The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
Forget Backman — meet the Pope’s anti-semite
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“If anti-Semitism is truly the oldest hatred, the hallmark of this noxious ideology is the enduring nature of its bigoted beliefs.” That’s Liberal Senator Michael Ronaldson, in response to the now notorious Age column published by Michael Backman. Ronaldson’s remarks have now been spectacularly confirmed by a much more overt manifestation of anti-Semitism. Meet Richard Williamson:
Williamson’s an admirer of former Klan leader David Duke, he’s a 9/11 Truther who thinks that the Unabomber might have been onto something — and he’s a virulent, Protocols-of-Zion-quoting anti-Semite who thinks that the Holocaust didn’t happen. He’s also just been welcomed by Pope Benedict back into the Catholic fold. Bishop Williamson belongs, you see, to the Society of St Pius X, the biggest organisation of the Catholic Traditionalist movement, the milieu which Mel Gibson’s mad (and anti-Semitic) dad also emerged. The SSPX follows the teachings of the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre — rejecting the Second Vatican Council’s abolition of the traditional Latin mass, as well as more or less any social or political manifestations of modernity. Benedict’s reversal of the Vatican’s 1988 ex-communication of four Lefebvrian bishops has mostly been spun as a generous gesture of reconciliation, albeit ruined by the buffoonish, loose-cannon Williamson. Time magazine explains that the Pope wants to make the SSPX into “a personal prelature of the papacy, the same special status that conservative lay group Opus Dei was granted by John Paul II”. But there’s an obvious question, isn’t there! Given Williamson’s long history of anti-Semitism, what kind of organisation would maintain him as a bishop? What’s the SSPX attitude to bigotry? The Southern Poverty Law Centre, an organisation monitoring American hate groups, puts it bluntly: “The Society of St. Pius X, which has chapels and schools across the United States, remains a font of anti-Semitic propaganda.” It’s not difficult to find examples. The Angelus Press, the SSPX’s publishing house, distributes, for instance, Hilaire Beloc’s anti-Semitic text The Jews (“If this isn’t pertinent reading for today, then we don’t know what is!”), alongside a tract entitled Mystery Of Freemasonry Unveiled which “covers all aspects of Masonry, Satanic societies [and] the use of Masonry as an Instrument of Judaism.” The press also advertises Neo-Conned by one J. Forrest Sharpe, a notorious anti-Semite whose news bulleting, according to the SPLC, “brims with anti-Semitic materials from the likes of Ernst Zundel, the neo-Nazi author of The Hitler We Loved and Why”. But the SSPX goes beyond disseminating the anti-Semitism of others. You’ll recall that Michael Backman’s Age piece contained the line: “The historical persecutors of the Jews have been Christians — their punishment for the death of Jesus”. In that case, the phrasing left the question ambiguous as to whether Backman himself endorsed that ancient canard. The SSPX is more straightforward. On its website, its ‘Catholic FAQ’ section explains:
That’s about as clearcut as hate speech gets – and yet it’s presented as a FAQ on the SSPX’s core tenets. But wait — there’s more. The SSPX home site also features this document, a piece by Rev. Frs. Michael Crowdy & Kenneth Novak entitled “The Mystery of the Jews”. The long article — again, freely available to anyone with Google — methodically repeats every slur of medieval anti-Semitism:
It goes on to explain that “the Jewish people win control of property by usury”, that ‘Jews are known to kill Christians”, that “Jews get into posts of influence, and submit society to a high degree of corruption in ways of thinking and acting, which leads to a reaction of public opinion against them” and that “Communism was financed by Jewish money”. This is straightforward, old school anti-Semitism. Why, then, is the Pope palling around with such people? The removal of the sentence of excommunication does not, in itself, mean that the SSPX crew are suddenly in good standing with Rome. The Catholic blogger Rationabile Obsequium argues:
Fair enough. But the question still remains. Why does Benedict want to bring vile racists in his tent? After all, AFP reports: “Since assuming office in April 2005, Benedict has made great efforts to heal the schism with the more traditionalist Catholic movement, granting a private audience to [SSPX leader] Fellay in mid-2005.” It’s one thing to try to break the rank-and-file of the SSPX from their doctrines. It’s another to have a friendly chat with someone whose group openly and unabashedly distributes the foulest anti-Semitic slanders. Which brings us back to Michael Backman. One would like to think that the response to his piece reflected a genuine concern that his questionable phraseology opened the door to racism, rather than an attempt to shut down critics of Israel’s attack on Gaza (although this editorial does rather make you wonder). Certainly, it’s true that the murderous history of the 20th century leaves no room for ambiguity about racism. But, as a figure on the world stage, the Pope matters rather more than an obscure business columnist. That’s why his apparent toleration of an anti-Semitic hate group deserves the strongest possible condemnation, even if there’s no political mileage to be made from it. |
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21 Comments
Jeff, you cannot condemn the Pope on the basis of what a schismatic body says on their website, as you have done in this article. As I said before, SSPX does not recognize the legitimacy of any Pope since John XXIII, and have actively denounced all doctrinal developments extending from the Second Vatican Council.
