Bishop Richard Williamson, who recently denied that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, is calling his remarks "imprudent" as he expresses his regrets in a letter posted on Friday on his personal blog.
The bishop also thanks the pope for lifting the excommunication that the Vatican had imposed on him 20 years earlier because he had been elevated to bishop's rank by a renegade, ultraconservative prelate.
Williamson's denial of the Holocaust in a recent interview on Swedish TV sparked a storm of protest from Jewish groups and others.
2 comments:
It is truly ridiculous that we are not allowed to question history. Everyone should have the right and freedom of belief. Questioning the historical evidence of the Holocaust does not mean one is not appalled by human suffering, just that one seeks truth in all things. Questioning the exact details of Holocaust has nothing to do with the Bible or questioning the belief in Jesus Christ, and as such should be seperated from church affairs. It is our own personal and spiritual right to seek out the truth and come to our own conclusions.
Revisionism is a constant in History but certain facts are undeniable. The facts behind the history of the Shoah are deep, wide and well vetted. Just because a man has holy offices it does not give him right to say stupid or outrageous things.
There were ovens in the concentration camps; we have the technical drawings. We have the physical evidence. We have the bureaucratic paperwork that set them up.
Do a little research. Look at the number of Jews in Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Romania, Holland, etc before the war and after. Then look the number after. Whole communities evaporate from view. The city of Riga in the Baltic was a center of Jewish culture and learning before the war. One third of the population was Jewish. Today Riga is to use the horrific Nazi term Judenfrie for all intents and purposes. Where did all those European Jews go?
Well they sure as hell did not all move to either Tel Aviv or Miami Beach. There is a huge demographic hole in the population of the European Jewish people that can not be explained by accident of war or out-migration to Israel and other lands. This disproportionate loss points in only one direction: a systematic program of genocide.
That and the other data manifestly prove not only did the holocaust exist but it's awful toll in human lives. To claim the loss of only 200,000 Jews when the real number hovers in the range of five to six million is to be at least blissfully ignorant of the facts. More than likely it is to be maliciously disseminating an anti-Semitic trope.
There is a deep and profound rot in the soul of this church leader one that most likely began at the head. To make the statement he made was profoundly UN-Christian. The statement was stupid, biased, unthinking and deeply hurtful. More to the point it was illegal to make in the setting it was made in and the Bishop knew this. So not only was it hurtful it was also dangerous and careless. The man did not even have the good sense to offer the opinion in a different venue.
Some questions about the received wisdom of History are legitimate others are not. The good bishop did not merely "question the exact details of the Holocaust" he denied it happened. He denied irrefutable evidence- the ovens of the concentration camps. He offered up a ludicrous estimate of Jewish Death, 200,000, that has no basis in reality. He gave aide and comfort to the most despicable human cockroaches on the face of this earth; the Holocaust deniers and their Neo-Nazi, Neo-Fascist, White Supremacist, Anti-Semite cohorts. He gave voice to a lie. Last time I checked the Christian God is not very fond of bearing false witness.
Yes we must search out the truth, but we also must accept the facts. There is a mountain of evidence that supports the basic History of the Shoah. Five to six million Jews were killed, two million Gypsies,multiple millions of Poles and Russians are also part of the tally. Those are the facts, deal with them.
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