New York, NY – Abe Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, sought to temper the enthusiastic responses expressed by Jewish leaders following their meeting on Thursday with Pope Benedict XVI over the reinstatement of a bishop who denies the Holocaust.
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“The problematic and controversial chapter of the church and the matter of Holocaust denial do not end with the pope’s declaration condemning Holocaust denial,” Foxman said.
Foxman, who was present at the meeting in the Vatican, refused to echo the compliments which other Jewish leaders feted the pope over his forceful denunciations of Holocaust denial.
“A meeting between Jews and the pope is always an important, historic event,” Foxman said. Yet, “as long as the church allows an anti-Semitic bishop who denies the Holocaust to continue in his post under the aegis of the church, this means that the church is saying one thing yet doing another.”
Foxman, himself a Holocaust survivor, seeks to emphasize that he appreciates the pope’s condemnation and his moving statements on his planned visit to Israel. Yet, in his words, “you cannot say that you are against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial when you allow an anti-Semitic bishop and Holocaust denier to continue serving in the clergy.”
“The church gave the bishop enough time to recant,” Foxman said. “But he asked for forgiveness only from the pope and he said he is waiting for proof that indeed six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and the Nazis used gas chambers.”
“Holocaust denial is a crime by law in key countries,” Foxman said. “Only after the church recants from the rehabilitation and restores his prior standing as excommunicated can we say that the matter of the church and Holocaust denial has been solved.”
Please……. who cares what the pope says. The church has killed more jews over the years then the nazis. The pope is a politician… if he says sorry or not it does not make a difference because “esav sonei es yaakov”.
The Catholic Church’s antisemitism fueled muchof Nazism , the yellow hat becme the yellow star, the Venice Ghetto became Lodz and Warsaw Ghetto, the inquisition limpieza del sangre or purity of blood was the forerunner of the Nuremberg racial and the deicide accusation fuled the hatred. The Catholic Church is powerful entity except it wants to burn the candle on both ends
If he’s so sorry let him put him right away back into exvomunicat
If he’s so sorry let him put that nutjob back into excomunication!
The only thing less important than what the Pope says or does, is what the ADL says. In actuality, they bug me by always whining. I believe they are a cause of antisemitism today. Not the only cause, for sure, but one cause.
Who cares what the ADL has to say? we are in golus and have to be shy and respectful to all. it brings nothing good to just be busy criticizing the pope.
This is embarrassing. Williamson is NOT and HAS NEVER BEEN a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. And neither his excommunication nor the rescinding of the excommunication had anything to do with his horrific beliefs about the Shoah. The Pope has made it clear that if Williamson wants to be a part of the Church, he has to submit to the Pope’s authority, including renunciation of his holocaust denial. What more can we ask for?
Jews cannot confront the Catholic Church what we can do remember and accordingly what I have seen. In Birkenau, Majdanek, Belzec and Mauthausen the Bundisten, Mizrachisten, Agudisten and Zionisten and Jews who found through Hitler that they were yidden inhaled the same Zyklon B and were burned in the same crematoria. What we need ahavas yisroel for stam a yid
The ADL brings only shame and pain upon us.