Chief Rabbinate of Israel cuts ties with Vatican over Holocaust bishop

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel has cut ties with the Vatican over the Pope’s decision to lift the excommunication of an English bishop who denies the full extent of the Holocaust.

A Jew Investigates the Holocaust

In a measure of Jewish anger around the world at the reinstating of the four bishops of the Society of St Pius X, the Chief Rabbinate has written to the office of Pope Benedict XVI condemning Bishop Richard Williamson’s comments as outrageous. The letter was leaked to The Jerusalem Post. Jewish leaders in the UK have also protested at the lifting of the excommunications but others criticised the Chief Rabbinate’s decision, saying it could harm interfaith dialogue.

Bishop Williamson, who was educated at Winchester and Cambridge and converted to Catholicism as a young man, told Swedish television that no Jews died in gas chambers, and that up to 300,000 died in the Holocaust. Historians generally accept that six million Jews died.

According to the English-language Jerusalem Post, the Chief Rabbinate also cancelled a meeting with the Holy See’s commission for religious relations with the Jews. The Pope yesterday reaffirmed his “full and unquestionable solidarity with Jews”. The German pontiff said that as the world marked Holocaust Day on Tuesday: “I recall the images of my visits to Auschwitz and the testimonies of the innocent victims of racial hatred.”

The Society of St Pius X was founded by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in opposition to the liberalisation of the Church in the 1960s. At least 600,000 Catholics are thought to attend its traditionalist Masses worldwide.

Pope Benedict has for years been keen to see these Catholics brought back into the fold, and last year reinstated the Tridentine Rite to placate them. That provoked outrage from the Jewish community because the rite includes a Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews.

Bishop Williamson is being investigated in Germany for Holocaust denial after his Swedish TV interview. He could face a prison sentence of up to five years.

In the interview he said: “The historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers.”

Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior-general of the Society of Saint Pius X, condemned the interview as vile.

Despite widespread voices of condemnation from within the Jewish community, some leading British Jews questioned the Chief Rabbinate’s decision to cut ties.

Sir Sigmund Sternberg, a pioneer of interfaith dialogue, said: “As one who has struggled for many years to keep doors open and to pursue the resolution of dispute and conflict by dialogue, I see little merit, whatever the provocation, of freezing a relationship which so clearly needs clarification and discussion.”

The Pope is due to visit Israel in May. So far, the Israeli Government has said that the visit will go ahead.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5604019.ece

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