Schismatic Bishops, Holocaust Denial and Christian-Jewish Relations

Fr John McDade SJ, Principal of Heythrop College, University of London, on schismatic bishops, holocaust denial and the Church’s understanding of Christian-Jewish relations (thanks: Anna Arco). Here is how he concludes:

Modern Christians have inherited a version of Christianity in which there has been a negative relationship to Judaism […]. A considerably darker legacy is the hate-filled rhetoric bequeathed to us by John Chrysostom in 4thCentury Antioch, Martin Luther in 16th Century Germany and the countless preachers who stirred up the anti-Jewish feelings that flowed murderously into 20th Century European history. The task is now a simple one: to develop an account of Christian identity in which there is a positive relationship to the Jewish people. And with this project, we are setting ourselves the task of recovering the insight available in the earliest Christian decades that there is a living tie between what God does in Israel and what God does through Christ. This can only be an enrichment of the core Christian identity and mission, and it is this enrichment which is threatened by those who, for ideological reasons, try to drive a wedge between Christians and Jews. We should not tolerate them.

If Richard Williamson is accepted back into communion with the Catholic Church, there should be no question of his exercising either an episcopal or a priestly role in the Church. This would be completely inappropriate and unwelcome: no one needs ministry from a person who holds views which are inimical to the Church’s positive relation to the Jewish people. When Pope Benedict was simply Joseph Ratzinger, he wrote that ‘the highest vocation that we can have is simply to be a Christian’. This ought to govern the advice that is given now to Williamson: live as a Catholic layman and do your best to reach heaven through the grace you received at Baptism, but do not expect to act in the name of Christ in either a priestly or episcopal capacity. This matter is too important for the Church to act otherwise and Williamson is too marginal and offensive to genuine Catholicism to be given a ministry to speak in the name of the Church.

500 Years of Female Portraits

“500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art”—nominated as Most Creative Video at the 2nd Annual YouTube Awards—is an awesome video, submitted by Philip Scott Johnson on April 22, 2007, but I discovered it only now (thanks to my wonderful friend Sandra), and I am more than glad to share it with my readers.

Be prepared to have an amazing viewing experience and to enjoy La Scapigliata (The Lady of the Dishevelled Hair) and the Madonna of the Carnation by Leonardo da Vinci, the Lady with a Unicorn by Raphael, the Birth of Venus by Botticelli, the Portrait of a Young Woman by Tiziano and that of a Young Venetian Woman or Red-haired Woman from Venice by Albrecht Dürer, and many other masterpieces (by Reynolds, Rubens, El Greco, Renoir, Modigliani, Picasso …  see here for a complete list of artists and paintings).

Sound track: J.S. Bach’s Sarabande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1, BWV 1007 In G Major performed by Yo-Yo Ma.

Waiting for the Etonians

At The First Post Oliver Kamm reviews Nick Cohen’s new book, Waiting for the Etonians: Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England. Nick Cohen is the author of What’s Left?, which has been one of the most powerful denunciations of the manner in which the Left has lost its way (and I loved it for that).

Which is the best Islamic state?

Has Sweden become the best Islamic state? What is certain is that Muslim influence is growing over there, Pamela Geller reports. But Pamela has something to say about Denmark, too, whose disintegrating social conditions in urban areas are under everybody’s eyes. See also: Islam in Europe  and Alamo City Pundit.

'Wrong You Are, If You Think You’re Right'

Luigi Pirandello’s classic, “Right You Are, If You Think You Are,” is the leitmotif of a thoughtful and insightful post by Roger L. Simon at Pajamasmedia.com. The famous play, he says, “came immediately to mind when I read the results of the new Rasmussen poll reporting 53% of Americans see our country headed for a Depression similar to the 1930s.” Now, he continues, “the question is whether this will be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” in fact President Barack Obama seems “to be encouraging this.”

