On being an ass

[newschoolman]

Thursday, 5 February 2009On being an ass

Still suffering from my lurgy this morning. But the old mind will not rest.

This morning on the BBC4 current affairs flagship programme The Today Programme, William Oddie put on a good show in defending the pope over the Williamson affair.

He did, however, appear to make one odd mistake. He said that Bishop Williamson will have to renounce his holocaust revisionism in order to come back into full communion with the Church. I don't think this is true. The Vatican Secretariat of State document from yesterday said the following:

Bishop Williamson, for an admission to episcopal functions in the Church, will also have to declare, in an absolutely unequivocal and public manner, distance from his positions regarding the Shoah, unknown to the Holy Father in the moment of the remmission of the excommunication.

So, he will have to renounce his revisionist views in order to function as a bishop, not to be readmitted to the Church (which, indeed, has already happened).

Few people will remember the letter Archbishop Lefebvre wrote in August 1987 to the priests he had chosen to consecrate:

I will bestow this grace upon you, confident that without too long a delay the See of Peter will be occupied by a successor of Peter who is perfectly Catholic, and into whose hands you will be able to put back the grace of your episcopacy so that he may confirm it.

In other words, there was always the possiblity that the pope might not confirm the office of episcopacy conferred by ABL on these four men. That might yet still happen, at least for Bishop Williamson.

Could Bishop Williamson actually renounce these views? 99% of people will say no. I'm not so sure. Having lived under the same roof as Bishp Williamson for three years, I can tell you that, to all appearances, he is a deeply spiritual man; wrong headed, occasionally potty, but an inventive teacher and profoundly engaged in the spiritual life. I remember older seminarians telling us about the time Bishop Williamson ran the 1st Year Spirituality class. I'm vamping the dialogue but it went something like this:

BW+: Okay, today we begin the course in Spirituality or Spiritual Theology. I'm going to dictate to you now the first lesson in the spiritual life, so write it down and underline it -

I .........AM ........ AN ........ ASS!

Could Bishop Williamson renounce his views on holocaust revisionism? Well, maybe with the help of a couple of good historians he could be convinced that the arguments in favour of the historicity of the Shoah are very sound indeed. Maybe if the pope ordered him to reconsider his positions on these historical questions, he would do so.

After that, he would only need to remember one more thing ... All together now:

I .........AM ........ AN ........ ASS!

Or, as he told the seminarians whom he tonsured at Flavigny in 2008:

So my dear young men, let’s be humble. Let’s be intransigent for the truth we serve. But let’s be humble for our poor selves. We remain sinners.

[StevusMagnus]

Darn, and here I thought newschoolman was finally beginning to see the light. ;)

[Cantus]

Poetry, pure poetry!!!!!!! 

My avatar proves true again!!!!!!!

My dear Bishop Williamson, I'm glad to say I know at least one, but you may not be so glad to hear it, sir!!!  Even though we haven't seen each other in some years.
 

[devotedknuckles]

LOL!!!!!!!!

[spasiisochrani]

I seem to remember that, many years ago, possibly before the consecration of the bishops, Archbishop Lefebvre was criticized by a Jewish group.  He reacted with surprise that this would happen, because, he said, he made it his policy never to talk about the Jews.  Does anybody else remember this?

[newschoolman]

Saturday, 7 February 2009Bishop Williamson looking at the evidence again

I imagine my post On being an ass on Thursday caused some people to sneer. "Bishop Williamson change his mind? No way!"

Interesting then to read an extract from Der Speigel picked up by Reuters and posted on Rorate Caeli:

Asked why he had not apologized for his comments, Williamson told Germany's Spiegel magazine: "If I should discover that I have been at fault, then I will do so."

Williamson told Swedish television in an interview broadcast on January 21: "I believe there were no gas chambers." He said no more than 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, rather than the 6 million accepted by mainstream historians.

"I ask everyone to believe me that I did not deliberately say something false. I was, on the basis of my research in the 1980s, convinced of the accuracy of my comments," he told the weekly in an interview released on Saturday.

"Now I must examine everything again and look at the evidence," he added.

That isn't a retraction but might we expect sometime soon a change of heart of the part of the bishop once he has looked again at the evidence? Does this expression 'research in the 1980s' herald a much-needed updating (and change) of his views?

Watch this space.

(And, Bishop Williamson, if you ever read this, allow me to remind you that we're all asses!)

[Gerard]

Well, maybe with the help of a couple of good historians he could be convinced that the arguments in favour of the historicity of the Shoah are very sound indeed. 

Does anyone know who these Unicorns might be?  I'm amazed that some people like Ferrara are so convinced of their positions and the Bishop's error that they believe the first principal is "agree with me" and anything else is absurd. 

I'm betting a typical man on the street interview in which people are asked to source their knowledge of the 'holocaust" would not bear much in the way of results.  The majority would probably cite television and movies. 

I'd really like to see the historians who can verify the shrunken heads for me.  And I mean the ones from the concentration camps, not the news media. 

[Cantus]

Saturday, 7 February 2009Bishop Williamson looking at the evidence again

I imagine my post On being an ass on Thursday caused some people to sneer. "Bishop Williamson change his mind? No way!"

Interesting then to read an extract from Der Speigel picked up by Reuters and posted on Rorate Caeli:

Asked why he had not apologized for his comments, Williamson told Germany's Spiegel magazine: "If I should discover that I have been at fault, then I will do so."

Williamson told Swedish television in an interview broadcast on January 21: "I believe there were no gas chambers." He said no more than 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, rather than the 6 million accepted by mainstream historians.

"I ask everyone to believe me that I did not deliberately say something false. I was, on the basis of my research in the 1980s, convinced of the accuracy of my comments," he told the weekly in an interview released on Saturday.

"Now I must examine everything again and look at the evidence," he added.

That isn't a retraction but might we expect sometime soon a change of heart of the part of the bishop once he has looked again at the evidence? Does this expression 'research in the 1980s' herald a much-needed updating (and change) of his views?

Watch this space.

(And, Bishop Williamson, if you ever read this, allow me to remind you that we're all asses!)

Well, none of us could ever refute that.  I'm proud of H.E.B.W.  It's the most public humility that I've ever seen from him.

[charlesh]

I'm starting to like this guy (er, bishop) more and more! The first thing I realized when I converted a few years back was that I was an ass.