Footnotes to a Controversy

Earlier tonight, Joao asked me:

"What's the deal with Benedict XVI lifting the excommunication of the anti-Semitic bishop?"

I suppose, in case there are others among my friends also asking the same question, I must provide an answer.

I think these people are thinking of this particular scandal.

Of course, media being media, these idiots all seem to assume that Pope Benedict lifted Bishop Williamson's excommunication, which would be due to Williamson being an anti-Semitic nut job. Apparently, some editors have been cutting down their research department, because the hysteria is a product of poor research.

It would do well to realize that what the Pope was doing was lifting an excommunication handed down by John Paul II against the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), of which Bishop Williamson just happened to be a member.

The order was not excommunicated for being anti-Semitic. The order was excommunicated because this particular bunch of bishops were ordained as bishops illicitly by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988. Of this particular bunch, only Williamson is an anti-Semitic horse's ass. You see, making anti-Semitic statements, while stupid and sinful, is far from an excommunicable offense. The excommunicable sin on the part of these bishops is accepting the ordination of orders from an outright schismatic, which does far more damage to the cause of Christian unity than simple anti-Semitic ass-hattery.

So, in short, the Pope did not suddenly find Antisemitism fashionable. He was trying to unify this breakaway group of people with the Church, something he has also been trying to do with traditionalist Anglicans and the Eastern Orthodox. That one idiot happened to be antisemitic doesn't change that. In a church of sinners, you do not condemn a group of people for the sins of one guy.

I think that at the heart of this scandal is the difficult nature of forgiveness. The most scandalous thing that the media, and everybody who believed the media, found was the notion that even somebody as noxious as Bishop Williamson could be forgiven.

But, God has forgiven worse sins, and will continue to forgive even sins of such magnitude as to be beyond imagination. The Holy Father is simply following his boss' example with regards to the SSPX, who seem ready to attempt to reconcile. As for Williamson himself, nobody is beyond the pale when it comes to God. There are only those who wish themselves there.

As a corollary of the Beauty and the Beast rule, the SSPX, in order to get back into the Pope's good graces, has begun cleaning it's own house. They have already relieved Williamson and fellow antisemitic nut job Florian Abrahamowicz of their positions.