Posted by
whoyg1513 on Monday, October 19, 2009 10:32:26 PM
Reading this, people might ask, “But wasn’t it proven last winter that the pope didn’t know Williamson’s views when he lifted the excommunications?”
No, no shred of evidence was offered, anywhere. A widespread impression of proof was created by a media deluge in March, a deluge chilling not only for its dishonesty but for the similarity of language different media used to
game machines promote that dishonesty.
In February, media such as BBC , The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN took a seemingly neutral stance, reporting the substance of the Vatican’s February 4, 2009 statement while avoiding critical comment.
Thus the BBC wrote:
[Excerpt from February 4th BBC report starts here]
A statement said British Bishop Richard Williamson must “unequivocally” distance himself from his statements to serve in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Vatican also said that the Pope had not been aware of the bishop’s views when he lifted excommunications on him and three other bishops last month.
[My emphasis – J.I.]
– “‘Holocaust bishop’ told to recant,” BBC , Feb. 4, 2009, http://news.BBC.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7869995.stm
[Excerpt from February 4th BBC report ends here]
Notice the ambiguity of the phrase “to serve.” For those who read a bit further, the BBC quoted the Vatican text, according to which “to serve” meant “to
cultured freshwater pearl be admitted to the Episcopal functions of the Church,” but the BBC never explained “Episcopal functions.” This reporting, typical of leading English-language media, was very misleading. Contrary to the impression the media conveyed, Williamson’s excommunication was lifted regardless of whether he changed his stand on the Holocaust. Only his right to legitimately exercise the functions of a bishop (i.e., “Episcopal functions”) was at issue. And, as the media chose not to point out, this meant that if Williamson retracted his Holocaust denial, even if he continued to accuse Jews of conspiring for world conquest, he could legitimately “serve,” i.e., function as a bishop in the church, making him a possible future candidate for Cardinal or even pope.
While in February leading English-language media took a low-key approach, avoiding both incisive criticism and open defense of the pope, in March they aggressively defended and even lied for the pope. Reporting about a March 10 papal letter to bishops on the excommunications affair these media:
A) Falsely framed the bishops letter as a “disarmingly human” admission of fault, leading the public to believe that the pope had humbled himself in order to woo those who criticized him in January and February. In fact the March letter was a fierce attack on critics and an endorsement of the SSPX.
B) These media also reopened discussion of the Vatican’s Feb. 4th ‘pope-didn’t-know’ postulation, discovering that miraculously it had become established fact.
Both these themes are manifest in a BBC article of March 12th. Framing the pope’s letter to
pearl necklace wholesale bishops as a serious self-criticism, the BBC headlined its piece, “Pope admits Holocaust row errors.” (My emphasis.)
On February 4, the BBC had reported:
“The Vatican also said that the Pope had not been aware of the bishop’s views when he lifted excommunications on him and three other bishops last month.”
[My emphasis – J.I.]
– ibid.
But on March 12, the BBC reported:
“In January, the Pope lifted the excommunication imposed 20 years earlier on Bishop Williamson and three other bishops, unaware of his controversial remarks.”
[My emphasis – J.I.]
– “Pope admits Holocaust row errors,” BBC , March 12, 2009,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7938827.stm
So whereas in February the BBC wrote “The Vatican also said that the Pope had not been aware,” now the BBC removed the phrase “the Vatican also said,” presenting the pope’s alleged unawareness as a known fact. In fact no proof had been offered and none was offered now. This was revealed truth. A modern miracle.
In the March 12 piece, the BBC went so far as to
freshwater pearl jewelry frame the pope’s self-justification in his March 10 letter to bishops as an admission:
“In the letter, which was published on Thursday, the Pope acknowledges that the Vatican must in future pay more attention to the internet as a source of information.”
[My emphasis – J.I.]
– ibid.
Similarly, The New York Times story had the headline:
“Pope Admits Online News Can Provide Infallible Aid”
[My emphasis – J.I.]
– “Pope Admits Online News Can Provide Infallible Aid,” by Rachel Donadio, The New York Times, March 12, 2009
http://nytimes.com/2009/03/13/world/europe/13pope.html
The word ‘admits’ connotes a confession of fault. But what did the pope “admit” in the bishops letter? Presenting his effort to reconcile with the SSPX as a “discreet gesture of mercy” (if he did say so himself), the pope wrote:
[Excerpt from pope’s letter starts here]
“An unforeseen mishap for me was the fact that the Williamson case came on top of the remission of the excommunication. The discreet gesture of mercy towards four Bishops ordained validly but not legitimately [regarding this confusing but politically revealing distinction, see footnote [6] – J.I.] suddenly appeared as something completely different: as the repudiation of reconciliation between Christians and Jews.