It’s quite the same here in Italy, but curiously, while in the US the “jinx” is the ruling Administration, in Italy, as noted here a couple of days ago, the wet blanket is the center-left opposition. As a result of this game with reversed roles, while the left-leaning US President seems to be mostly engaged in imposing “cap-and-trade schemes,” the right-leaning Italian Prime minister seems to actually prefer more “traditional” and effective ways to stimulate the real economy.

“What strikes me now more than ever,” says Roger Simon,

is how deeply psychological all things economic are. Of course, we have all always known that, and of course there are substantive matters like a world’s worth of unpaid mortgages and weird paper that would turn Bernard Baruch into a pretzel, but still, investors have to have some measure of faith in the economy for business to continue in capitalist society. For the moment, that’s gone. It’s more like “Wrong You Are, If You Think You’re Right.”

Pirandello, I’m sure, would have appreciated the irony.

Look, Mr. President, priority No. 1 is to create jobs!

“Forget Rush Limbaugh,” writes Patrick O’Connor, in fact “for all the focus on the king of conservative talk, Democrats may have found a more important villain in House Minority Whip Eric Cantor.” And here is why (via Gateway Pundit):

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) seized on the opportunity to criticize the president Tuesday for over-reaching in his first 50 days on the job.

Following the GOP's weekly conference meeting, the second-ranking House Republican told reporters that President Obama should be focusing on the "economic crisis," as opposed to holding four-hour meetings on healthcare, as the president did last week. The efforts may be laudable, Cantor said, but the White House should be devoting all resources to fixing the economy and not to "impose these cap-and-trade schemes."

"At the end of the day, we are in an economic emergency. Economists are saying that there's a 30 percent likelihood that we're going to be in a depression," Cantor said. "My goodness, we do have an emergency, and we oughta say, look, priority No. 1 is to create jobs."

Embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning

Melissa Clouthier has some important clarifications on President Barack Obama reversing of Bush Administration’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. Yet, there must be something in that piece I wasn’t able to understand. It’s when she quotes Katherine Jean Lopez :

[A]s Katherine Jean Lopez notes, “Notice the qualifier. Cloning is fine for research — ‘therapeutic cloning.’ In other words, you can create life as long as you’ll destroy it and not raise it as your child. That is an assault on human dignity. How many Americans realize the import of what Obama said today?”

“She is right,” Melissa Clouthier says after a moment. “Scientists may form cellular clones on which to experiment, but citizens may not use the same technology to create a human life.”

Since Katherine Jean Lopez is a conservative, pro-life and Catholic columnist, I guess I must have missed something. Let’s just say that “therapeutic cloning” is intrinsically evil—if not an affront to basic human values—because it creates life only in order to destroy it for research purposes.

Dalai Lama's statement on the 50th anniversary of Uprising Day

Here are some excerpts from the Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day:

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Tibetan people's peaceful uprising against Communist China's repression in Tibet. Since last March, widespread peaceful protests have erupted across the whole of Tibet. Most of the participants were youths born and brought up after 1959, who have not seen or experienced a free Tibet. However, the fact that they were driven by a firm conviction to serve the cause of Tibet that has continued from generation to generation is indeed a matter of pride. It will serve as a source of inspiration for those in the international community who take keen interest in the issue of Tibet. We pay tribute and offer our prayers for all those who died, were tortured and suffered tremendous hardships including during the crisis last year, for the cause of Tibet since our struggle began.
[…]
Our aspiration that all Tibetans be brought under a single autonomous administration is in keeping with the very objective of the principle of national regional autonomy. It also fulfils the fundamental requirements of the Tibetan and Chinese peoples. The Chinese constitution and other related laws and regulations do not pose any obstacle to this and many leaders of the Chinese Central Government have accepted this genuine aspiration. When signing the 17-Point Agreement, Premier Zhou Enlai acknowledged it as a reasonable demand. In 1956, when establishing the Preparatory Committee for the “Tibet Autonomous Region”, Vice-Premier Chen Yi pointing at a map said, if Lhasa could be made the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which included the Tibetan areas within the other provinces, it would contribute to the development of Tibet and friendship between the Tibetan and Chinese nationalities, a view shared by the Panchen Rinpoche and many Tibetan cadres and scholars.If Chinese leaders had any objections to our proposals, they could have provided reasons for them and suggested alternatives for our consideration, but they did not. I am disappointed that the Chinese authorities have not responded appropriately to our sincere efforts to implement the principle of meaningful national regional autonomy for all Tibetans, as set forth in the constitution of the People's Republic of China.

