Of History and Theology

Paul Gottfried, who is Jewish, writes:

As far as I know, the Catholic Church does not excommunicate members for holding political incorrect historical interpretations. Catholics are free to believe what they want about how many victims Hitler or Stalin killed. They may even believe, if they chose to, that the Cards beat the Steelers in last week’s super-bowl, without being tossed out of the fold for their wackiness.

Church authorities, however, are authorized to excommunicate those who reject church discipline or who openly deny some basic doctrine. Still and all, in the past century or so, the Vatican has not been kicking out confessing Catholics very often. What happened to Lefebvre and his followers was not a common occurrence. It was directed against those ultra-traditionalists who resisted the changes introduced by Vatican Two. Lefebvre and his followers repudiated the Church’s teachings, as proclaimed through Vatican Two, about the uses of vernacular liturgy and about certain alterations in the priest’s role in the Eucharist.

It is altogether possible that the current pope thought that such measures were excessively harsh in dealing with otherwise devout Catholics, who seemed to be erring on the side of orthodoxy. And particularly when those Catholics, who are on the opposite side of the political-ecclesiastical spectrum, continue to endorse positions that are entirely antithetical to Catholic moral positions. Catholics now throughout the West are championing such religiously indefensible stands as gay marriage and abortion on demand, but they have yet to suffer the consequences that befell the ultra-traditionalists. If the media’s understanding of religion were applied, then the only inexcusable sin would be to hold a politically incorrect opinion. On this basis the pope would have to excommunicate and keep excommunicated anyone whose views were not acceptable to the media elite and to politicians like Merkel, who bow and scrape before the Fourth Estate.

Unfortunately the Pope accommodated this leftist tyranny yesterday, when he placed a condition on Williamson’s return to the Church, namely that Williamson must accept the authorized 6 million figure for Jewish victims of the Holocaust. This of course muddies the waters, even if Williamson is being forced to sign on to what is factually probable. For now it does appear that Williamson had been excommunicated for saying something that was politically incorrect.

What for me, however, is the most galling aspect of this studied hysteria is the implicit assumption that only those mass murders committed by Nazis or “fascists” deserve to be condemned. Among those who are now writhing on the ground in theatrical indignation are the usual Communist apologists in Germany and elsewhere, those self-proclaimed models of conscience who would never think of noticing or even allowing anyone else to notice, Stalin’s or Mao’s enormities. In Germany an otherwise honest scholar or journalist might well be afraid to compare Stalin’s crimes to Hitler’s because someone who does this may well face criminal proceedings for “trivializing the Holocaust.”

And this is connected to what is now going on with the “new Vatican scandal.” The organized hysteria against the decency of lifting the ban of excommunication against Williamson comes from the trivializers of genocide on the left, those who need to fight fascist phantoms in order to divert attention from equally gruesome murders associated with their heroic regimes and those who are systematically rooting out civil liberties in Western and Central Europe. Needless to say, this hysteria is being used to strengthen the new red terror that has gripped the West in the name of antifascism. And those in the media and educational establishment who are engaging in it deserve to fall under what is now a distinct possibility in parts of Europe, Muslim rule. It is a possibility that the multicultural, antinational Left in Germany, with the acquiescence of “conservatives” like Merkel, have prepared the way for while burying their civilization—in shame. It is not Williamson but his shrieking enemies who should be inspiring the most fear. Too bad the Pope didn’t stick to his guns!

Not least for us conservatives on the decidedly non-multicultural, non-antinational Left.