“I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to
cultured pearl jewelry that source of news.”
[My emphasis – J.I.]
– “Letter of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
to the Bishops of the Catholic Church,” March 10, 2009
http://vatican.../...ben-xvi_let_20090310...html
or http://snipurl.com/i92sz
[Excerpt from pope’s letter ends here]
That’s it. In the March letter, the pope criticized neither Williamson nor himself. Rather, he lamented an ‘appearance,’ i.e., the way millions of people perceived his actions. And he now claimed that, due to a failure to consult the Internet, he was unaware, “early on,” not of Williamson’s views (which he never discussed) but of the fact that people were terribly angry over the lifting of the excommunications.
This was not an admission; it was a preposterous lie. First, there is no reason to believe the Vatican was Internet-illiterate. For example, on Jan. 18, 2009, six days before the Vatican announced the SSPX rehabilitation, the Vatican-related news service Zenit announced that:
“Google, a symbol of the seemingly endless possibilities of the Internet, will team up with the Vatican Television Center and Vatican Radio in a joint venture to give Benedict XVI his own YouTube channel.”
– “Google to Team Up With Vatican,” Zenit, January 18, 2009, http://www.zenit.org/article-24828?l=english
Granting for the sake of argument that despite organizing joint projects with Google and YouTube, the pope and all the members of his vast state and media support apparatus were incapable of reading news on the Internet, remember that every newspaper and every broadcast media blared the news of the worldwide protest against the pope’s decision immediately the excommunications were publicly lifted. Are we supposed to believe that neither the pope nor any of his staff ever look at any media?
Instead of making these points, the once-great The New York Times presented the pope’s letter as an ‘admission,’ which the Times found to be “disarmingly human.”
The London Times apparently consulted a thesaurus, for instead of having the pope ‘admit’ his “disarmingly human” innocence, according to that austere journal:
“In a strikingly humble letter to Catholic bishops, he [that would be the pope – J.I.] conceded that the Vatican should have been aware of the views of Richard Williamson, the English bishop at the centre of the row.”
[My emphasis – J.I.]
– “Pope embraces internet in apology over Holocaust bishop,” by Richard Owen and Ruth Gledhill, The Times (London), March 12, 2009
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5888650.ece
Here the London Times explicitly stated what other leading media implied: that in his letter to Bishops, the pope apologized for Williamson’s violent antisemitism.
That is a lie.
Despite the pope’s statement at Ben Gurion airport that all must “combat anti-Semitism wherever it is found,” his March letter contains no reference, let alone opposition, to violent attacks on Jews by Williamson and the SSPX. He criticizes the SSPX members for “arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions” – all criticisms of their resistance to Vatican control, not for being wrong, let alone for fomenting hate. He praises them as “touching” and “warm hearted” and presents them and himself as the real victims of hate.
Do you think I am exaggerating? Discussing the public reaction to his “discreet gesture of mercy” towards the SSPX, in an outrageous – indeed, beyond outrageous – passage, the pope writes:
“At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them – in this case the Pope – he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint.”
[My emphasis – J.I.]
– “Letter of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
to the Bishops of the Catholic Church,” March 10, 2009
http://vatican.../...ben-xvi_let_20090310...html
or http://snipurl.com/i92sz
In this, the most important statement in the March letter, the pope says that those who dared criticize his “gesture of mercy” are the real bigots, while he and the SSPX members are the victims of hatred “without misgiving or restraint.”
The seriousness of the pope’s letter and of the media falsification cannot be overstated. The pope did not write a letter of contrition, intended to woo his critics. He wrote a letter of counter-attack against his Gentile critics. And although some Jewish leaders, perhaps suffering hallucination, praised the pope for some imaginary change of heart, the letter is a deadly attack on Jews. Because, after all, Jews are the people, first and foremost, against whom the SSPX incites.
The Washington Post took the same tack as the London Times, using “concedes” instead of “admits,” and misleading readers to believe that in the bishops letter the pope presented Williamson’s statements as offensive; they implied that he would not have rescinded Williamson’s excommunication had he known about those statements. Thus:
“Benedict reiterated [in the bishops letter – J.I.] that he had not known about Williamson’s offending Holocaust statements before he lifted the excommunication on him and three other bishops in January.”
[My emphasis – J.I.]
– “Pope Concedes ‘Mistakes’ in Bishop Controversy,” by Mary Jordan, The Washington Post, March 13, 2009
But once again, in the March letter the pope never said he was unaware of Williamson’s Holocaust denial. He never referred to Williamson’s views as “offending.” Indeed, he never mentioned Holocaust denial or spoke of Williamson’s views. He only wrote that he was unaware of the popular reaction to his rescinding of the excommunications, which, in “an unforeseen mishap for me” came at the same time as “the Williamson case.”
