He said it didn't happen... was he living in a hole?

In the 1960s there was a group of 4 members of the Catholic church that rebelled against the church's modernization and consecrated men in an unsanctioned ceremony. In 1988 they were excommunicated.

Last week the excommunication was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI. What people are most confused about isn't that they were allowed back into the church, but rather, that the Pope embraced them just days after the Sweedish news released an interview with Bishop Williamson, who stated: "I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against -- is hugely against -- 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler." He then went on to say that he didn't believe in gas chambers. The Bishop did not deny the death of "200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them [died] by gas chambers." Aparently he thought that the death of 6 million Jews wasn't possible.

As you can imagine, this sent red flags all over the place.

The head of the society Williamson belongs took distance from him, stating that his colleague made his own statements, and the Pope tried to mend ties with the Jewish community by not denying that he believed that the gas chambers had existed. However, he did not openly take action against the bishop.

Was this wrong?

I'm as open as they come on a lot of issues. I uderstand that there are always two different sides to an argument. But was this guy living under a rock? Williamson is 68, which means that he was born in the second world war, and although this happened in the UK, the fact that he doesn't believe it happened begs the question of how did he come to believe this? Doesn't the fact that some countries consider such comments punishable under hate-crimes, ring something for him?

He did send a letter in appology, but the appolgy was to the Pope and his head of PR, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos. In it he didn't deny what he said, nor did he say he had made a mistake, but rather he was sorry for the rukus he had caused the Holy Father.

The Jewish community is supposed to get an appology any day now. But is that enough? Should the pope appologise for reinstating the priest? Can he be excommunicated agian? Should we be happy he's old and in ill health and that he'll probably die at some point?

I personally think that the answer is no. Perhaps I'm looking at this through my partial catholic upbriging, but I just do not see how any of this will help. It won't fix years of work and talk between the church and the Jewish Community. Nor will it retract the statement that has been put out.

Perhaps the solution is to reeducate those that speak out that way. A fieldtrip to Auswitz perhaps. Maybe they need to be sat in a room and hit on the head with the overabundent information from the time.

But I think that it is important to remember. This is all the doing of one man and not the institution. And though he may be misled in thinking that he should be dipping into a political arena, when his job is to help his congregation to enrich their christian lives.

The damage is done. Let us hope that it can be cleaned to a point that both parties can move on in their relationship to bring the Catholic Church and the Jewish Community closer.