SSPX
SSPX Anti-Semitism Documented
By Richard Bartholomew, 2009-02-21 09:12:23
Section: Front Page, Topic: Hate Speech
In the wake of the Bishop Richard Williamson scandal, Belgian Jewish news site Joods Actueel has conducted what it describes as an "in-depth review" of websites run by the Society of Saint Pius X in various countries. Verdict: "This is in many ways worse than...bishop Williamson...Williamson is a lone fool and not taken serious[ly] by the masses, whereas here we are talking about an entire society comprising thousands of priests spreading hatred to hundreds of thousands around the world...What we have uncovered here is preaching of lies and hate against Jews today thereby once again promoting hatred against the Jewish people.
By Richard Bartholomew, 2009-02-21 09:12:23
Section: Front Page, Topic: Hate Speech
In the wake of the Bishop Richard Williamson scandal, Belgian Jewish news site Joods Actueel has conducted what it describes as an "in-depth review" of websites run by the Society of Saint Pius X in various countries. Verdict: "This is in many ways worse than...bishop Williamson...Williamson is a lone fool and not taken serious[ly] by the masses, whereas here we are talking about an entire society comprising thousands of priests spreading hatred to hundreds of thousands around the world...What we have uncovered here is preaching of lies and hate against Jews today thereby once again promoting hatred against the Jewish people.
The report can be seen in full at:
[http://joodsactueel.be/2009/02/19/pius-x-anti-semitism/].
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The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is an international Traditionalist Catholic organisation, founded in 1970 by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
The Society's official Latin name is Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Pii X, meaning "Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X". It is composed of 486 priests, together with "religious members who are brothers, sisters, and oblates, and by affiliation, Third Order members".[1]
Relations between the Society and the Holy See have been tense, but dialogue between the two sides has been ongoing for years. On 21 January 2009 the Holy See remitted the excommunication that it had declared in respect of the four SSPX bishops whom Archbishop Lefebvre had illicitly consecrated in 1988,[2] and expressed the hope that all members of the Society would follow this up by speedily returning to full communion with the Church.[3][4]
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Political controversies
There is an overlap in French society between the SSPX's constituency of support and support for extreme right-wing political positions. In the French context, such positions include:
§ Condemnation of the 1789 French Revolution and of the French Republic, accompanied by support for the pre-Revolution absolutist Catholic monarchy. Archbishop Lefebvre vocally condemned the Revolution.[76]
§ Support for the Vichy government (1940-1944). Lefebvre spoke approvingly of the "Catholic order of Pétain", referring to the Vichy Vichy
§ Support for the Front National political party and its leader, Jean-Marie le Pen, who is on the far right of the political spectrum.[78][79] In 1985, Lefebvre was quoted in the French far-right periodical Présent as endorsing Le Pen, though his endorsement was made on the basis that Le Pen was the only major French politician who unambiguously condemned abortion. In 1991, the then SSPX priest Fr. Philippe Laguérie called the Front National "the party least removed from the natural law".[80]
In the United States
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Anti-Semitism
There have been statements by some members of the society which have been interpreted as anti-Semitic, particularly regarding Holocaust denial.[84] The society itself denies the claim that anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism exists in important circles of the Society[85] The Society stated that it has lay supporters and even a priest with a Jewish background, a reference to Father Florian Abrahamowicz, whose views on the Jews have been interpreted as negative,[86][87] and who was expelled by the Italian chapter of the Society in February 2009.[88].
The views of Bishop Williamson have been a particular source of controversy, as have those of another British SSPX cleric, the late Fr. Michael Crowdy.[89] For example, Bishop Williamson has written:
"However, until they re-discover their true Messianic vocation, they may be expected to continue fanatically agitating, in accordance with their false messianic vocation of Jewish world-dominion, to prepare the Anti-Christ's throne in Jerusalem
In an interview with Swedish Television in November 2008, whose broadcast on 21 January 2009, the date on which the Holy See lifted the excommunication of the four SSPX bishops, gained wide publicity, Williamson repeated his opinion that the generally accepted history of the Holocaust is wrong. He accepted an estimate of only 200,000-300,000 Jews who perished in Nazi concentration camps, and denied that any were killed in gas chambers.[91]. The Vatican
Williamson's views on this and other subjects are controversial even within traditionalist Catholicism: see the main article on him for details. After his interview, broadcast by Swedish Television on 21 January 2009, both the Superior General of the SSPX, Bishop Fellay, and the District Superior of the SSPX in Germany, Fr. Franz Schmidberger, stated that Williamson's views represented his own personal opinions;[93] and Bishop Fellay, as superior general of the Society, "prohibited him, pending any new orders, from taking any public positions on political or historical questions".[94]
Although the SSPX authorities have thus distinguished Williamson's views from those of the Society, the Anti-Defamation League has accused the Society of St. Pius X of being "mired in anti-Semitism",[95] and journalist John L. Allen, Jr. has said it would be misleading to consider Williamson an isolated case: Father Florian Abrahamowicz, who after being the superior in Italy has since been expelled from the Society, also said he was not sure the Nazis had used gas chambers for anything other than disinfection, seemed to cast doubt on the number of six million Jews killed, complained that the Jews had exalted the Holocaust above other genocides, and called the Jews a "people of deicide".[96]
The SSPX was also accused of anti-Semitism in a 2006 report on Traditionalist Catholicism published by the American Southern Poverty Law Center.
In 1989, Paul Touvier, a fugitive wanted for war crimes, was arrested in the SSPX priory in Nice. The SSPX stated at the time that Touvier had been granted asylum there as "an act of charity to a homeless man".[98] In 1994, Touvier was sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering the execution of seven Jews at Rillieux-la-Pape in 1944, allegedly in reprisal for the French Resistance's killing of the Vichy minister Philippe Henriot.[99] On his death in 1996, a Requiem Mass for Touvier's soul was offered for him by Father Philippe Laguérie,[100] the priest then in charge of the SSPX church of St Nicolas du Chardonnet in Paris.[101]
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In the wake of the Bishop Richard Williamson scandal, Belgian Jewish newssite Joods Actueel has conducted what it describes as an "in-depth review" of websites run by the Society of Saint Pius X in various countries. Verdict:
"This is in many ways worse than...bishop Williamson...Williamson is a lone fool and not taken serious[ly] by the masses, whereas here we are talking about an entire society comprising thousands of priests spreading hatred to hundreds of thousands around the world...What we have uncovered here is preaching of lies and hate against Jews today thereby once again promoting hatred against the Jewish people.
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Is the Society of St. Pius X a Cult? (Appears to be sister site to "Is the Society of St. Pius X in Schism?")
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