Quite apart from the current process of Sino-Tibetan dialogue having achieved no concrete results, there has been a brutal crackdown on the Tibetan protests that have shaken the whole of Tibet since March last year. Therefore, in order to solicit public opinion as to what future course of action we should take, the Special Meeting of Tibetan exiles was convened in November 2008. Efforts were made to collect suggestions, as far as possible, from the Tibetans in Tibet as well. The outcome of this whole process was that a majority of Tibetans strongly supported the continuation of the Middle-Way policy. Therefore, we are now pursuing this policy with greater confidence and will continue our efforts towards achieving a meaningful national regional autonomy for all Tibetans.

From time immemorial, the Tibetan and Chinese peoples have been neighbours. In future too, we will have to live together. Therefore, it is most important for us to co-exist in friendship with each other.

Since the occupation of Tibet, the Communist China has been publishing distorted propaganda about Tibet and its people. Consequently, there are, among the Chinese populace, very few people who have a true understanding about Tibet. It is, in fact, very difficult for them to find the truth. There are also ultra-leftist Chinese leaders who have, since last March, been undertaking a huge propaganda effort with the intention of setting the Tibetan and Chinese peoples apart and creating animosity between them. Sadly, as a result, a negative impression of Tibetans has arisen in the minds of some of our Chinese brothers and sisters. Therefore, as I have repeatedly appealed before, I would like once again to urge our Chinese brothers and sisters not to be swayed by such propaganda, but, instead, to try to discover the facts about Tibet impartially, so as to prevent divisions among us. Tibetans should also continue to work for friendship with the Chinese people.

Those rose-colored glasses of embryonic stem cell dogma

President Obama, they say, is determined to insulate scientific decisions across the federal government from political influence, and “to use sound scientific practice, responsible practice of science and evidence, instead of dogma in developing federal policy.” But what about if, for instance, among the “dogmas”—or “principles,” as someone might prefer to call them—there is one, called respect for human life, that has governed medical and scientific practice since Hippocrates’ day, and, in the United States, is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence’s guarantee of the “unalienable” rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for each individual?

There is a post on that very thing at Townhall.com which is worth reading (thanks: Sandra Kennedy Schimmelpfennig).

Italy's stimulus spending

In 2008 the Italian economy contracted 1.0 per cent, its worst showing since 1975, and last Wednesday the Bank of Italy predicted that the economy would likely shrink by 2.6 per cent this year. There is absolutely nothing to be happy about, but, as common sense suggests, if there is something that can make things even worse, it is to paint this crisis as a tragedy, and that is exactly what the center-left opposition is doing, along with some of the mainstream media. By the way, believe me when I say that this inner attitude of mind is another reason why so many former liberals—and I am one of them—became conservative voters, and proud to be so.

“Our greatest fear is that people will change their lifestyles just because they’re afraid, and thus worsen the crisis,” Berlusconi told reporters some days ago, after a Cabinet meeting in which the government gave its green light to funding for a major public works program valued at 17.8 billion euros. The program includes the Strait of Messina bridge, to connect the toe of the boot-shaped peninsula to Sicily (see my previous post). This, in addition to 5 billion for poor families and 2 billion for car rebates and incentives to buy energy-saving appliances, previously set aside by the government.

Moreover, next Friday the government will formalize a measure intended to stimulate the construction industry. Home owners will be allowed to add additional rooms to their homes (without exceeding 20 percent of the cubic volume of the existing structure). Practically, balconies and terraces could be covered and converted into indoor living space as extra bedrooms, bathrooms or kitchens. The plan will help families deal with the economic crisis while boosting activity for small, local construction firms.

