Benedict XVI steps up
B16 does a great job in clearing the air of l’affaire Lefebvre (and especially the Richard Williams, Fuckwad, Esq., sub-problem).
An unforeseen mishap for me was the fact that the Williamson case came on top of the remission of the excommunication. The discreet gesture of mercy towards four Bishops ordained validly but not legitimately suddenly appeared as something completely different: as the repudiation of reconciliation between Christians and Jews, and thus as the reversal of what the Council had laid down in this regard to guide the Church’s path. A gesture of reconciliation with an ecclesial group engaged in a process of separation thus turned into its very antithesis: an apparent step backwards with regard to all the steps of reconciliation between Christians and Jews taken since the Council – steps which my own work as a theologian had sought from the beginning to take part in and support. That this overlapping of two opposed processes took place and momentarily upset peace between Christians and Jews, as well as peace within the Church, is something which I can only deeply deplore. I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news. I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility. Precisely for this reason I thank all the more our Jewish friends, who quickly helped to clear up the misunderstanding and to restore the atmosphere of friendship and trust which – as in the days of Pope John Paul II – has also existed throughout my pontificate and, thank God, continues to exist.
Bonus for Catholics: you can tell the Curia has been booted in the gut (as a FotG enjoys doing) and may be cowed for the rest of the pontificate. It is an endless source of frustration that “the Vatican” is always quoted, seemingly authoritative, when it turns out to be the ramblings of some bureaucrat who’s just a celibate version of your stereotypical Brussels-issue Eurodrone. Also, along with the crazy SSPX rad-trad schismatics, he also smacks down the remake-the-Church-in-the-image-of-my-Berkeley-drum-circle-c.-1972 relativists. So no matter who your enemies are, there’s something to like…
It’s late and I’m too tired to think hard about this, so there’s more extensive analysis from George Weigel and Edward Oakes, S.J.
Yeah, I know the Hello Kitty AR-15 has nothing to do with this.
Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.