Monday, January 26, 2009
People who know me and who are familiar with my blog understand I am no fan of the Catholic church and its current Pope. Here’s yet another reason why.
Pope Benedict XVI has decided to lift the excommunication of a British bishop who denies that 6 million Jews were killed in gas chambers at the hands of the Nazis.
The pope’s decree, issued Saturday, brings back into the Catholic Church’s fold Bishop Richard Williamson and three other bishops who belong to the Society of Saint Pius X.
According to Bishop Richard Williamson:
“I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against, is hugely against, 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers. I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers.”
Folks, the rejection that 6 million Jews were killed in Nazi gas chambers is a revisionist spin on history and is embraced by the likes of the Aryan Nation, David Duke, and the Christian Party. For these anti-Semitic extremists, denying the veracity of the Holocaust is the glue that binds them together.
But least we be surprised that Pope Benedict XVI would take such an action.
Long before becoming leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI was known simply as Joseph Alois Ratzinger in Bavaria, Germany and at age 14, he enrolled in the Hitler Youth. Ratzinger even then trained in the German infantry, but were it not for an illness precluding him from the usual rigours of military duty, he would have served in anti-aircraft division of the Nazi military.
For me, the Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee said it best when he issued this response to Pope Benedict XVI’s outrageous action:
“Welcoming an open holocaust denier into the Catholic Church without any recantation on his part, the Vatican has made a mockery of John Paul II’s moving and impressive repudiation and condemnation of anti-Semitism.”
From the Left 
a lot of former nazi’s have been pope – strange to say the least
It’s so interesting to me that the Vatican selected a former member of Hitler’s Youth Group to be the spiritual leader of the 2 billion-strong Roman Catholic Church and once he gets the crown, all he does is bash gays and pardons Nazi apologists. Am I the only one who thinks he wasn’t the best choice for Pope?
Pope Benedict enjoys wearing Prada.
Other than this, I can’t think of anything good to say about him?
I was raised Catholic but left the church 30 years ago for my own sanity. When I read something like this I’m reminded I made the right decision.
We should all be disgusted that the Roman Catholic Church is inserting Holocaust deniers into their ranks. You really have to wonder if Pope Benedict, in private moments dons Nazi regalia and goose steps around the Vatican?
As a Jew and as a gay man, I find this stunt by Pope Rat to be morally reprehensible and spiritually offensive.
When will Catholics wake up about their church?
The Roman Catholic church is the largest Christian church on earth and what did they do when child, priest pedophiles were busy molesting little boys in the confessional? They did nothing.
In the U.S., they relocated the worst offenders to other parts of the country and never told the receiving church about the priest’s sexscapades.
vicodaniel1987@yahoo.com
Benedict and Ted Haggard should get a house together next summer on Fire Island. They can exercise their demons together and wear Prada.
Saw this post referenced in the UK Guardian and wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you bring the story to the attention of your American readers.
We in the UK tend to hold Pope Benedict and the Vatican at arms length anyway. The behavior of the Catholic church during WWII is a sore spot for many surviving Britons who in retrospect, thought the church could do much more.
Yet another reason to reject the catholic church.
I’m not Jewish and I find this offensive.
You really have to wonder if this Pope has some sort of illness like Alzheimers?
Pope Benedict XVI is a very ignorant man but Bishop Richard Williamson just stupid.
The fact is, World War II casualties vary greatly from estimates ranging from 50 million to over 70 million people. These numbers include men, women and children with some nations suffering more loss than others.
Red China lost 20 million during WWII, whereas the former Soviet Union saw more than 23 million deaths and Nazi Germany lost 7 million in the course of the war.
The Jewish death toll is always a source of debate and controversy which is curious. People like this Catholic dunce, Bishop Richard Williamson, seem determined to marginalize the number and manner of Jewish deaths. Jews died in a variety of way: Nazi gas chambers, gun and rifle shot, starvation, disease, and from natural causes.
