Pope Benedict XVI has written an unusually personal letter to bishops worldwide explaining why he revoked the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop and admitting mistakes in how the Vatican handled the case. The letter, which the Vatican will release Thursday, is a further attempt to calm the waters after Benedict pardoned four schismatic bishops, including Richard Williamson, who in a television interview aired in January said that there were no Nazi gas chambers. The revocation provoked worldwide outrage and caused Catholics and Jews alike to question Benedict’s commitment to ecumenism and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
In passages of the letter that appeared on Wednesday in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio, the Vatican admitted “mistakes” in handling the case, and said in the future it would pay more attention to how news spreads over the Internet. A YouTube video of Bishop Williamson’s television interview, in which he denies the Holocaust, was widely available online in the days before the pope lifted the excommunications in late January.
The four belong to the ultra-conservative Society of St. Pius X. They had been excommunicated by Pope John Paul II after being ordained without a papal mandate, causing the only formal schism in the church. In passages from the pope’s letter posted Wednesday on the blog of a veteran Vatican reporter, Andrea Tornielli, Benedict said he considered revoking the excommunication “a modest act of mercy” toward the bishops, whose ordinations were “valid but illicit.” “Instead,” Mr. Tornielli quotes the letter saying, “it suddenly appeared something completely different: as the denial of reconciliation between Christians and Jews.”
The blog posting said the pope wrote that he had been “saddened” that “even Catholics, who should have been better able to understand things,” instead seemed poised with “a hostility ready for the attack.” He added that he thanked “the Jewish friends who quickly helped remove the misunderstandings and to reestablish the atmosphere of friendship and trust”…
So I would say to my cousins, "Does that mean the Pope was always right, even before he got to be Pope? What if I get to be Pope, does that mean that everything I’ve ever said was right? What if the Pope as a kid said that he didn’t think the Pope was infallible?" I was pretty tough on my cousins about this Papal Infallibility business [I expect it was my way of countering the not so vague claim made by a parent of mine about his own infallibility].
This was terrific and it caused me a bout of mirth. Thank you.