As for Bishop Williamson, he is a convert from Anglicanism and has some pretty vituperative views about the Papacy that put his anti-Semitism in the shade. SSPX has deplored the views he expressed on television recently (which is really what all the fuss is about) and has taken steps to distance themselves from him. If that doesn’t amount to publicly denouncing the man, I don’t know what does. If the other bishops (re-)join the Church, Williamson is unlikely to follow. He will be left with a fissiparous rump of clergy who will discredit themselves soon enough — hardly a vindication of Archbishop Lefevbure’s reasons for setting up the SSPX in the first place.
The Church is not a political party. The Pope has no authority with which to rebuke Williamson. Without putting too fine a point on this, you don’t seem to have done your fact checking properly before posting this article, and none of your responses have addressed the points I have raised. Your readers (and editors) should expect better.
Without wanting to tell you how to suck eggs, I really think you should look up a few of the conservative Catholic blogs — Holy Smoke has a lot of commentary on this issue. You will see that conservatives within the Church are utterly appalled at this move, and are watching to see how the sede vacantists behave. I would also suggest that you take the effort to discover what the Catholic Church’s doctrinal views on the Jewish people are before writing such a ridiculous denunciation of the shadow of a statue.
The Pope, like any public figure, meets with many people. This doesn’t mean he agrees with everything everyone says or writes.
only a so-so effort at deflection:
- haven’t given those nasty papists a good kicking since WYD.
- one of the pope’s advisors got a bit uppity & compared gaza to a concentration camp.
- quick, let’s call the pope a racist & bring those papists down a notch or two !
fact is i haven’t seen the pope’s swiss guards drop any bombs on women & children lately…but other groups been doing plenty of that lately though…what is the definition of “racist” again ?
I am over this sort of racist drivel. The holocaust was evil but 108 million other people died in Dresden, England, France and Vietnam in two world wars.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/20/gaza-israel-samouni-family
“They left behind their own unique detritus: bullet casings, roasted peanuts in tins with Hebrew script, a plastic bag containing a “High Quality Body Warmer”, dozens of olive-green waste disposal bags, some empty, some stinking full - the troops’ portable toilets.
But most disturbing of all was the graffiti they daubed on the walls of the ground floor. Some was in Hebrew, but much was naively written in English: “Arabs need 2 die”, “Die you all”, “Make war not peace”, “1 is down, 999,999 to go”, and scrawled on an image of a gravestone the words: “Arabs 1948-2009”.
There were several sketches of the Star of David flag. “Gaza here we are,” it said in English next to one.”
One large peace symbol had three slogans written in Hebrew in its three compartments: “Death to Arabs,” “War on Arabs — Sounds Good to Me”, and “The Only Good Arab is a Dead Arab.”
