Rabbis may halt Vatican talks over Holocaust-denying priest

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel has threatened to break off normal dialogue with the Vatican over its decision to lift the excommunication of a Catholic priest who claimed that no Jews died in gas chambers during the second world war.

In a letter to Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with Jewry, officials from Israel's supreme religious governing body warned that without a public apology from the priest it would be "very difficult to continue dialogue with the Vatican as before". The letter called on the priest, British-born Richard Williamson, to recant his "deplorable" statement.

The letter said: "You will appreciate that under such circumstances it would be wiser for us to postpone our next meeting in Rome at the beginning of March until this matter is clarified."

It is the fiercest criticism yet of the papal decree, issued last weekend, aimed at rehabilitating members of a traditionalist Catholic order - the Society of St Pius X - one of whose clerics is a Holocaust denier.

Williamson, who now lives in Argentina, had claimed in a television interview that historical evidence was "hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler ... I believe there were no gas chambers."

Alongside three bishops, Williamson was excommunicated 20 years ago after being consecrated by French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent.

The letter, signed by Oded Weiner, the director of the Chief Rabbinate, said: "Even if the move in itself was not intended in any way to relate to the church's relationship with the Jewish people, when it involves the embrace of someone who publicly expresses such odious and outrageous opinions, then it definitely does affect our relationship."

Yesterday Weiner told the Guardian the Rabbinate was demanding an explanation from the Vatican. "This relationship is very important for us and the Holy See. We have not cut ties with them. We are saying the matter has to be clarified. They are aware of the pain and sensitivity and they will consider it and send it up to the highest authorities."

His comments came as the pope made his first public remarks on interfaith relations. Referring to his recent commemoration of the Holocaust, he highlighted how at Auschwitz "millions of Jews were cruelly massacred, innocent victims of blind racial and religious hatred". At his weekly audience, yesterday Benedict XVI told thousands: "I once again affectionately express my full and indisputable solidarity with our brothers and sisters who received the first covenant. I trust that the memory of the Shoah will induce humankind to reflect upon the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the heart of man."

The row, however, shows no immediate sign of abating. The Nobel peace prize winner and death camp survivor, Elie Wiesel, said that the pope, by lifting the excommunications, had given credence to "the most vulgar aspect of antisemitism".

In an interview with Reuters, Wiesel said: "What does the pope think we feel when he did that?"

Guardian

Pope stirs up Jewish fury over bishop

The Vatican is reinstating a British priest who denies millions died at the hands of the Nazis

Tension between the Vatican and Jewish groups looked set to explode yesterday after Pope Benedict XVI rehabilitated a British bishop who has claimed no Jews died in gas chambers during the second world war.

Benedict yesterday welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church Richard Williamson and three other men who were excommunicated in 1988 after being ordained without Vatican permission. The three had been appointed by breakaway French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The Vatican decree issued yesterday spoke of overcoming the "scandal of divisiveness" and seeking reconciliation with Lefebvre's conservative order, the Society of Saint Pius X, which opposes the modernisation of Catholic doctrine.

But Jewish groups have warned the Pope that the decision could damage Catholic-Jewish relations after Williamson claimed in an interview, broadcast last week, that historical evidence "is hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler ... I believe there were no gas chambers".

Shimon Samuels, of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Paris, said he understood the German-born pope's desire for Christian unity but said Benedict could have excluded Williamson, whose return to the church will "cost" the Vatican politically.

In an interview taped last November and aired last Wednesday on Swedish television, Williamson said he agreed with the "most serious" revisionist historians of the second world war who had concluded that "between 200,000-300,000 perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber". Williamson added he realised he could go to jail for Holocaust denial in Germany.

British Jewish groups condemned the decision and said they feared it could damage social cohesion. "The Council of Christians and Jews have said that in recent years there has been a considerable increase in antisemitism from some of the eastern European churches," said Mark Gardner, spokesman for the Community Security Trust which monitors attacks on Jewish people in the UK. Gardner said he hoped the Vatican would make it clear it abhors Williamson's comments about the gas chambers.

