Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090708/ap_on_re_eu/eu_vatican_conservatives
Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday replaced the cardinal responsible for lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop as part of the Vatican's effort to reconcile with an ultraconservative group.
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.
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican has criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks about Israel at a U.N. conference on racism as "extremist and unacceptable" and said the comments promote an atmosphere of conflict.
At the same time, Vatican officials, including Pope Benedict XVI, emphasized the importance of participation in the conference, which was being boycotted by the United States and several other Western countries.
Ahmadinejad told conference participants in Geneva April 20 that Israel had "resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering" and had established a "totally racist government in the occupied Palestine." His comments prompted a temporary walkout by dozens of diplomats in attendance.
The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, told Vatican Radio April 20 that "statements like those of the Iranian president do not go in the right direction, because even if he did not deny the Holocaust or the right of Israel to exist, he expressed extremist and unacceptable positions."
Source:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0901787.htm
COMMENT
Muslims or Iran or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have never insulted Christianity, while Jews do it every time they breathe. Remember the recent episode with that Israeli Jew smearing Christ and his mother? By all streaches of immagination, the Catholic church should have issued a condemnation not against the one who insulted its idols, but also against the state (Israel) who not only allowed, but promoted the "show" on television. But what happened instead? The church barely said anything: no outcries, nothing, just a bare "regret" from the traitorous pope.
Now when Mahmoud points out the way Israel has "resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering" would make a solid case for "racism", the Church reacts with full gear against such "extremist and unacceptable" views. This gives a perfect measure over how useless and benign Christianity has become these days...
