Holocaust scepticism is the one unpardonable
'sin'
Bishop Richard Williamson
We live in an age
of moral relativism. Behaviour that would have horrified every
previous generation is now celebrated. Beliefs held sacrosanct
for two millennia are openly mocked.
Even the Church of
Rome, once a beacon of consistency, has cringed before modern
(and post-modern) liberal trends since the Second Vatican Council,
held from 1962 to 1965.
There is one single
exception to this trend, and a single exception to the far older
and more honourable tradition of source sceptical enquiry. The
events known as the Holocaust are immune from critical investigation,
it is assumed that one version of those events is an absolute
and eternal truth, and any judgment of that period of history
which diverges from the orthodox line is regarded as an unforgiveable
moral outrage.
Bishop Richard Williamson,
a Cambridge-educated Englishman, has been literally demonised
by the media, by Jews, by the Left, and by elements within his
own church in recent weeks, ever since giving an interview to
Swedish television in which he expressed his views that no Jews
were killed in gas chambers and that the total Jewish death toll
in the wartime camps was around 300,000.
A Vatican spokesman
has said:
"There is no room for such views in the Catholic Church.
They are totally unacceptable."
Literally demonised: Bishop Williamson is
portrayed as the Devil (and the Pope as in league with the Devil)
Authorities in Argentina, where Bishop Williamson
was director of a Catholic seminary, expelled him from the country
on a visa technicality, while letting it be known that in reality
he was being punished for his opinions.
Though he has humbly pledged to reconsider his
views in the light of any new evidence his opponents can provide,
German leftists at a carnival in Dusseldorf portrayed the Bishop
as the Devil.
On returning to his native
Britain, Bishop Williamson's return was met by a near-riot of
press at Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5.
Damian Thompson of the Catholic Herald
and Ruth Gledhill of The Times have seized the opportunity
to attack the traditionalist Society of St Pius X to which Bishop
Williamson belongs, while insisting that there can be
no rational discussion of the views the bishop holds.
Their argument seems unChristian, though very
much in the spirit of the Stockholm International Forum 2000 in
its guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust, which stated: Care must be taken not to give a platform for deniers... or
seek to disprove the deniers' position through normal historical
debate and rational argument.
Note that the advocates of this new religion of
Holocaustianity resist the invasion of reason onto their sacred
turf.
Whatever our religion, those who are interested
in historical truth underpinned by free and fearless research
must trust that (in whatever direction his views develop) Bishop
Williamson will continue in the fine tradition of St Thomas Aquinas,
holding reason as a true gift from God complementary to faith.
