A Stewpot of Loathing & Lies

To:-- Socialist Worker.Org

Re:-- A Screed by Eamonn McCann stewing up a pot of loathing and lies about Pope Benedict

I am a catholic AND a socialist, and I am not in the least dismayed by Pope Benedict's efforts to end a schism within the Church. I am, however, nauseated and angered by the garbage and spleen spewed out by putative "leftists" like Eamonn McCann in what is evidently a neurotic and obsessional hatred of the Church. Let's get a couple of things straight.

1. Benedict did not rehabilitate Williamson "despite his denial of the Holocaust" -- that is a blatant reportorial falsehood. He lifted a pre-existing excommunication (based on liturgical issues) against four bishops of the schismatic Society of St. Pius. The Pope did so without making inquiry into the personal political or historical opinions of any of the four. "Despite" is a lie.

2. I hadn't thought that the internal religious affairs of the Church were a matter of concern to socialists or anyone else who is not Catholic. But apparently the same crowd that raises howls of indignation at the Index or at the trial of Galileo, now wants the Roman Curia to go about making inquiry into who believes what about the cause of Katrina, or the causes and consequences of the genocide of European Jewry. Why stop there? Why not have the Pope inquire as to person's beliefs about the Armenian Holocaust (which Abe Foxman vehemently insisted was not a "holocaust"). Why not have the Roman Curia inquire as to who denies the English Holocaust of the Irish? The fact is that the Church is a big tent. People are in it or out of it based on limited credal matters of faith, not their personal opinons about a myriad of other topics.

3. I hadn't thought that some inane knee jerk incantation about so-called "holocaust denial" would have warranted reproduction in this forum. No small number of commentators, including Jews like Gilad Atmon, Norman Finklestein, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, have noted the cultivated metamorphosis of an historical tragedy into a theologico-political cult for the advancement of Zionist aims. "Holocaust" is not an historical description of anything, but a liturgical term lifted from the Old Testament referring to sacrifices of atonement (See e.g. Lev. 5:10; Mark 12:33) It has been converted into a label for a vast conjury of actual events the formed and coalesced into Nazi genocide against various groups. In that way a very complex matter is simplified into a spuriously singular "fact" which is then turned into a taboo used to hound and bludgeon people.

4. Banging the taboo against Williamson, the august and "liberal" New York Times shrieked that Williamson had the temerity to "deny that six million Jews died in Nazi gas chambers." Oh? Six million were gassed? Is this non-revisionism upwards? No one has ever claimed that six million Jews were gassed except the lynch mobs at the Times and, not doubt, Ellie Wiesel. Upping the ante, and banging the taboo against Benedict, the political hacks that call themselves a government in Germany lambasted the Pope as an "embarrassment" while -- always affirming The Holocaust -- they supported, applauded and stood 100% behind Israel's phosphorizing, DIME bombing, blasting, slaughter and starvation of Gaza. Who's the "embarrassment here" comrade Socialist Worker?

5. The revisionist studies Willamson relied on are, in my opinion, inaccurate. But if anyone thinks the issue is "simple" or "obvious" he or she should read what Raul Hilberg had to say about the difficulties in computing the numbers of fatalities and Justice Gray's opinion in Irving v. Lipstadt acknowledging the lack of "clear" and unimpeachable evidence of kiling gas chambers at Auschwitz. Whatever Williamson believes about this or any other matter is subject to debate on the merits; but debate on the merits is not what this is about.

6. What this is about is hatchet jobbing, and stirring up a demagogic stew of hate as is more than evident McCann's digression from "Holocaust Denial" to the Church's views about gays, to the coverups of the pedophilia scandal, to "abetting an onslaught on children" to abortion to the Pope's alleged insulting of other religions in the Regensburg Addresss. McCann has evidently not read the address (as I have) and would have no clue what Benedict was talking about if he did. Mc Cann is also unaware that the address was so "hateful" it inspired an unprecedented and very favorable conjoined inter-Muslim response. But the Pope's success in reaching out to the Muslim world, would embarrass McCann's screed. None of the issues he evokes are seriously discussed, they are just tossed into the fetid stew in the way of all inciters and rabble rousers.

This piece of crap does not belong on your site; and it is also time that people on the Left get past a knee jerk and obsessional hatred of the Catholic Church. Like any institution made of humans, the Church has done good things, stupid things and bad things. It is time for progressives and socialists to look for and at that part of the Church which is their ally and to read what Benedict has actually written to see the extent to which he is a very strong critic of the unjust system we live under.

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