The Pope just re-communicated four bishops who were excommunicated in the 1980s. Richard Williamson, one of the four, is a holocaust denier and thinks 9/11 was a zionist plot. While he’s been vocal about these things for years, since he gave an anti-semitic talk this week, people are upset about the timing of the re-communication (know a better term? I don’t).
First: this has nothing to do with timing. He’s been a bigot and an idiot 24/7 for years. If the issue is his belief about Jews, then what week he gets reinstated shouldn’t have anything to do with the complaints against the church now.
Second: but, his excommunication didn’t have anything to do with his beliefs about the Jews. It was because he saw the church as becoming too liberal and he joined a splinter group of traditionalists. Now that we have a very traditional Pope, it makes sense for him to be brought back in.
Third: after all, you can be a bigot and an idiot and be a Catholic; you just aren’t supposed to go against whatever they’re for at the moment.
Theoretically, excommunication comes if you’re a heretic. To be a heretic (by the way, that word comes from the Greek for choice), you have to have a member of the Church tell you what to believe and then refuse to believe it. This is what distinguishes it from paganism, etc.
As far as I know, Catholics still have the choice to not believe in the holocaust. Has there been an official position on that?
P.S. I’m not defending this guy; I’m just questioning the logic of the complaints. If I got to design hell, he would be in it, along with a bunch of other stupid/evil people.
