Why We Speak Out.

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

When I wrote about the Vatican's reinstatement of four schismatic bishops, including Holocaust denier SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson some readers commented that the Catholic Church's current hierarchy would not respond to the outrage it provoked.

As it happens, the Vatican is walking this one back as fast as it can.

On Wednesday, February 4, 2009 I was pleased to read this story on the home page of The New York Times:

ROME - Responding to an extraordinary burst of global outrage, especially in Pope Benedict XVI's native Germany, the Vatican for the first time on Wednesday called on a recently rehabilitated bishop to take back his statements denying the Holocaust.

As well as:

In a statement issued Wednesday, the Vatican Secretariat of State said that Bishop Williamson "must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah," or Holocaust, or else he would not be allowed to serve as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church.

As I reported previously about the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X ("SSPX"), their reason for existence is clearly reactionary:

Founded in 1970 by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, they are not only anti-Enlightenment but they are openly contemptuous of the necessary (and unfinished) changes of Vatican II.

The group broke with Rome in 1988 after Lefebvre ordained four new bishops in defiance of Rome's orders. The Vatican responded to by excommunicating Archbishop Lefebvre and the bishops he ordained.

Why would the Pope want to reach out to these folks? Simple, this is a pontiff obsessed with supposed schemes of secular moral relativism and nihilism. Quite possibly in an effort to buttress socially conservative support within the Church, he moved towards the reconciliation with this group of traditionalist renegades (No such outreach to a more loyal group such as Call to Action. But faced with outrage from Catholics far and wide, the Pope made certain that SSPX - specifically Williamson - to take back any statements he made denying the Holocaust.

Friends, this is precisely why we speak out. No, we don't win every battle, but we are starting to win a few - something worth considering since our movement is only now starting to coalesce. And no, we did not do this on our own. There were governments and religious leaders whose voices, added to ours' forced this change.

And yet all the same, it proves that we do - and will - make a difference.