I am a Catholic for all my life. Not ‘a recovering Catholic.’ But, ‘a discovering Catholic,’ with roots deep in old ethnic traditions.
Watching and attempting to understand all the Vatican’s decisions over all these years, is like reading a Gothic novel with every third page torn out.
Little or no sunshine until a matter is a fait accompli, or as in this case, a fait accompli of harms done.
Non-Catholics often shake their heads over many of Pope Benedict’s pronouncements that silence this one, but not that one; that embrace this one with open arms and kick others to the curb.
The latest upheaval this week was set into motion by Pope Benedict re-embracing four bishops who were irregularly ordained in 1988— whom Pope John Paul II then ex-communicated along with their consecrator… and with Cardinal Ratzinger at hand.
Cardinal Ratzinger is the other name for Pope Benedict; they are the same person.
Like I said, Papacy=Gothic novel: many pages of continuity and backgrounding often missing.
I’ve prepared a lengthy article on one of the ‘irregular’ Bishops who Pope has re-welcomed… Bishop Richard Williamson… debunking his many, and I do mean many, conspiracy theories and their source(s). The article will run at National Catholic Reporter online next week.
But in the meantime, I’d like to share with you some of the meat of what will be in that article in terms of my research on Williamson. Bishop Williamson, now nearing 70 years of age, writes markedly self-centered takes on the holocaust, 9-11, and John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Holocaust is not his only set of beratings and ‘evidences.’
His self-published writings perseverate on conspiracy after conspiracy theory, which to my mind, puts him squarely in the secular category of old guys on bar stools discussing the latest exciting “horrible-thing-that-isn’t true.”
But, it’s his many unloving, unmerciful and very unbishop-like things he has written about… how lay-people must conduct themselves in his so-called bishoply endeavors… which stand out most to this Catholic, underlining his lack of clarity and lack of charity, equally so… including his unjustifiable screed toward other classes of people, other religious groups, including Jews.
Is the Pope guilty of being an anti-Semite? I don’t believe so, even though many are still nervous about the opacity, the lack of extensive and lengthy stories filled with specific details about his early life in Germany during the Nazi period. But, as a journalist and as a Catholic, I have read the pope’s spoken words about Shoah, and they definitively over and over condemn the Nazis who predated on innocents in order to extinguish them.
(There are other issues about this pope and his wanting, apparently, to convert the entire world to Catholicism… but that is a different, though related story, to this one.
I’ve carefully watched and transcribed Williamson’s interview with Swedish television, his prattle and — you can’t call it hubris– it appears more like a foolish old man in the limelight who holds forth on his favorite pretend game: ‘Let’s you and me pretend I am a highly developed intellectual.’ He isn’t. Not even close.
But, there is this: as Benedict Arnold offered to give West Point to the British when Arnold was a turncoat and put his own interests ahead of the young nation he served during the American Revolution… Bishop Williamson has put his own gloat and mental twists ahead– far ahead– of decency to others… and in essence also betrayed the Papal hierarchy that pays his commission.
Pope Benedict may get an absurdist’s retraction from Williamson, but in my book, as a Catholic, Williamson is not a voice to be trusted or followed. There are other far more able, rational, conservative commentators and leaders in the Catholic church who do not cause international upheavals with their cruel and foolish words –as we say in the military, who do not “sh– in their own mess kits.”
Who am I? A nobody Catholic. But, were I Pope Benedict’s advisor mouse, I would advise defrocking Williamson, which means only this, though again, the symbolism is so darkly Gothic. Defrocking’s bottom line amongst others, is finally secular. It means ‘the Donald Trump treatment’: You’re fired.
It means, you gain no more paychecks from us. It means in the case of a Bishop, you’re on your own to earn your own way in the world without limousines, without housekeepers, without fine food and wine, without luxuries given to prelates.
Except for one thing: Because it is Church, even though it seems often enough with star chamber still intact… it is built at its pure root on the premise of mercy and forgiveness of any and all who seek it. It is also built on love, without warranting who is worthy of humane love and who is not.
What peculiar position this puts Catholics in– not the vapid, “love the sinner and hate the sin,” but to rather try hard to find a way to love the one who does not love all others. That humanitas is not a given in any person, but in old Catholicism, it is the bar set to strive toward.
And… yet… but… still… for many of us personally, the temblor brought on by Pope Benedict not vetting Williamson thoroughly… has unleashed a shameful thing that, to me, stands above all others: If one cruises the neoNazi sites, Aryan and ‘brotherhood’ sites, Klan sites, Williamson is seen there as a hero who has further reddened the blood of hate groups against Jews.
This is the ‘unintended’ and very serious consequence, as more and more Aryan brotherhood, Klan and neo-Nazis move to continue to maim and murder those they deem ‘not worthy,’ … immigrants, Jews, Catholics, blacks, Asians, people of Arab descent… whomever they deem ‘the mud people.’
This to me, is the HUGE truly ugly, harmful and long-lasting vortex energized by Bishop Williamson and his daft spittings about… that truly deleterious groups of the enraged young, are roused further, feel strengthened by adding one more ‘believer’ to their flock. This phenomena will not recede by mere apology from Williamson, from Pope Benedict, from anyone. It is now a bell that can never be unrung.
The darkness of the Gothic novel is, as some forget, not only about mystery, and medieval twists and turns. It draws to itself also, horror.