Perhaps, American Catholics could DEMAND from their church and specifically, from Bishop Richard Williamson, to explain why it matters whether 50%, 75% or 100% of the 6 million Jews died in gas chambers? They still died and by huge numbers.
Personally, I am appalled to see Pope Benedict XVI rescind the ex-communication of a Bishop who denies that 6 million Jews were killed at the hands of the Nazis. There is something morally and universally offensive about resurrecting the authority of a Bishop who is obviously informed by an anti-Jew bias.
Fug is alive and well and living in the Vatican.
It blows my mind that anyone claiming to be a faith of “good” would elect such a monster.
I have a number of Catholic friends and they’re horrified by this Pope.
They say he’s more out of touch than was John Paul and more determined to hold onto a hierarchy that dates back 1,000 years or more.
What annoys me about him is his constant attacks on the LGBT community. I bet he has a pretty, 16 year old Italian boy in his residence.
Don’t they all?
5,000 Catholic priests in the United States molested young boys. That didn’t set the gay community back much, did it?
I always knew they were goofy when Mel Gibson said his wife would go to hell because she’s not a Catholic. And then there’s Mel’s father….
From theage.com….
“It’s all — maybe not all fiction — but most of it is,” he said, adding that the gas chambers and crematoria at camps like Auschwitz would not have been capable of exterminating so many people.
“Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it?” he said. “It takes a litre of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the gas to do it. That’s why they lost the war.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The Sith Lord of the Roman Catholic Church has lost his mind.
Pope Benedict XVI is a douche.
As Panasit says, one can debate the exact number of people killed and by what method –plenty of victims of the Holocaust were killed by other means – but why the hell is that a hot topic? The 200,000 to 300,000 figure is appalling ignorant of extensively-documented history, but what’s more appalling is the apparent attempt to minimize what was done. WWII saw death on a horrific scale, as Panasit lays out, but the Holocaust, and the death camps, were a special form of hell that should never be dismissed, and it’s disturbing to see a high-ranking, supposed man of god do so.
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It is sad to see that the information about Pope Benedict XVI is manipulated to influences other people who do not not facts about the Pope. He was drafted against his will while was attending a catholic seminar studies in Germany. He is one of the most brilliant and compassionate faith leaders in our times. He is part of his story for your better understanding. At the age of five, Ratzinger was in a group of children who welcomed the visiting Cardinal Archbishop of Munich with flowers. Struck by the Cardinal’s distinctive garb, he later announced the very same day that he wanted to be a cardinal.
Ratzinger attended the elementary school in Aschau am Inn, which was renamed in his honour in 2009.[
Following his 14th birthday in 1941, Ratzinger was conscripted into the Hitler Youth—as membership was required by law for all 14-year-old German boys after December 1939[9]—but was an unenthusiastic member who refused to attend meetings, according to his brother.[10] In 1941, one of Ratzinger’s cousins, a 14-year-old boy with Down syndrome, was taken away by the Nazi regime and killed during the Action T4 campaign of Nazi eugenics. In 1943, while still in seminary, he was drafted into the German anti-aircraft corps as Luftwaffenhelfer, (Air force child soldier). Ratzinger then trained in the German infantry. As the Allied front drew closer to his post in 1945, he deserted back to his family’s home in Traunstein after his unit had ceased to exist, just as American troops established their headquarters in the Ratzinger household. As a German soldier, he was put in a POW camp but was released a few months later at the end of the war in the summer of 1945. He reentered the seminary, along with his brother Georg, in November of that year.
Thus, following repatriation in 1945, the two brothers entered Saint Michael Seminary in Traunstein, later studying at the Ducal Georgianum (Herzogliches Georgianum) of the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. They were both ordained in Freising on 29 June 1951 by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Munich. Ratzinger recalled: ..at the moment the elderly Archbishop laid his hands on me, a little bird – perhaps a lark – flew up from the altar in the high cathedral and trilled a little joyful song.