I don't know if I am angry or unhappy: the truth perhaps is I am both.
But it is too much, much too much, and I say: Enough! The media explosion against Benedict XVI for having supposedly re-integrated four traditionalist bishops, of whom one is an avowed [Holocaust] negationist, is not criticism but calumny and disinformation.
Because, whatever one may think of the Pope's decisions, it must be said, underscored, and repeated time and again that these four bishops have not been 're-integrated'.
And so, Mons. Williamson whose statements to Swedish television are simply intolerable, has not been taken back into the Catholic Church and is still not under the Pope's authority.
The reports that speak of re-integration are based on a serious confusion between revoking an excommunication and full re-integration with the Church.
I would gladly be indulgent to all the newsmen and commentators who may have, in good faith, confused the two things. The categories used by the Church can lend themselves to misunderstanding by the wider public.
But the truth obliges me to point out that, according to Church law (canon law), they are not at all the same thing. If one confuses them, then one is a victim of simplifications which benefit no one except those who deliberately want to provoke, thus becoming unwitting accomplices to them.
In general, the public has a right to demand that a sportswriter, for example, should know how to distinguish between a 'corner' and an 'attempt'. Why then should the Church not have the right to have its own 'technical' vocabulary, and why must anyone tolerate such serious misrepresentations just because 'it is about religion'?
Let us look at what happened. Following the election of Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, the bishops of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X, founded more than 30 years ago by Mons. Marcel Lefebvre, asked to resume their dialog with Rome on two conditions: first, the liberalization of the 1962 Mass, which was done through the
Motu Proprio in July 1977, and second, the lifting of the bishops' excommunication.
What does such a lifting mean? To take a familiar example, I would say this: When Mons. Lefebvre left the Church - that is, when he disobeyed the Pope by ordaining four bishops despite a formal warning from the Pope (John Paul II), it was as if a red barrier fell into place and the red light came on, to indicate he had left the Church.
This meant that if, one day, he would like to come back, he would first have to make honorable amends. Mons. Lefebvre is deceased, God rest his soul! Today, his successors, 20 years later, have said to the Pope: "We are ready to resume the dialog, but you must do something symbolic on your part. Lift the barrier and change the red light to blinking yellow."
And the Pope, in order tostack the cards in favor of dialog, has done that. What remains to be seen is whether those who wish to come back to the Church will do so.
Do they all want to come back? When? Under what conditions? We don't know. As Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, said in the official decree lifting the excommunications: "It remains to establish the conditions for dialog".
Perhaps the Pope, after some time that we are not aware of, will grant the society a canonical status. But for the moment, that is not yet done. The precondition to dialog has been met, but the dialog has not begun. So we cannot judge the outcome until that dialog has taken place.
On top of this, on the eve of the day when Cardinal Re's decree was to be made public, Swedish TV revived clearly negationist statements made by one of the four bishops concerned, Mons. Williamson.
At the time the Pope gave the green light to Cardinal Re to sign the decree, could he have known about Williamson's statements? Honestly, I think I can say No! In a way, that is reassuring. It's a sign that the Vatican does not have the means to place every bishop in the world under surveillance nor to monitor every TV program in the world.
And it is here that one must not err in interpretation: What does the coincidence between the signature of the decree, anticipated to take place January 21, and therefore known to Williamson as one of the interested parties, and the decision to broadcast, on that same day, statements he ha made [in November]?
Let everyone ask himself: Who gained by this? Who gains from the scandal provoked by such obscene statements?
The answer seems clear to me: those who want to torpedo the process opened up by the signature of the decree. Now, from the little one has followed about this question and the various statements made by Williamson in the past, it is clear that he does not wish to reconcile with Rome at any cost.
This bishop who, let me repeat, still has no tie of canonical subordination to Rome, simply used the method of terrorists: he set off a bomb (an 'intellectual' one) in the hope of derailing the entire process of reconciliation. He is doing what 'ultras' in all times have done - they prefer to leave a field of ruins rather than make up with those they consider to be their enemies.
And so I say with sorrow to all those who have so quickly - in glee or in pain - lumped the Pope and Williamson together: you played the game, unwittingly, of a cynical provocateur. If I may say so, you offered him a second target that he can only find ravishing: soiling the Pope's reputation in the worst way. A Pope whom he distrusts more than anyone, because he sees that this Pope can absolutely bring down the entire argumentative scaffolding erected by Mons. Lefebvre.