This seems to me to be an effective and non harmful way to stimulate the economy. “Other countries have had to shell out money for bailouts,” said Finance minister Giulio Tremonti, “but they’ve done less for the economy.” Obama docet, I would dare to say. To give an idea, the new infrastructure program could be worth about 0.6 percent of Italy’s GDP, save some 65,000 jobs that would be otherwise lost due to lack of funds and create 140,000 new jobs. Public Works minister Altero Matteoli told Il Messaggero daily newspaper.

Of course, with regard to the Strait of Messina bridge, the opposition say it will be an ecological disaster, vulnerable to high winds, earthquakes and tidal waves, if not a boon for the mafia. But the truth is, as I told in a comment to my previous post (sorry to quote myself, but I’m lazy …), that for every public works project, here in Italy, there have always been crowds of Cassandras, objectors, hypercritical experts (or would-be experts) and, above all, political opponents who talk big and do nothing …, so most of the times I, as well most of my countrymen, just don’t trust them. There is no reason to think that the planners are so naïve, incompetent and irresponsible as to have not fully considered the possible impact of the bridge, its feasibility, etc. While there are very good reasons to think that Renato Schifani, speaker of the Senate and a Sicilian, was right when he declared the project to be of enormous importance for the whole of Italy’s depressed south.

Sources:
Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Timesonline, The Guardian, Ansa.

A bridge to the future?

Italy’s government has revived plans to build the Strait of Messina bridge, linking Sicily to the mainland. The single-span suspension bridge, with a central span of 3,300 m (about 2 miles), would be the longest in the world. The project is part of a massive 17.8bn-euro public works program to create new jobs and boost the economy.

Italy’s Foreign minister delays Iran visit

In light of the “unacceptable statements” made by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “against the state of Israel and the American administration,” Italy Foreign minister Franco Frattini has delayed a visit to Tehran. Yesterday Ali Khamenei described Israel as a “cancerous tumor,” and criticized Washington’s “unconditional support” for Israel. He also said that the Holocaust was used to “usurp” Palestinian land.

The Italian reaction to both the hateful and hurtful anti-Semitic statements made by Ali Khamenei and the equally unacceptable statements contained in the draft of the final document of the upcoming United Nations World Conference Against Racism (see my previous post), has been as severe as quick. Which is something new, to tell the truth, in comparison with the standards of our political decision-making. I think Franco Frattini earns a “bravo” for this.

Italy pulls out of UN racism conference

Soon after Israel, Canada and the United States, Italy decided today to withdraw its delegation from the preparatory negotiations ahead of the upcoming United Nations World Conference Against Racism known as the Durban Review Conference, which is a follow-up to the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

The conference is due to take place in Geneva on April 20-24. Italian Foreign minister Franco Frattini said that the decision is due to “aggressive and anti-Semitic statements” in the draft of the event’s final document, which he described as “totally unacceptable.” Ministry spokesman Maurizio Massari confirmed Frattini’s statements and said Rome would not participate in the conference unless the document was changed.

The mistery of Fr. Giussani

Today Communion and Liberation, the movement founded by Fr. Luigi Giussani, is present in more than 70 countries. There are about 100,000 people belonging to the Fraternity. Then there are the members of Memores Domini (men and women under vows), the priests of the Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo, the Sisters of Charity of the Assumption, and the Companionship of Works Association, which links about 30,000 industrial businesses, magazines, publishers, etc.

Who really was Fr. Luigi Giussani? For the first time, a book presents his spiritual biography: Don Giussani. La sua esperienza dell'uomo e di Dio, by Massimo Camisasca. An extract from the volume’s culminating chapter can be read in English translation at Sandro Magister’s website. Of course, at the center of everything are a “coming” and an “encounter.”

'Pope Ratzinger’s solitude'

Italian vaticanist Luigi Accattoli has written a very interesting piece, “La solitudine di Ratzinger” (“Pope Ratzinger’s solitude”), published today in Liberal. Fr. John Zuhlsdorf has had the great idea of providing an English translation of it on his What Does The Prayer Really Say? If you don’t know Luigi Accattoli yet, just read the article and you will understand why he is one of my favorite writers.

