LEFEBVRIAN BISHOPS
Belgium: Cardinal Danneels, “unacceptable insult””Unacceptable insult to the Jewish people”: that’s the response of Cardinal Godfried Danneels, Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, to Bishop Richard Williamson’s denial of the Holocaust. During the television programme “Controversies”, broadcast on the RTL channel on Sunday 8 February, the cardinal once again condemned the words of the traditionalist bishop, after Williamson had refused to retract them in an interview with a German magazine. Danneels, according to the Cathobel press agency, said he felt “embarrassed” towards the Jewish community for what Williamson had said. “I apologise, even if I am not directly to blame for all this. I feel some shame for being a bishop like him”, the cardinal told the head rabbi of Brussels, Albert Guigui, he too a studio guest in the television programme. The rabbi had said he “regretted” Williamson’s words and awaited “a very strong stance by the Pope that would dissociate the Church from all Holocaust deniers and in particular Mgr. Williamson and reiterate that the Holocaust is an historical truth in conflict with the Christian faith”. Statements already released by the Vatican in recent days, reports Cathobel, “had made it clear that the bishop had publicly and without equivocation to retract his statements on the Shoah before he could ever be admitted to the episcopal ministry in the Catholic Church”. The meeting between the cardinal and the rabbi ended with an embrace.Germany: Mgr. Zollitsch, “courageous act from the Pope”Recognition of the Second Vatican Council and solidarity with the Pope. These are the key issues addressed by mgr. Robert Zollitsch, president of the German Bishops Conference (Dbk), in a comment on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, the Sunday issue of the weekly paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Zollitsch rejected the accusation that the Pope would be pursuing a re-establishment, saying that “he acts in the name of responsibility and is burdened with the task of taking decisions on behalf of the whole universal Church on the ways the key issues of the Council must be revived today”. The bishop stated that the Pope “wants continuity and strives with great long-sightedness and energy to show the pre- and post-Council Church as the only Church”. As to the Lefebvriani bishops, Zollitsch commented that such fact “has damaged the Catholic Church”, because “it gave the wrong impression that the Church has strived too early to approach sinister people and go back to the past”. This, he added, “grieves anyone who feels bonded to the Church and esteems the strength of the Christian faith. That’s why it is important not to be internally divided and not to get trapped in advising one another on how to best respond to this situation. Instead we need solidarity with the Pope and with one another”, concluded Zollitsch.Poland: Mgr. Michalik (KEP), letter of unity to the Pope”The opening of the doors to a dialogue, aimed to heal a painful schism, is a deed of great courage and true pastoral love”. It was stated by the Polish bishops, in a letter sent in these days to Benedict XVI. The presidency of the Polish Bishops Conference (Kep), in the “letter of unity with the Pontiff”, recalls the virtue of love that “is the first that looks for ways to meet others and the routes to reconciliation”. The Polish bishops wish that the Pontiff’s “fatherly gesture” may inspire “an opening in the bishops and devotees of the Fraternity of Saint Pius X” and thus lead them “to adopt without hesitation the entire magisterium and discipline of the Church, including those of the Second Vatican Council and the lessons of the latest Popes”. The bishops assure that the Church in Poland “incessantly supports the successor of the Apostle Peter in his care for all the Christian Churches”, while, in response to the Pope’s appeal, “the Catholics in Poland pray, that every step towards the unity of the faithful in Christ may bear the wished-for fruit”. The letter, written on behalf of the whole episcopacy, was signed by the president of Kep mgr. Jozef Michalik, by the deputy president mgr. Stanislaw Gadecki, and by the secretary general mgr. Stanislaw Budzik.