He reports that the IDF had kicked all the family out of their homes and then shelled them wherever they went but this one the home standing because the Israeli’s were living in.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090126/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictgazareligion
Ha’aretz Magazine, 8 October 2004 - Dov Weisglass, counsel to Ariel Sharon in an interview with Ari Shavit.
I still don’t see how the disengagement plan helps here. What was the major importance of the plan from your point of view?
“The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president’s formula so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that’s necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”
Err just a question. There seems to be a bit of distinction between excommunication from a religion, and being a recognised sinner still accepted within. For instance any number of murderers, rapists and yes racists will still be accepted as Catholics.
Unlike some other religions they do a busy trade in confessions for exactly these sins. There’s a good movie with Tilda Swinton in it called The Statement I think about a the French Catholic church finally marginalising a devout confessor and murderer of the Jews in WW2. Issues of Church complicity or protection run through the story and it’s supposedly loosely fact based:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Statement
Not quite sure the rules for excommunication (though my suggesting George Pell was an agent of the Devil on the environment could be getting up there) but my guess is it quite allows for sinners to stay a Catholic.
So the question really is - is there any official recognition. Suspect not much. You say he’s still a “Bishop” but my guess is you can’t unBishop people in the Church. If vague memory serves it’s a sacrament like communion and confirmation namely “Holy Orders”. I suspect you can only sack them from their job, a bit like W Bush is forever more a POTUS.
Some official Jesuit type will probably decide to buy in to this string eventually.
At the risk of flogging a dead horse, no, Kieran, you can’t condemn the Pope on the basis of what a schismatic body says on their website. But that’s not what the article does, is it? The problem lies with the Pope’s attitude to that anti-semitic schismatic body, his willingness to, as Time says, grant it ‘a personal prelature of the papacy, the same special status that conservative lay group Opus Dei was granted by John Paul II’. In other words, if Time is to be believed, the Pope, one of the world’s most significant religious leaders, is contemplating giving a special official status to a group that publicly says that Jews are usurious Christ killers who funded communism. You don’t think that’s at all problematic?
You say that the Pope regularly meets with lots of people. So do most public figures — but if we learnt that any secular leader was having private audiences with the leader of an anti-Semitic hate group, we’d condemn them for it. Wouldn’t we?
I’m glad to hear that conservative Catholic blogs are aghast at the suggestion of a reconciliation with these bigots. They should be. I don’t get why you aren’t.
Kieran Crichton: You use the language of the Church: you have an intimate knowledge of the Church: you do the Church’s PR. Yet you are not a Catholic? Some three or four people may believe you. I am not one of them.
You say with evident pride that the Catholic Church is not a political Party. With the huge corruption of thought which the Church infects the population, it, in theory, doesn’t need to be.
What a conveniently short memory you have. Slow to mention The DLP (Democratic Labor Party) founded by the late and loathsome Bartholomew Augustine Michael (call me Bob) Santamaria? Jesuit trained Bob founded this Australian Catholic Party, I believe there is a small, possibly growing, renaissance of this blot of Australian history. In its heyday it was such a touching sight to see all the nuns of Loreto Convent’s Mandeville Hall (VIC) passing out how to vote cards marked, naturally, VOTE FOR THE DLP. In the golden years of the DLP.
Semantically the CC is not a political party, it’s just more than happy to become one. Sub rosa of course.
Jeff — there’s a very basic point I think you’ve missed, if you’ll bear with me.
If Israel would speak to Hamas, and comply with all agreements reached, Hamas would cease to be a threat to Israel. On the other side, the Israeli argument for ‘war’ with Hamas (if you call it that) would cease to be compelling. Change would come to both sides.
SSPX is to the Catholic Church what Hamas has been to Israel. For there to be peace, Hamas will have to either refine their line on Israel or change it. My guess is that the outcome of the process under way is that, for the SSPX to gain a legitimate place in the Catholic Church, they will have to begin by accepting the documents of the Second Vatican Council without qualification, along with all subsequent commentaries, encyclicals and other statements of Catholic belief extending from these documents. In return they would be allowed to retain the use of the old Mass and their existing structure of provinces, seminaries and so on with the imprimatur of the Pope. But there would be a quantum shift in the doctrinal basis of the SSPX, which would involve an end to some of their more extremist views, especially on Judaism.
