Hitch Reax

Christopher Hitchens on Pope Benedict's decision to lift the excommunication of Holocaust denier Wykehamist Bishop Richard Williamson.

From Newsweek:

Ask yourself, first, why it was that the church took until 1965 to repudiate the charge of deicide against the Jews. After all, it is only in one verse of one Gospel (Matthew 27:24–25), and in the climactic scene of Mel Gibson's movie, that the Jewish Sanhedrin demands to be held responsible for the coming crucifixion for all time and through all generations. Then there is the question, even if the rabbis did make such a demand, of whether they could claim to speak for all Jews then, let alone all those who have been born since. So why did it take until 20 years after the Nuremburg trials for the church to admit the obvious?

...When excesses are committed by the religious (something which does indeed seem to happen from time to time), you often hear it argued that these are only perversions of the "true" or "real" or authentic teachings. What makes the present case so alarming is that concessions are being made to Holocaust-deniers and anti-Semites, and that this is not a departure from "original intent" Catholicism but rather part of a return to traditional and old-established preachments. For decades, it has seemed to many incurious outsiders that the Roman Catholic Church had at the very least made a good-faith attempt to acknowledge its historic responsibility for defaming the Jewish people. Suddenly, this achievement doesn't look so solid.