The Post also stated:
“The pope said he wanted to ‘clarify’ that the breakaway group would not be allowed to rejoin the church unless it clearly accepted the modernizing Vatican II reforms of the 1960s, which include a repudiation of anti-Semitism.”
In fact, the pope never used “clarify” in this context, never set conditions for the SSPX to “rejoin the church” and never mentioned antisemitism. He made no demand that the SSPX endorse Vatican II, and indeed said:
“But some of those who put themselves forward as great defenders of the [Vatican II – J.I.] Council also need to be reminded that Vatican II embraces the entire doctrinal history of the Church. Anyone who wishes to be obedient to the Council has to accept the faith professed over the centuries, and cannot sever the roots from which the tree draws its life.”
– “Letter of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
to the Bishops of the Catholic Church,” March 10, 2009
http://vatican.../...ben-xvi_let_20090310...html
or http://snipurl.com/i92sz
Rather than attacking the SSPX, the pope attacked those who defended Vatican II.
The London Times and The Washington Post lied by omission (failing to quote the pope’s claim that he and the SSPX were the true victims of hateful scapegoating) and by commission (falsely claiming that the pope had apologized for Williamson’s views, that he called those views ‘offensive,’ that his letter was an ultimatum to the SSPX, and so on). They presented as news reports what were in fact editorials endorsing the Vatican, and misrepresented the pope’s self-defense, his attack on critics and his warm embrace of the SSPX, as a concession to those opposing the SSPX.
Is it any wonder if people falsely concluded that the pope had taken strong action against antisemitism?
The editors at the London Times should get a special award for double-think-in-the-face-of-absurdity, because their March 12 article mentioned several times that on Jan. 23 (one day before the Vatican announced the lifting of the excommunications) The Times published a piece headlined:
“Pope could welcome Holocaust denier back into the fold”
– by Ruth Gledhill, The Times (London), January 23, 2009 http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5567829.ece
Consider.
The Vatican is not only an absolutist religious/ideological leadership. It is also a state (by decision of the Fascist, Mussolini). It has a Secretariat of State (like the British foreign ministry, but more disciplined). It has an intelligence apparatus. It has a worldwide media network, including Vatican radio (two hundred reporters), plus the staffs of newspapers and magazines, all operating as the voice and ears of the Vatican.
The London Times is a world-class newspaper, not one that diplomats, intelligence ops and the staffs of Vatican media would ignore, least of all when the Times was predicting:
“If Benedict XVI goes ahead with lifting the excommunication in spite of Bishop Williamson’s comments, that will in turn wreak havoc on more than 40 years of attempts to rebuild relations with the Jewish community after nearly two millennia of Christian anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust.”
– The Times (London), January 23, 2009, ibid.
Yet the London Times wanted us to believe that a) even though it had exposed Williamson’s Holocaust denial and predicted a storm of protest one day before the Vatican announced the excommunication-lifting, nevertheless b) the Vatican could have been unaware of Williamson’s statements and the widespread protest that exploded immediately following the lifting.
The Times and Post invented a papal letter to bishops designed to soothe public opinion, thus defining themselves as spin-masters for the hierarchy of the church. Congratulations!
CNN followed The Washington Post, promulgating the lie that the pope attacked Williamson as a “holocaust bishop,” with the headline:
“Pope: We should have Googled Holocaust bishop,” March 14, 2009
http://cnn.com/...holocaust.bishop.pope.benedict/index.html
As noted, in the letter the pope never mentions googling Williamson, never calls him a “Holocaust bishop,” and indeed never mentions the words ‘Holocaust,’ ‘Shoah,’ ‘genocide,’ or ‘antisemitism.’
Meanwhile, CNN followed the BBC and The New York Times by using “admits” rather than “concedes”:
“The pope admits in his letter that the affair had taken him by surprise, with something that was meant to be a gesture of Christian unity becoming misrepresented.”
[My emphasis – J.I.]
– ibid.
I highlighted the ubiquitous ‘admits’ in the first part of the sentence, but the second part is also worthy of attention. There CNN built on the general media claim that the pope had ‘admitted’ the truth of what was in fact a lie – ‘I am innocent-by-ignorance! May the heavens fall: I cannot pretend otherwise!’ – adding that the pope had also ‘admitted’ that his opponents took advantage of his ‘admittedly’ well-intentioned gesture towards the SSPX in order to slander him!
What will the pope admit next? Heaven trembles at the possibilities.