SSPX has been a disruptive element to the Catholic Church throughout the world because they deny the legitimacy of all developments post-V2. By bringing them into the structure of the Church, I would guess that the Pope is seeking to bring progress to their views on a wide range of issues. However, the onus is on SSPX to abandon those positions that leave them outside the Church at present, and the lifting of excommunications and beginning of talks to give them a place in the Church is the first step towards bringing change in the SSPX. This may ultimately bring an end to the bigotry you have highlighted. Surely this is a desirable outcome?
The Pope talks to many people. SSPX does not represent the views of the Pope or the Church; perhaps your inflammatory headline should be amended accordingly.
Kieran, the guy’s been making anti-Semitic comments for a decade or more. It’s not ‘calling for a pogrom’ to expect such a man to be sacked. Organisations that do nothing when their representatives spout anti-Semitism share some of the responsibility. What’s controversial about that?
In any case, my whole argument was that the problem was broader than Williamson. The SSPX are, as the Southern Poverty Law centre says, a consistent font of anti-Semitism in the US. You can find their anti-Semitic documents with ten minutes of Googling.
You write: ‘Nothing SSPX says or publishes on a wide range of issues — including Judaism — is representative of current mainstream Catholic views or official doctrine: it is highly unlikely that the Pope would agree in private or public with the contents of the FAQ you cite.’
Well, that’s what I would have thought. But can you not understand why it’s a bit worrying when the Pope grants a private audience to the representative of an overtly racist group? As I quoted, Time says Benedict intends to make the SSPX into “a personal prelature of the papacy’. Now, maybe Time has that wrong. I certainly hope so. But, again, isn’t it just a bit alarming? These are people who say the Jews are usurers who killed Christ – and the Pope’s got plans to work closely with them?
As for the person who suggested that opposing anti-Semitism provided cover for Israeli racism against Palestinians, well, nothing could be further from the truth. All racism is repugnant and should be opposed. To borrow an old phrase, anti-Semitism is the anti-Zionism of fools. It’s perfectly possible to oppose the assault on Gaza while still thinking there’s something wrong with the free pass that the medieval bigots of the SSPX seem to be getting.
Cranks are everywhere. It depends upon the publicity they are given:
A visiting Bar-Ilan University academic and educator Rabbi Dr. Pinchas Hayman who specialises in New Testament Studies had this to say:
‘Separation of church and state is a Western concept based on the assumption that Judaism is a religion…
but it is false, Judaism is our national identity and Halacha is the Jewish national legal system’
and further:
‘Christian have to make a choice -either retain their present belief system and be antisemitic or form a partnership with the Jewish people. As long as Christians keep jesus as God, they will be antisemitic because it must lead them to believe that those who reject Jesus reject God…. Christian idolatrous antisemitism led to the Holocaust’. (AJN - Melbourne edition, Friday 26 July, 1996)
Ehud Barak (PM of Israel 1991-2001) stated:
‘A Plaestinian life is not even worth the fingernail of an Israeli citizen’
Israel Gutman of Jerusalem Yad Vashem Institute, an intelectual and holocaust survivor, deemed a new Berlin monument to homosexual Nazi victims scandalous for equating the Nazi’s persecution of homosexuals with its persecution of Jews’. (LifeSiteNews.com June 2, 2008)
for a non (roman) catholic kieran crichton, you sure argue like a jesuit
Jack,
The Swiss Guards are too busy dropping their pants to drop any bombs.
Wouldn’t have anything to do with Benedicts past would it? Like in the 40’s, like Hitler Youth, like Nazi Party, old ’ habits’ die hard. Ask Tony Abbott, am sure he will have an opinion.
Kieran writes: ‘Bishop Williamson is regarded among his colleagues as a dangerous and extremist crank’.
