USCCB President Cardinal Francis George has said that SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson's Holocaust minimising comments have "evoked understandable outrage from the Jewish community and our own Catholic people." Cardinal George, called Pope Benedict's gesture to lift the excommunications of four Society of St. Pius X bishops "an act of mercy and personal concern for the ordained and lay members of this Society" - an analysis coinciding with Benedict's own explanation that the decision aimed to heal a rift in Church unity, Zenit reports.
One of the prelates involved, Bishop Richard Williamson, caused scandal by claiming in an interview that 6 million Jews were not gassed during the Holocaust. The interview, filmed in November, happened to air shortly before the lifting of the excommunication was made public.
Cardinal George called Bishop Williamson's comments "deeply offensive and utterly false," and said they have "evoked understandable outrage from within the Jewish community and also from among our own Catholic people."
"No Catholic," he said, "whether layperson, priest or bishop can ever negate the memory of the Shoah, just as no Catholic should ever tolerate expressions of anti-Semitism and religious bigotry."Cardinal George added: "The Holy Father's lifting of the excommunications is but a first step toward receiving these four bishops, and the priests who serve under them, back into full communion with the Catholic Church. If these bishops are to exercise their ministry as true teachers and pastors of the Catholic Church, they, like all Catholic bishops, will have to give their assent to all that the Church professes, including the teachings of the Second Vatican Council."
If Lefebvrite bishops are to exercise ministry in the Catholic Church, they must meet the expectation set upon any bishop: assenting to the teachings of the Church, including Vatican II.
Zenit says that this affirmation is sounding from various parts of the world as Catholic bishops respond to the Jan. 21 papal decision to remove the penalty of excommunication from four bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, including the society's superior-general.
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(Source: CTHUS)