I cannot develop this point in this letter, I can only refer back to an article which I published in the columns of
Le Monde in 2007 when the Motu proprio was issued [on the traditional Mass]:
When I read, almost everywhere, that the Pope is granting everything to the traditionalists without demanding anything in return, I disagree. He has given them what they want about the traditional Mass, but he is totally demolishing their rationale at its very foundation.
The entire argumentation of Mons.Lefebvre rested on an alleged substantial difference between the Mass of St. Pius V and that of Paul VI. Now, Benedict XVI has said. "It makes no sense to speak of two rites!" [i.e., There is one rite, but it has two forms.]
One may legitimize resistance to the Council if one thinks, in conscience, that there is a substantial difference between the two rites. But can one legitimize this resistance, and for more reason, a schism, based on a difference in form?
For a traditionalist, and more so for diehard negationists like Williamson, Benedict XVI is infinitely more redoubtable than all those who advocate that Vatican II introduced 'rupture' in the Church.
Because if there is rupture, then the traditionalistwill take comfort in his opposition to 'modernity' or any 'novelty' for the Church. But this Pope, who peaceably shows that Paul Vi's Mass, religious freedom and ecumenism are an integral part of authentic Catholic tradition, takes away all his justifications.
I am well aware that I need to develop my own argumentation on this issue. But I beg your pardon for suggesting that you go to the Internet sites where all this is visible. I suggest above all that each one guard well against well-staged provocations.
As for those who insist on saying that Joseph Ratzinger served in the Hitler Youth, they should read what he said in Caen on June 6, 2004, at the 60th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy, and that they also ask themselves what they would have done in his place. [He was 14!] When one howls too strongly with the wolves today, that does not show one would have been capable of distinguishing himself from the wolves of another time.
There remains a secondary point which is just as serious: one must also question the communication of initiatives from Rome when it concerns subjects that are quite sensitive. After the controversy over the Regensburg lecture [which by itself deserves to be deconstructed], I hope - with the reservation that this is something I would much rather discuss internally - that responsible officials in the Roman Curia would proceed to a serious 'debriefing' on their communications failures.
To sum it up, here is how I saw the events: On January 21, Italian traditionalist circles who believed they had gained a victory, organized a leak to the Italian newspaper
Il Giornale [also to
Il Riformista]. Whereupon, the media tom-tom was under way.
But we. members of the bishops' conferences, knew absolutely nothing! And for three days, the rumors - wrong because they spoke about a coming day of 're-integration' - would proliferate everywhere like a brushfire.
Meanwhile, there was Mons. Williamson's bomb. And it was not until three days later, Saturday morning, that we all saw the decree signed by Cardinal Re. How could we then reset the debate on a proper footing?
Cardinal Ricard undertook to do that [with his letter as a member of teh Ecclesia Dei Commission], and he did a very good job, but the fire was by then out of control, and it seemed no one was willing to listen to reason.
Now that the dust has started to settle, let us try to revive our spirits calmly. As my grandmother used to say: God can make something good come out of a bad thing.
The bad thing is that Pope Benedict XVI has once again been dragged in the mud by the majority of mainstream media, except, thank God, La Croiz and a few others in France. Many Catholics, and many persons of good will, have been left to themselves in misunderstanding and even pain.
But the good thing is that the masks have fallen. If the dialog continues despite all this with the FSSPX bishops - provided, that is, they choose to go through the opening given them - then may there be discernment enough so that everyone concerned knows a bit more of what the other side thinks.
In conclusion, I would like to address myself to those Catholic faithful who might feel, not unreasonably that they have been somewhat betrayed, if not mistruste, in this affair: think of the parable of the prodigal son, and beyond it. If the older bother, who had at first refused to join the feasting, says he now wants to join in, would you refuse him?
Have enough confidence in yourselves and in the Spirit who guides the Church and which also guided Vatican-II, that the presence of the older brother who sulked is not going to spoil the feast. Give the latecomer a bit more time to get used to the lights of the assembly where all the rest are gathered.....
+ Hippolyte SIMON,
Archbishop of Clermont
Vice-President of the Conference of the Bishops of France
January 29, 2009