That might be the case but he’s still a bishop, isn’t he, and so the organisation he leads must take some responsibility for him.
In any case, you miss the broader point. The SSPX a might not agree with Williamson’s broader views (about say 9/11 and women not wearing trousers) but it still publishes (http://www.sspx.org/Catholic_FAQs/jews_guilty_of_deicide.htm for instance) overtly anti-Semitic material. The documents I quoted are racist, pure and simple — and yet they’re freely available on the SSPX website. How can anyone defend that?
This is very simplistic. There are a few salient facts that are important to the parts of this article concerning SSPX. I am not a (Roman) Catholic, nor do I support SSPX or have any connection to this group. Without wanting to defend the SSPX (or Mr Sparrow, for that matter), there are factual gaps that would render this article highly misleading to an uninformed reader.
The SSPX does not accept the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and therefore adheres strictly to pre-V2 views on doctrine, liturgy and social order. To them, the last ‘true’ pope was John XXIII; his successors down to Benedict have been denounced as imposters. These are quaint and outdated views that have clearly changed within the organisation; it is in SSPX’s nature as a reaction against modern tendencies in the Church that the official line of the pre-concilliar Church has been maintained.
Bishop Williamson is regarded among his colleagues as a dangerous and extremist crank. Following his comments on a Scandinavian current affairs program the various parts of his own province distanced themselves from his views through press releases and other public statements. He is manifestly not representative of the full breadth of views within SSPX, which clearly don’t support his frankly bizarre views.
Finally, what do you think would happen if Microsoft suddenly started making Apple computers and promoted them as the only ‘true Apple computers’? Either all-out corporate war, or some sort of merger. SSPX is regarded by many Catholic bishops as a divisive element in their dioceses; Benedict is seeking to address this through some accommodation of SSPX in the regular structures of the Church. This latter move has been welcomed by senior bishops in Germany and France — or didn’t your get research that far, Mr Sparrow?
You can always find ignorant cranks, misguided fools and various types of vicious bigotry anywhere if you look hard enough. Even in Crikey.
Perhaps more intensive research is required into Pope Benedict’s membership of the Hitler Youth: Was he indeed merely drafted into the organisation, as he has stated, or did his membership go further: What posts did he hold, are there kameraden still alive who can recall how boisterous or otherwise he was at Nazi rallies, for instance. His welcoming of this odious Williamson character back into the embrace of Mother Church is more than worrisome and I can’t help but feel the Church is under going a nasty little lurch to fundamentalism (anti-Jew/Muslim/secularism and anti-woman) which threatens to derail its 60-year experiment with modernity.
If Kieran Crichton’s comments are accurate, this is at best a “beat-up”, at worst the sloppy efforts of a reverse-of-the-coin Backman seeking to denigrate the Pope.
Crikey recently took an SMH journo to task on transparency grounds for not revealing at the end of a pro-Israel article that his trip (on which the article was based) was effectively funded by Israel. Of greater interest is - does the author have a vested interest / agenda that is not disclosed ?
Disclosure: Jack is Catholic.
Kieran,
It’s too hot to keep arguing about this so after this I’m done.
With all due respect, your analogy completely misses the point. Imagine a racist split from, say, the Labor party. There’d be nothing wrong with the Labor leadership seeking to win the members of that organisation away from their bigotry — indeed, that’s what you’d hope a principled politician might do. But that would mean ALP politicians publicly denouncing racism, and explaining why it was so vile, even as they tried to find a common ground with the supporters of the split group around other isues.
Is that really how Benedict’s behaving here? I don’t see any sign of it. But I’m happy to be wrong. If the outcome of this little fracas is that the Pope comes out and denounces, not just Bishop Williamson as an individual nutter but the whole poisonous medieval anti-Semitism on the SSPX website, well, that would be a good result.
As for the headline, I’m just a ‘umble freelancer. I don’t write the headlines.
Yawn.
And that’s really the best I can say about this.