The Crusades: myth and reality

The Siege of Antioch (Medieval miniature)

The following post is a very modest attempt to pay tribute to one of the most controversial issues in Western intellectual history. Thanks to Steven, who wrote some very interesting posts on this subject, making me willing to tackle this admittedly difficult task.

While the events known as “Crusades” remain one of the most misinterpreted aspects of medieval history, “Crusades” and “Crusaders” are among the most misunderstood terms of our time.

In the West the Crusades have been described in a huge number of books and articles as “Holy Wars” (and by consequence the antecedents of every religious and ideological wars), which was a thesis upheld by the historians and philosophers of the 18th-century Enlightenment. Voltaire, for instance, depicted the Crusaders as blood-thirsty fanatics, while portraying their opponents, particularly Saladin and al-Kamil, as wise and just monarchs. But there was a reason why the Enlightenment circles cast that “black legend” shadow on the Crusades: they wanted to use it as a weapon in their anti-religious campaigns, and particularly in their psychological war against the Roman Catholic Church.

Today, in the Western countries the black legend, imbued with a collective sense of guilt, is being continued in the spirit of political correctness, while in the Muslim world it is being continued by Islamists, who use it to paint the West as evil and Islam as a victim of Christian aggression. Al-Qaeda often uses the terms “Crusades” and “Crusaders” to refer to the West and its presumed (past and present) “aggressive” attitude towards the Muslim world. Which of course, according to Al-Qaeda and its affiliates and supporters, “justifies” Islamic terrorism as a “response” and a means of defense.

“We all pay—and will continue to pay—the consequences of the Islamic masses’ desire for revenge, of their call for vengeance against the ‘Great Satan,’ which, by the way, is not just the United States, but the whole of Christianity, the very one responsible for the Crusades,” wrote Italian Catholic writer Vittorio Messori—who interviewed Pope John Paul II in Crossing the Threshold of Hope—in a July 1999 article in Corriere della Sera newspaper. “After all,” he argued, “is it not Westerners themselves who insist on saying that it was a terrible, unforgivable aggression against the pious, devout and meek followers of the Koran?”

But the historical truth is quite different. Even the term “Crusades,” according to Messori, is a lie:

It was anti-Catholic propaganda that invented the name, just as it invented the term Middle Ages, chosen by ‘enlightened’ historiography to describe the parenthesis of darkness and fanaticism between the splendors of Antiquity and the Renaissance.

And it goes without saying that

those who attacked Jerusalem 900 years ago would have been very surprised had they been told that they were engaged in what eventually would be known as the 'first Crusade.' For them it was an itinerary, a 'pilgrimage,' a route, a passage. Those same 'armed pilgrims' would have been even more surprised had they foreseen the accusations leveled against them of trying to convert the 'infidel,' of securing commercial routes to the West, of creating European 'colonies' in the Middle East ...

Furthermore,

there is a question we must ask ourselves. In the context of more than a thousand years of Christian-Islamic relations, who has been the victim and who the aggressor? […] When Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem in 638, the city had been Christian for over three centuries. Soon after, the Prophet's disciples invaded and destroyed the glorious churches of Egypt, first, and then of North Africa, causing the extinction of Christianity in places that had had Bishops like St. Augustine. Later it was the turn of Spain, Sicily and Greece, and the land that would eventually become Turkey, where the communities founded by St. Paul himself were turned into ruins. In 1453, after seven centuries of siege, Constantinople, the second Rome, capitulated and became Islamic. The Islamic threat reached the Balkans but, miraculously, the onslaught was stopped and forced to turn back at Vienna's walls. If the Jerusalem massacre of 1099 is execrated, Mohammed II's action in Otranto [Italy] in 1480 

must not be forgotten, a raw example of a bloody funeral procession of sufferings.

