Vatican criticisms mount despite containment efforts

Bishop Richard Williamson and another prominent cleric of the Society of St. Pius X, who had also expressed skepticism about the Holocaust, have been disciplined by that traditionalist body, offering a further indication that the leadership hopes to distance itself from perceptions of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Meanwhile, the Vatican has notched an important success in its efforts to contain the fallout from the Williamson affair, managing to convince the Chief Rabbinate of Israel to put a meeting which had been cancelled back on track. That result is seen as especially critical ahead of Pope Benedict XVI’s scheduled visit to Israel in May.

Despite those developments, observers both inside and outside the church have continued to voice astonishment, and in some cases outrage, that the Vatican did not do a better job of managing and communicating the decision to lift the excommunication of Williamson and three other traditionalist bishops.

Over the weekend, the Latin American superior of the Society of St. Pius X announced that Williamson has been removed as the director of a traditionalist seminary in Argentina, near Buenos Aires, which he had led since 2003.

“The affirmations of Bishop Williamson do not reflect in any way the position of our society,” said Fr. Christian Bouchacourt, Latin American superior of the traditionalist body, in a statement.

At roughly the same time, the Italian leadership of the society announced that it had expelled Fr. Floriano Abrahamowicz, a well-known figure in the Italian media who has questioned whether the Nazis used gas chambers for anything other than “disinfection,” referred to Jews as “a people of deicide,” and expressed sympathy for Erich Priebke, a German SS officer convicted of war crimes for a 1944 massacre in Rome.

In recent days, Abrahamowicz also came to Williamson’s defense, blaming Jews for exalting the Holocaust above other instances of genocide.

An Italian superior of the society said that the expulsion was the result of positions expressed by Abrahamowicz “differerent from the official positions of the Society of St. Pius X.” Fr. Davide Pagliarani called the decision “painful,” but “necessary in order to prevent the image of the society from being further distorted and, in consequence, doing damage to its service to the church.”

Pope Benedict XVI’s recent decision to lift the excommunication of Williamson and three other traditionalist bishops ordained in 1988 by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre triggered a global firestorm, in the wake of an interview given by Williamson to Swedish television, in which he asserted that “not a single Jew” had died in gas chambers and that no more than 300,000 Jews had died during the Second World War.

Those assertions built on a track record of public comments from Williamson questioning the historical reality of the Holocaust datingback to the 1980s.

In response, the Vatican has struggled to reaffirm its commitment to remembrance of the Holocaust and good relations with Judaism, saying that the pope and senior officials were not aware of Williamson’s views. On Thursday, Benedict is scheduled to meet with the U.S.-based Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and make an address about the Holocaust and the dangers of Holocaust denial.

Today, a delegation from the World Jewish Congress met with senior Vatican officials, including Cardinal Walter Kasper, the pope’s top officer for relations with Jews. Afterwards, a spokesperson for the congress released a statement saying, “We now believe that our message has been understood. The controversial debate of the past three weeks has had a positive impact.”

The leadership of the Society of St. Pius X has also tried to distance itself from Williamson’s views. On Jan. 27, Bishop Bernard Fellay, worldwide superior of the Society of St. Pius X, released a statement saying that Williamson had no authority to speak on anything other than faith and morals, and indicating that he had been barred from further comment on political and historical questions.

Fellay was also one of the four bishops whose excommunication has been rescinded, a move presented by the Vatican as an “act of peace” intended to heal the only formal schism in the church since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

Despite these damage control efforts, criticism of the Vatican’s handling of the Williamson affair has continued to build, including stern reactions from voices generally perceived as sympathetic to Rome.

Conservative columnist George Weigel, for example, in a Feb. 8 essay in First Things, wrote: “The last several weeks of curial chaos, confusion, and incompetence in the wake of the lifting of the excommunications of four Lefebvrist bishops have made clear just how dysfunctional the curia remains in terms of both crisis analysis and crisis management.”

On Sunday, a brief note was posted on Williamson’s blog indicating that “His Excellency is neither dead, dying nor retired.” It was the first comment since Jan. 30, when Williamson posted a letter to Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who heads the Vatican’s Ecclesia Dei Commission overseeing relations with the traditionalists, apologizing for the “tremendous media storm” triggered by “imprudent remarks of mine on Swedish television.”

Notably, Williamson did not offer any apology for the substance of his comments on the Holocaust. In a brief interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel, which appeared on Saturday, Williamson said he would only recant in the face of “proof” that his positions are incorrect.