For racism, like any bigotry, to MEAN anything, it has to be doing people HARM. Today that’s anti-Arab racism. If your race it actually statistically over-represented at the top of every imaginable field, if you can buy a house in any postcode etc, etc then: WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?
My parents are Irish Catholics. I’m not. But I can feel the viceral hatred of the British that occupation caused. I can connect to a racism against the English. I don’t appove of it, would never act on it, but its there. But I don’t think it matters a damn because it isn’t ruining anyone’s life [at all].
Please read Norman Finkelstein on the abuse of this term (antisemitism).
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/content.php?pg=11
We are not in a vacuum. Space given to this spurious irrelevancy, actually provides cover for the Racist and Democratic state of Israel, in its destruction of the lives of people who are guilty of being Arabs.
You can find similar pathetic postions on white supemicists’ media, where they claim that THEY are the victims of racism. But as white men own just about all the world’s wealth, I don’t expect to see articles about anti-stupid-white-men racism on a publication like Crikey.
Looking about as balanced as Faux News.
Attempt a sense of proportion.
Actually, in the eyes of the Vatican none of the bishops of SSPX are bishops in good standing in the Church. Their consecration was irregular, and led to the excommunications in the first place. Bishop Williamson is a bishop in name only: like his colleagues. You claim he is the ‘Pope’s anti-Semite.’ This is an outrageous and fanciful claim that leaves you open to accusations of sectarian bigotry. I have already pointed out why the excommunications were lifted.
Bishops are responsible FOR — not TO — the Church in Catholic polity. The SSPX response to Williamson’s appearance on television has been clear enough. His credibility as a leader within his own organization, which was already poor, has simply evaporated. Would you like them to stage a pogrom on their English bishops to satisfy your standard of responsibility, Mr Sparrow?
I did not say that the SSPX does not enunciate views that are frankly repugnant to any fair-minded person, Catholic or otherwise. However, I do think you could agree that the SSPX is a reactionary and divisive sect, pure and simple. They do not accept that doctrine might change over time, or hinder the mission of the Church. The fact is that denying the legitimacy of the Second Vatican Council is the whole reason for the existence of SSPX. Doctrinally and liturgically, they have not moved a jot from the official line of 1958 (grounded in positions reached a century earlier), even though world views of Judaism and racism in general were clearly changing then, as demonstrated in the documents of V2. Nothing SSPX says or publishes on a wide range of issues — including Judaism — is representative of current mainstream Catholic views or official doctrine: it is highly unlikely that the Pope would agree in private or public with the contents of the FAQ you cite. The fact is that SSPX still officially regards the present Pope as an imposter, and the official church as a facade for modernism. What does that say to you?
Is this guy on trial in this article because his opinions are clearly incorrect or merely for having them!
To read Brian the Atheist’s hilariously funny comment that the Catholic Church has been slowly modernizing itself over the past sixty years has given me one of the best laughs I’ve ever had.
Think of the Catholic Church as a business: a giant corporation. And as with all such entities the Church spends vast sums of money doing market research. Field studies reveal their followers as being conservative and well pleased to be marching backwards; to a time when men sat around fires, were illiterate, thought wife beating was the order of the day, and enjoyed watching hapless animals dying in ritual slaughter. The Church views its followers as semi-literate teenagers who are mentally challenged and mentally lazy. This is why a Fascist Pope Benedict welcomes the like of Bishop Williamson. Of course Benedict’s views are not only tolerated but believed. All because some clown declared him to be God’s representative on earth. Also these people believe that Jesus Christ was his own father. And some woman who was a virgin gave birth to a man who was his own father, who was his own grandson…. …(I wonder why the poor lady didn’t have a nervous breakdown?) If people believe all of this in the twenty-first century, they will believe anything. And they deserve to be laughed at.
David RC (Roman Catholic? Relapsed Catholic? Whatever) Tony Abbott would have an opinion, but as a Jesuit trained, linear son of the late unlamented Bartholomew Augustine Michael (call me Bob) Santamaria,
you couldn’t trust a word he uttered.
As someone else once said. “Thank God I’m an atheist”.