On The Other Hand

WOW! you really put it to him! Couldn’t have said it better myself. Excellent response to the whole scenario around this issue. The Catholic Church has a responsibilty to denounce Williamson. Otherwise, there is reason to question these church leaders true colors and intentions for sincere friendship, reconcilation and goodwill.

Also, do me a favor and tell Phil Jacobs I made a typing error on the first line of my response to his article. Left out the word “not”  Thanks.

Shabbat Shalom,
Barb Bloom

Call it what you may John. But it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.

Neil… please let me set the record straight - at least from my perspective… what Benedict did was to revoke the excommunication of 4 bishops who had been ordained by a renegade bishop, Marcel LeFebre, in an effort to bring back into the Catholic Church those members of the St. Pius X society, who are priests and bishops who disagreed with the decisions of Vatican II… It was a general gesture and part of Benedict’s outreach to several disaffected groups who did not want to see the Catholic Church changed to what it generally is today. This gesture to the Pius X society was I believe intended to express it’s members a “peace offering” in the disagreement with The Vatican… here is what the Vatican Press office stated:
VATICAN CITY, 28 JAN 2009 (VIS) - At the end of his general audience today, the Pope mentioned his recent decision to revoke the excommunication on “the four bishops ordained without pontifical mandate by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988”.

“I have undertaken this act of paternal benevolence because those same bishops have repeatedly expressed to me their profound suffering at the situation in which they found themselves.

“I hope that this gesture of mine will be followed by a prompt commitment on their part to take the further steps necessary to achieve full communion with the Church, thus showing true faithfulness to, and true recognition of, the Magisterium and authority of the Pope and of Vatican Council II”.

Unfortunately, Rev. Williamson was one of those included. and he obviously doesn’t think in the same way as other members of the Catholic Church hierarchy.