And here were Messori’s final remarks:

A simple review of history, along very general lines, confirms an obvious truth: Christianity is constantly on the defensive when it comes to Moslem aggression; this has been the case from the beginning until now. […] Admittedly, some in the course of history need to ask for forgiveness. But, in this instance, must it be Catholics who ask for forgiveness for actions in self-defense, and for keeping the road open for pilgrimage to Jesus' places, which was the reason for the Crusades?

This is a very similar approach to that of historian Franco Cardini of the University of Florence, the author of Europe and Islam (2001). In an article published on July 21, 1999 in Avvenire newspaper, to the question whether or not the Crusades are to be considered as “Holy Wars” or “religious wars” Cardini’s answer is unequivocally negative:

[T]he real interest in these expeditions, in service of Christian brethren threatened by Moslems, was the restoration of peace in the East, and the early stirring of the idea of rescue for distant fellow-Christians.
[…]
[T]he Crusades were never 'religious wars,' their purpose was not to force conversions or suppress the infidel. The excesses and violence committed in the course of the expeditions (which did occur and must not be forgotten) must be evaluated in the painful but usual context of the phenomenology of military events, keeping in mind that, undoubtedly, some theological reason always justified them.
[…]
The Crusade was an armed pilgrimage that developed slowly over time, between the 11th and 13th centuries, which must be understood by being inserted in the context of the extended relations between Christianity and Islam, which have produced positive cultural and economic results. […] If this was not the case, how could one explain the frequent friendships, including military alliances, between Christians and Moslems, in the history of the Crusades?

The Crusades issue is not so easy, after all. When correctly interpreted, it shows that there has been an over emphasis on what, on the Christian side, was wrong, negative, cruel, while what was positive and right has been kept quiet. And that Muslims and Christians did not only make wars. It is also worth noting that several European authors claimed that not only did the Crusades era produce active intellectual exchanges between East and West in all fields of science and culture, but also that there has been direct, although discreet, contact between the spirituality of Islam and that of medieval Christian Europe, to say nothing about the supposed liaisons between Dante and the tradition of Arab mystical poetry, and between the so-called Christian “initiatory organizations” and the Sufism, which is generally understood to be the inner, mystical dimension of Islam.

Even from this point of view the case of the Templars, who played a fundamental role in the Crusades, is paradigmatic. This order of knights was founded in Jerusalem in 1119 and was given its Rule by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who opposed the lay knighthood, which in the 12th century was often made up of avid, violent and amoral persons, with “a new knighthood” made up of monks at the exclusive service of the poor and pilgrims and well-aware that an enemy might have to be killed during war if there is no option, but must never be hated. Well, as Franco Cardini recalls in his Gerusalemme d’oro, di rame e di luce (1991, no English version, as far as I know), Usama ibn Muniqidh, an Arab-Syrian noble and warrior of the twelfth century and Emir of Shaizar, wrote in his autobiography that he was friendly with one European Christian knight, talked with Christians, and stayed with the Templars, “who were my friends,” when he was in Jerusalem. The Templars would also allow him to pray in a chapel they had built in the former Aqsa mosque.

And this is just one example among many.

Having said that, it’s obvious that the Crusades remain an insult to all those who reject war “without any ifs and buts,” as well as to those Christians whose basic tenet is to turn the other cheek, and to forgive everybody for everything, at all times, regardless of circumstances, consequences, and common sense—the kind of Christians the author of this article was referring to ...

Bye bye bishop Williamson

The “absolutely unequivocal and public” taking of distance from his positions regarding the Shoah, which the Vatican was expecting from bishop Williamson, has not come to pass. Which is perhaps no surprise, given the nature of the case—a desperate one, indeed.

What is surprising is, in my opinion, that Richardson felt the need to perform an attempt to apologize for the interview he gave to a Swedish TV program last November (aired in January), in which, as it is well known, he disputed that six million Jews had been killed by the Nazis, and said that none had died in gas chambers.