"Jews will be extremely alarmed by the lifting of this excommunication on somebody who holds such extreme anti-Jewish views," Gardner said. "I hope the Vatican will speak out on this particular aspect of Williamson's ideology."

Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, warned last week the Vatican's actions would play into the hands of those seeking to stir up trouble. "For the Jewish people ... this development ... encourages hate-mongers everywhere," Steinberg said. Rome's chief rabbi Riccardo Di Segni said that revoking Williamson's excommunication would open "a deep wound".

Senior Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi fought back yesterday, telling the Observer: "Williamson's statements are not agreed with and are open to criticism, and they have nothing to do with the lifting of the excommunication. One is not connected to the other. The Society of Saint Pius X has itself distanced itself from these statements."

Relations between the Vatican and Jewish groups are already strained by the row over Pope Pius XII, who was pontiff during the second world war, and is being considered by the Vatican for beatification. He is accused by some historians and Jewish leaders of failing to speak out against the Holocaust.

Israeli officials recently protested when a senior cardinal said Israel's offensive in Gaza had turned it into a "big concentration camp".

It is not the first controversy for Benedict. His decision to allow freer use of the old Latin mass, including a Good Friday prayer for the conversion of Jews, caused widespread anger. His reintroduction of the Latin mass earned him criticism from Jewish groups but brought him closer to the Swiss-based Society of Saint Pius X, which opposed many of the changes introduced in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council, including holding mass in local languages.

The society's leader, Lefebvre, was still at odds with Rome in 1988 when he ordained four new bishops, including Williamson, without permission from the Vatican, earning excommunication both for himself and all four bishops. Lefebvre died in 1991.

Benedict has pushed to normalise relations with the society, meeting the current head, bishop Bernard Fellay, shortly after becoming pope in 2005. In its statement yesterday, the Vatican said Benedict was bringing the bishops back into the fold "with the hope that full conciliation and shared communion is achieved as soon as possible".

Guardian

Anti-Semitic leader rebuked by Catholic Bishop

A man who has run a virulently anti-Semitic “Catholic” group for 14 years has been told to clean up his act by church officials contacted by the Intelligence Report.

Robert Sungenis, who founded and heads Catholic Apologetics International (CAI), was profiled in the magazine edition released in January, along with other anti-Semitic individuals and institutions involved in the “radical traditionalist Catholic” movement, whose precepts are rejected by the Vatican. The Report later sent a letter to Sungenis’ bishop in Harrisburg, Pa., detailing Sungenis’ anti-Semitic activities.

The church responded with alacrity. According to a July 31 essay he posted on CAI’s website entitled “Catholic Apologetics International and its Teachings on the Jews”, Sungenis was contacted by Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades and later met with Rhoades’ vicar general, the Very Rev. William J. King, and the Rev. James Massa, executive director for ecumenical and inter-religious affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Afterward, Sungenis wrote that CAI’s “hard-line positions regarding the Jews” had been “often expressed in an ill-advised manner” and promised to change.

“CAI is in the process of removing all the content on its website concerning the Jews in order to make the initial adjustments in complying with my bishop’s directive,” he wrote. “If in the future we write any new material on the Jews, it will always be with the required due diligence, as if the bishop were present with us.”

Sungenis, based in State Line, Pa., is one of the hardest-line figures of the radical traditionalist Catholic movement, which generally has rejected the Vatican’s efforts to reconcile with Jews and other faiths. Among other things, Sungenis in 2002 wrote a 33,000-word screed attacking the Jews that led to him being thrown off Eternal Word Television Network, a Catholic cable station. Elsewhere, he has written of “Jews, Judaism and Israel” are conspiring to make Satan the ruler of the earth.

Despite the rebuke, Sungenis did not back down all the way. He wrote that the “Jews, as a race, are no longer the ‘chosen people’ of God,” and added that they “have been blinded to the Gospel of Jesus Christ by their own doing.” Still, he promised to adopt the “more conciliatory approach” that is today “in vogue.”

