The Pope's Past with the Right Wing

[IndianaGreen]

03/17/2009

A TROUBLESOME HISTORY?

The Pope's Past with the Right Wing
By Gunther Latsch

Pope Benedict XVI admitted that he made mistakes in his handling of the far-right Society of St. Pius X and the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson. But the pope has a history of being used by the extreme right.

For weeks, one heard relatively little from him. Pope Benedict XVI seemed to have little to say about the ultra-conservative brothers of the Society of St. Pius X -- about their Bishop, Richard Williamson, about is appalling denial of the Holocaust, and about the storm of criticism launched by many Catholics against the Vatican. Last Tuesday, Pope Benedict XVI finally issued a statement in a letter addressed to the "Dear Brothers in the Episcopal Ministry."

Since then, the world has known that the pope is indeed fallible. That is, of course, a human quality, but it isn't necessarily good for the office of the papacy. According to church doctrine, the pope's preaching of dogma is infallible -- but even errors unrelated to dogma can tarnish his reputation.

"An unforeseen mishap," wrote the pope, "was the fact that the Williamson case came on top of the remission of the excommunication (eds. note: of four Pius brothers)." This created the unfortunate impression that this "discreet gesture of mercy" was the "repudiation of reconciliation between Christians and Jews," which was something that he could "only deeply regret."

But the Williamson affair is not the first case where the theologian Joseph Ratzinger has allowed himself, with inexplicable nonchalance, to be used by right-wing extremists, as previously unpublished documents now show.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,613756,00.html

Related story:

Pope rejects condom use in Africa

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3786848&mesg_id=3786848

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