So, in a declaration released on February 26, he said that he “regretted” having made such remarks, “because their consequences have been so heavy,” and that, had he known beforehand “the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the Church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich,” he would not have made them. Furthermore, in a vain attempt to minimize the significance of his remarks, he added that on Swedish television he “gave only the opinion (...”I believe”...”I believe”...) of a non-historian, an opinion formed 20 years ago on the basis of evidence then available, and rarely expressed in public since.”

But the simple truth, as Norm Geras points out, is that

[t]he one thing he doesn’t say—and you have to assume that this statement has been thought about carefully—is that he has now concluded in light of a review of the evidence that those opinions were wrong. It looks […] like an apology because some were offended, as opposed to an apology for a falsehood now recognized by him.

And that’s why Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said yesterday in a verbal statement that the apology “does not seem to respect the conditions” set out by Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone. The Vatican spokesman also described the apology as “generic and equivocal.”

However, once again it is to be noted that, even if Williamson would have “respected the conditions,” his status within the Catholic Church wouldn’t change, since the lifting of the excommunication by the Pope did not by any means heal the schism between Rome and Lefebvrists. In fact, as canon lawyer Peter Vere points out, Williamson’s ordination—along with that of the other three bishops—20 years ago was illicit, because it was against the wishes of the Pope, but nonetheless valid. Which means that Williamson “is in fact a bishop with episcopal powers,” because his episcopal consecration was valid, but “not a Catholic bishop.”

The remission of the excommunication has freed the four bishops from a very serious canonical penalty, but it has not changed the juridical status of the Society of St. Pius X, which presently does not enjoy any canonical recognition by the Catholic Church. The four bishops, even though they have been released from excommunication, have no canonical function in the Church and do not licitly exercise any ministry within it.

As for the attitude of the Catholic Church towards the deniers of the Holocaust, what Pope Benedict said on February 12, speaking to American Jewish leaders at the Vatican, swept away any reasonable doubt, while the latest declaration by Williamson seems to have raised an insuperable wall between Williamson himself and Rome. Which I guess is not that bad.

March 10, 2009: Display the Tibetan flag

Next March 10 will mark a double anniversary for Tibet: 50 years since Tibetans rose up to protest China’s illegal invasion of their homeland, and one year since unprecedented protests broke out across the Land of Snow showing China and the world that Tibetans are determined to be free. The images in March 2008 of Tibetans in Tibet bravely displaying Tibetan flags is an image that none, among those who love freedom and justice, will ever forget.

That’s why the Students For Tibet web site is inviting people to display a Tibetan flag on March 10, 2009. And that’s also why I am linking here to their site.

There are many places where a Tibetan flag can be raised or displayed. Here are just a few of the suggested places that could fly a flag:

> Schools
> Shops
> Libraries
> Pubs/bars
> Sports grounds
> Village/Public Halls
> Offices
> Local landmarks
> Your home
> On cars

Moreover, in taking that a step further, as the “Dalai Lama blog” suggests, it would be great that all bloggers and webmasters displayed an image of the Tibetan flag on their blogs and web sites during the entire month of March. And that’s what I’ll be doing next week.

Moving backwards?

Moving backwards on the foreign policy front with Barack Obama in charge? Perhaps they forgot Machiavelli's lesson …

From this arises an argument: whether it is better to be loved than feared. I reply that one should like to be both one and the other; but since it is difficult to join them together, it is much safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

Slaying Leviathan

“Slaying Leviathan envisions an approach to tax policy rooted in natural justice. To achieve this goal, Ms. Carbone first traces the historical evolution of U.S. tax policy, from the 1765 Stamp Act to the 1997 tax cut. She then assesses the current American tax burden and former president George W. Bush’s tax cuts and explores the fundamental problems with U.S. tax policy. After providing a historical analysis of federal spending and of expanding governmental expectations, she offers a set of over-arching principles and instructions on how to apply them to tax policy proposals. Anyone interested in restoring justice and raising prosperity in America will find Slaying Leviathan a valuable resource.”

Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform, by Leslie Carbone. To be published on June 30, 2009, by Potomac Books Inc. Pre-ordering the book is possible through amazon.com.