THE TELEGRAPH: Lifting the ban on the Holocaust denying Bishop Williamson is disastrous, says Damian Thompson.
The night before Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications on the Holocaust denier Richard Williamson and the other bishops of the ultra-traditionalist Society of St Pius X (SSPX), I emailed a friend in Rome with close links to the papal household. I said: "You do know how awful this is going to look, don't you?" He replied: "Yes, but it's too late."
This week, the future of Benedict's pontificate hangs in the balance. For those of us who regard him as the greatest pope of modern times, this is little short of a tragedy. In the last 18 months, he has reintegrated Latin services into the life of the Church. Orthodox Catholics are thrilled by his intellectually dazzling project to renovate the Church's liturgy. Thousands of Anglicans will cross the Tiber as soon as the Vatican can find a way of protecting them from unsympathetic RC bishops.
Meanwhile, the haughty prelates of the SSPX are finally prepared to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Second Vatican Council, which modernised the Catholic Church in the 1960s. Only Benedict XVI could have achieved this.
But the Williamson fiasco – the incompetence of the Vatican communications service in failing to anticipate the outcry, and the sluggish response – has given Benedict's enemies the opportunity they have been waiting for. Far from being alarmed by the lifting of the excommunications, many liberals are happy to sit back and watch "the Ratzinger project" unravel. >>> Damian Thompson* | Tuesday, February 3, 2009
*Damian Thompson is editor-in-chief of 'The Catholic Herald'
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