Pope Benedict should affirmatively declare Holocaust denial to be heresy

Author: Menachem Rosensaft

Source: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304741650&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Pope Benedict hopes that the memory of the Holocaust "will prompt humanity to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the hearts of men." But statements condemning Holocaust denial and reaffirming ecumenical sentiments toward the Jewish people are not enough. Pope Benedict should affirmatively declare Holocaust denial to be heresy, and the Vatican should undertake a comprehensive program of Holocaust education.

Students at Roman Catholic schools, universities and seminaries throughout the world must be taught not only that the Holocaust occurred, but that centuries of Christian anti-Semitism helped make it possible. They must be taught that while Bishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, helped rescue Jews from the Nazis, and that Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège of Toulouse, France, spoke out publicly on their behalf, Pope Pius XII remained silent, as did most Catholic cardinals, bishops and priests. They must be taught that thousands upon thousands of baptized Christians actively participated in the mass murder of European Jewry, and that hundreds of thousands looked on or looked away.

They must be taught that the Franciscan priest Miroslav Filipovic, known as "Fra Sotona" ("Brother Satan"), was a brutal commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia, run by the collaborationist Ustasha regime, and that the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Saric, enthusiastically supported and advocated the persecution and murder of Jews. They must be taught that many of the French policemen of the collaborationist Vichy regime who rounded up French Jews and helped send them to their death at Auschwitz regularly attended mass on Sundays. They must be taught that the Vatican never excommunicated Adolf Hitler or other baptized Nazi leaders, and that after World War II, Bishop Alois Hudal was instrumental in spiriting Nazi war criminals to safety in Latin America.

While the Vatican's relations with the Society of St. Pius X is an internal matter, its attitude, and Pope Benedict XVI's attitude, toward Holocaust denial and Holocaust deniers affects us all. My five-and-a-half-year-old brother, my mother's son, was murdered in a gas chamber at Auschwitz. For the sake of continued Jewish-Catholic relations, all Catholics, indeed all Christians, must be taught that my brother's brutal death and the deaths of more than 1 million Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust is at least as real as the death of a Jew named Jesus in Jerusalem almost 2,000 years ago.