Hatewatch

Church split feared as Pope backs return of 'anti-Semitic' Latin Mass

A plan by the Pope to authorise the widespread return of the controversial Latin Mass, despite concerns that parts of it are anti-Semitic, has provoked a backlash among senior clergy in Britain and threatens to divide the Catholic Church worldwide. The 16th-century Tridentine Mass - which includes references to "perfidious" Jews - was abandoned in 1969 and replaced with liturgy in local languages, to make worship more accessible to the bulk of churchgoers. But the Pope announced on Thursday that a long-awaited document liberalising the use of the Mass, which some clergy fear will also limit the Church's dialogue with Jews and Muslims, will be released next week.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, has written to the Pope to say that no changes are needed. Concerns about the prospect of the introduction of the Mass were also underlined on Thursday at an unusual meeting to underline resistance to it. But the Pope subsequently issued a statement revealing that he had illustrated "the content and the spirit" of next week's document, which will be sent to all bishops, accompanied by a personal letter from him.

There have been months of debate about the impending statement within the higher echelons of the Church. Cardinals, bishops and Jewish leaders are concerned by the text of the "old" Mass, which has passages, recited every Good Friday, which say Jews live in "blindness" and "darkness", and pray "the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ".

There are also fears that a reintroduction may be the precursor of further changes to the reforms approved by the Second Vatican Council, which sat between 1962 and 1965 and which called for the Mass to be said in local languages, for the priest to face the congregation, and for the use of lay readers. Latin could still be used to recite the Mass, but the "new" Mass will be used, not the "old" Mass.

To celebrate the old Latin Mass now, a priest must obtain permission from the local bishop and the Roman Catholic Church in Britain. "It is standard practice to follow Rome, but we don't know yet what the [statement] will say," a spokesman for the Church in Britain said yesterday. "When we have the document, bishops and cardinals will consider it."

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, said bishops would still have a "central role" - but hinted at the Vatican's new enthusiasm for the old Mass by calling it a "great treasure" of the Church.

Pope Benedict's move is widely seen as an attempt to reach out to an ultra- traditionalist and schismatic group, the Society of St Pius X, and bring it back into the Vatican fold. The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the society in 1969 in Switzerland, in opposition to the Second Vatican Council's reforms.

The Rev Keith Pecklers, a Jesuit liturgical expert, said: "The real issue here is not limited to liturgy but has wider implications for church life." He added that proponents of the old Mass "tend to oppose the laity's increased role in parish life... collaboration with other Christians and its dialogue with Jews and Muslims".

Independent

BNP seeks anti-abortion Catholic votes

The British National Party is building an alliance with radical anti-abortion activists in an attempt to reach out to Catholics and secure their votes in future elections

Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, and one of his close deputies confirmed yesterday that they held private talks last week with the UK co-ordinator of Life League, an anti-abortion lobby group. Griffin and Mark Collet spent two days with James Dowson, an Ulster-based businessman and the main force behind Life League.

The meeting has outraged other anti-abortion campaigners. A number of them, who wanted to remain anonymous, contacted The Observer this weekend. One, who described himself as a 'mainstream anti-abortion and anti-racist', condemned the BNP.

Griffin claimed that amplifying the party's 'pro-life' policies would win it new votes among Catholics. 'There used to be a perception in Northern Ireland and Scotland that we were an Orange party. This is not so,' he said. The BNP, like Dowson, wanted to reach across the sectarian divide.

'If there is any plus for us in meeting Life League and highlighting our opposition to abortion, it is that it chimes with the feelings of many working-class Scottish Catholics,' the BNP leader said. His main candidate in Glasgow would be stressing the BNP's opposition to abortion in the forthcoming Scottish elections.

Dowson said the league had a 'moral duty to engage with anyone who will listen in order to promote our pro-life agenda'.

Matthew Collins of Searchlight, the anti-fascist magazine, said it was odd that the BNP 'welcomed Holocaust deniers' yet believed in the 'right to life of the unborn'.

Observer