholic: "I've had it!" Fifteen members of his family were lost in Auschwitz-Birkenau. "They were all gypsies," he says, "and all Catholics." His cousin Markus Reinhard, 50, lives in Cologne. Last Tuesday, on Germany's Holocaust Remembrance Day, he, his wife and his four sisters left the Catholic Church.
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The slip-up involving the St. Pius bishops could not have turned into a scandal but for two, closely-related problems associated with this pontificate. The first is the growing isolation of Benedict XVI. And the second is his trepidation when it comes to interacting with the modern world.
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The pope, says one member of the Curia, has surrounded himself with a team of yes-men, devoid of any critical voices. The team even shields the 81-year-old pontiff from unfavorable reports in the media. "As a rule," says the official, "he is only presented with excerpts from the international press. And in many cases, his staff members say: No, no, we cannot show him that article."
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"His current life," says a German theologian, "is reminiscent of Louis XVI. He hears snippets of what is happening in the world, signs something here and there, performs his duties, studies documents and has generally made a comfortable life for himself at court. But he is not the master of the machine that surrounds him."
