Moral Authority

8 Random Items for 1/29/2009 #7

I think we can truly say that Pope Benedict XVI is the type of Pope that American conservatives can truly love. This Pope isn't a kindly old Grandfather. This is a Pope who yearns for the days when the Catholic Church had absolute authority. (It is just a coincidence, I'm sure, that those were the days in which the Vatican openly practiced anti-Semitism and managed to rack up a body count that would historically dwarf the actions of Al Qaeda.)

If you haven't heard, the Pope has invited back into the fold Bishop Richard Williamson. Williamson was excommunicated from the church in the late 80's for belonging to a group of Catholics that oppose the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, where the Church categorically rejected the idea that Jews killed Jesus and condemned the practice of anti-Semitism. Williamson gave a television interview this past December where he made his opinion of the Holocaust known ...

I believe there were no gas chambers ... I think that two to three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps ... but none of them by gas chambers.

Of course the Vatican has rejected this opinion because to do otherwise would make them appear not just anti-Semitic, but stupid and ignorant. Still, how can you can justify allowing a man who would express these views a member of your church?

The Pope is conflicted on the subject of Jews anyway. On the one hand, he reaches out to them as friends, and then he sanctions the use of an old mass that calls for the conversion of Jews to Catholicism (I would assume they mean to use methods other than those used during the inquisition) and he would like to see Pope Pius XII beatified despite his silence during the Holocaust.

Much like the Protestant right-wing nut jobs in our country, the Pope seems to want to turn back the clock on religious reform. It will be to the world's peril if he accomplishes it.

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