Vatican Stands by Bishop in Holocaust Denial

As a blogger trying to write something new every day or two, I just need to say how thankful I am for the Vatican. If I’m at a loss for words, I simply Google “Vatican” and a door miraculously opens to show me the way. Sometimes it’s a Papal utterance of some kind that condemns birth control and unplanned teen pregnancy at one and the same time. Or maybe it’s a scathing denouncement of homosexuality, timed to coincide with a secular report documenting a level of homosexual orientation in the Catholic priesthood much higher than in any other observable male population. Even when the Church talks about money, it’s usually in the context of sex, as when American Archdioceses are forced to close parishes because they’ve been bankrupted by payouts to victims of priestly pedophilia. Catholicism has just never been able to get its arms around the issue of human sex, and the Church looks dysfunctional whenever the subject comes up.

Sex isn’t the only topic perplexing to the Vatican, however. There’s also the Holocaust and the broader issue of German Nazism. Pius XII, a gaunt Germanophile of dubious piousness, has been dubbed by several WWII historians as, “Hitler’s Pope.” There’s disagreement about whether his relationship with Der Fuhrer was one of appeasement or collaboration, but there’s no denying that Pius XII knew about trains to the death camps and said nothing to diminish or impede the slaughter of European Jews. The modern Vatican now seeks to reward this by making Pius XII into a saint. Go figure.

Then there’s Joseph Ratzinger. This man is the reason for my blog, today, since he’s currently making news around the world. He started WWII as a Hitler Youth, and by war’s end he was shooting anti-aircraft at Allied bombers. In 2005, he changed his name to Pope Benedict XVI, but I just call him, “PappaRatzi.” This former Nazi is now standing by one of his underlings, Bishop Richard Williamson, as Williamson makes headline news asserting that no Jews ever died in Nazi gas chambers. The Vatican is standing firm on a decision that Williamson can be rehabilitated, evidently viewing Holocaust denial as something in the same class with other inadvertent misdemeanors (actually the Church calls them venial sins) like pedophilia. The Church puts a lot of stock in rehabilitation, and much less in responsibility. What probably is beyond rehabilitation is a trusting relationship between the Vatican and Israel,

I love the Vatican. I could never be creative enough to make this stuff up.