Lifting Bishop Williamson's Excommunication

It is very difficult to get all the information one needs on religious matters in the secular press. This has been particularly true when it comes to the Pope's recent lifting of excommunication from a group of men illicitly ordained by a breakaway French Archbishop in 1988. Here's a letter to the editor that appeared in the Friday March 6, 2009 issue of the Idaho Catholic Register that does a good job of clarifying matters. I trust that neither the Register nor the author of the letter will mind my passing it along to you.

Two separate, distinct issues

Editor, the ICR:

I was dismayed to read in the Feb. 20 ICR, under the "From the Vatican" heading, a news report from Catholic News Service that traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson has recently denied some aspects of the Holocaust within days of Pope Benedict XVI remission of Bishop Williamson's excommunication.

Unfortunately, the secular media has linked these two otherwise unrelated stories and the Catholic News Service article you reprinted did little to correct this misrepresentation. Bishop Williamson was identified as a "traditionalist," yet the article should have pointed out that he is a member of the Society of St. Pius X and one of the four bishops ordained without papal authority by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988. For this act of disobedience, Archbishop Lefebvre and his four bishops were excommunicated by the pope. As such, Bishop Williamson has not been in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, a situation that Pope Benedict XVI has recently strived to right by lifting the 1988 excommunication of the four bishops. He trusts this act of forgiveness will be the first step toward reconciliation with the society and facilitate the return of members to communion with Rome. The remission of Bishop Williamson's excommunication had nothing whatsoever to do with his errant views of the Holocaust. Such misreporting was painful to many of our Jewish friends and has caused apologies to be issued by the Pope and Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the society.

I just thought Idaho Catholics should be aware of this.

Richard Smith
Garden Valley