Rome – The Vatican on Monday dismissed anti-Semitic comments by the head of a rebel Catholic traditionalist group, saying the Roman church did not see Jews as enemies.
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Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the rebel Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), said last month that Jews were among those “who over centuries have been enemies of the Church”.
Jewish support for the modernizing reforms of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council showed they were opposed to the Church, he said. The SSPX rejects the Council as a heretical event that betrayed age-old Catholic teaching and undermined the Church.
“It is impossible to speak of the Jews as enemies of the Church,” Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi said, stressing the Church position on this was “clear and well-known”.
“The Church is deeply committed to dialogue with Jews,” he added.
Fellay was among four SSPX bishops who were excommunicated from 1988 to 2009, when Pope Benedict reinstated them.
Talks between the SSPX and the Vatican to reintegrate them fully into Church structures ended in failure last year because the SSPX refused to accept Council reforms – including Rome’s reconciliation with the Jews – as valid Catholic teaching.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, a Jewish human rights group, denounced Fellay’s comments last week as a sign of “the deep-rooted anti-Semitism that lies at the heart of the SSPX’s theology”.
The Second Vatican Council “shifted the relationship between Catholics and Jews into a positive direction”, it said.
One of the four excommunicated SSPX bishops was Richard Williamson, who deeply embarrassed the Vatican by denying the Holocaust on Swedish television only days before he and the others were reinstated by the Vatican.
He has since been expelled from the group and is fighting charges of Holocaust denial in a German court, which took up the case because the television interview was filmed in Germany.
i wonder how the vatican paskend vatican 2… this break off group seems to be more “orthodox” than the vatican by keeping the old ways. so are they authentic catholics? do they hold of the pope?
Like someone is doubting the anti-samit instinct of the church. In today’s political correct world its natural to deny bias and hatred. But that “lieder” can’t erase 2 thousand years soaked in Jewish blood by the church.
We have to show appreciation and honor to people within its walls that speak out against hate and bigotry. Former pope John Paul was a man of dignity and will remain respected among jews and other religions as a man of honor and equality. Let him be a sample for the others at the church.
Ironic how he says we’ve been an enemy to the Church, when if anything it’s the other way around
Sorry but PJP was just as much an Eisav as the rest of them. Seriously, kissing the feet of young boys?! These guys are fundamentally twisted!
Let me understand who is talking hate right now?
In 1945 in Rome two Catholic Bishops organized the ratline and helped with the escape of Eichmann, Mengele, Brunner and other war criminals. Williamson a Catholic Bishop denied the existence of gas chambers and as a child the Catholics accused me of deicide
Im glad we know how they really feel
The Catholic Church has spilled more Jewish blood than anybody else. 1st , 2nd ,3rd Crusade which created a bloodbath among Jews from Speyer to Reims, The Papal bullae which were printed by the Stuermer with the worst vile antisemitic pronouncements. The inquisition in Spain. The Lateran pact by Pope Pius with Hitler which made palatable Hitler to German Catholics. The postwar facilitation by the Vatican of helping to escape German war criminals. It is a bloody, antisemitic record of the worst kind. British Catholics loved Hitler and the history of York should be known to every Jew. Curse on Bishop Fellay and his ilk
First of all, WE have enough of our own problems Aryeh so let’s not go THERE! As for “hate”, Christianity is being driven out of the Islamic dominated countries located in the Middle East. I haven’t heard EITHER entity come to help their own!
Love the outfit.