Recent news reports indicate that the reconciliation talks between the Vatican
and the radical traditionalist Catholic group, the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX),
have accelerated and are nearing their climax. The group, whose members include
the notorious Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson, was originally put
into schism in 1988 and since then has operated independent of Vatican
authority.
Recently Pope Benedict XVI has made a strong effort to heal
the schism and bring the group back into the Church.
As one French
Vatican analyst has noted, “Pope Benedict has staked a lot on his attempt to
heal this breach; it will be one of the things that will mark his
pontificate.”
Despite the conciliatory efforts made by the Vatican toward
the group, the Society has remained committed to its belief that it is correct,
and that the established Church is the heretical institution.
As one of
its leading figures, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais put it, “we do not change our
positions, but we have the intention of converting Rome, that is, to lead Rome
towards our positions.”
While it is not usual for Jews to intervene in
the internal struggles of other religions, in this case the Jewish community
will be watching the result of these talks with intense interest. When the
Society comes up for mention, it is usually linked to Bishop Williamson and his
overt Holocaust denial; and the bishop’s remarks were cited by the Vatican as
the major roadblock for reconciliation.
However, this focus on the odious
Holocaust denial statements uttered by Williamson has tended to obscure the
heart of the issue, and that is the hard-core traditional anti-Semitism that
permeates the theology of the Society.
Williamson himself has gone far
beyond Holocaust denial, as his own writings evidence. In a letter written in
1991 he quoted the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion approvingly; a
decade later (May 1, 2009), he did so again, writing in another letter that “God
puts in men’s hands the ‘Protocols of the Sages of Sion’ ... if men want to know
the truth, but few do.”
And Williamson is far from the only leader of the
SSPX to be infected with anti-Semitism. Bishop de Mallerais has called Jews “the
most active artisans for the coming of Antichrist” and described how “their
grave defects rendered them odious to the nations among which they were
established.”
De Mallerais is no fringe figure in the SSPX; he is a
member of the inner circle of SSPX leaders as well as the official biographer of
the movement’s founder, French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, whose own record on
Jews and Judaism was equally questionable. In a 1985 letter to pope John Paul II
Lefebvre summarized the SSPX’s staunch opposition to “all the reforms carried
out over 20 years within the church to please... declared enemies of the church,
such as the Jews.”
Finally, two essays that were posted on the SSPX’s US
website (and were removed when the public controversy initially erupted in 2009)
illustrate that anti-Semitism very clearly. In one essay, the Vatican II
teaching that “the Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if
this followed from holy Scripture” is described as “outrageous.”
The
other essay claims that “Judaism is inimical to all nations in general, and in a
special manner to Christian nations” and that “the unrepentant Jewish people are
disposed by God to be a theological enemy, the status of this opposition must be
universal, inevitable, and terrible.”
There are claims that “the Talmud,
which governs Jews, orders enmity with Christians” and that the “Jewish people
persecute Christendom” “conspire against the Christian State,” commit “usury”
and even “are known to kill Christians”! As a result, Jews should not be “given
equality of rights” but rather should be forced into ghettos (“isolated into its
own neighborhoods”).
Before one can say that the sanitization of those
websites is a theological statement showing the repudiation of those beliefs by
the Society, the SSPX’s Asia website still contains the testimony of a
Philippine bishop who was converted to the SSPX’s brand of Catholicism by
reading a book that taught him that “Judaism is the visible chief enemy of the
Catholic Church”! Pope Benedict has clearly invested a great deal of effort and
even passion in the attempt at reconciliation with the SSPX. But sometimes, the
best of intentions aren’t enough. In this case, what happens with the Society
will send a clear indication of the future of Jewish- Catholic relations to the
Jewish community.
Anything less than requiring a vigorous and transparent
effort to remove the foundation of theological anti-Semitism that underlies the
teachings of the SSPX will mark a visible retreat for the Church from the
reworking of its relationship with the Jewish people that began in the Second
Vatican Council almost 50 years ago.
Long ago the Prophet Elijah framed
the question clearly to the people of Israel at Mount Carmel: “How long will you
halt between two opinions? If the LORD be God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow
him.” Today the choice is the pope’s; the answer was clear then – it should be
equally clear now.
The writer is the director of government affairs for
the Simon Wiesenthal Center. As a longtime participant in Jewish-Catholic
relations, he was one of the Jewish leaders who met with Pope Benedict XVI
during his visit to the US in 2008.
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