I specifically remember a talk he gave in which he described the Jewish parents of a seminarian as “good people”. His parents were paying for his seminary tuition. If I happen across the link, I’ll send it to you.
So, I believe His Excellency when he says he feels no hatred towards Jews. I think he’s just very prone to conspiracy theories.
EDIT: Here’s the link.
stasaudio.org/samples/samples/doctrinal-2002%20(Anti-Modernist).mp3
The part about Jews being “good people” begins at about 7 minutes.
Thank you for this link, Dauphin! I thought it was very interesting to actually hear more from Bishop Williamson than the infamous few minutes on Swedish TV in which he denies the Holocaust.
So perhaps he isn’t a foaming-at-the-mouth “Jew-hater,” but then, Ahmadinejad has always claimed to like Jews on even days while on odd days he is calling for the destruction of Israel. So it’s hard to take a person at his own word. Still, you are right that we can’t see into his heart, and to say that Williamson “hates” Jews is perhaps a little strong. But that still doesn’t let him off the hook.
For me, the impression I get from this lecture is one of amazing
condescension. That seems to be the form anti-Semitism takes when it appears among Catholics. The Church has rarely expressed hatred for the Jews, but condescension? Absolutely. Starting with the otherwise wonderful St. Augustine, who said that Jews must be allowed to exist in our society if only so that we can see what a degraded state those who deny Christ end up in. From what I’ve read of SSPX websites – there was a good post from Chosen_people a few pages back – this is the animating spirit of their relationship to the Jews: Jews are sort of pathetic, they’re missing out on the Truth, they aren’t willing to admit that they “killed Christ,” etc. And, as Williamson says about modernists in this podcast, “sure, we need to love them, we need to pray for them, etc etc., but it’s a waste of time to argue with them…it’s not even worth the effort.”
So maybe this is an attitude Williamson holds towards
all “infidels” – not just the Jews, but liberals, modernists, non-Catholics, etc. And perhaps that means that anti-Semitism is, if not too
harsh a charge, too
narrow a charge to level against him. In other words, he is just a fairly arrogant person,
in general.
I mean, it shows – first of all, sure he says that these seminarian’s grandparents are good people (“despite being Jews”), yet he says so only to introduce a “buuuuut…” His insinuations are sort of nasty, don’t you think? He compares these two Jewish people (who in his mind may very well stand in for all people who have not accepted Christ) to the “stupid liberals” who think that 2+2=5 because it’s more “creative.” I don’t know about you, but I found his conflation of the grandparents’ Judaism with their modernism to really muddy things up…he seems to treat Judaism as just another lame falsehood that must be stamped out, rather than as the ancient, precisely
pre-modern faith tradition that it is.
His attitude is exactly the opposite of that of our beautiful modern Popes, who call the Jews our “elder siblings,” and who – rather than despairing of the possibility of reasoning with them – engage them in debates (the Rabbi whose ideas were discussed in the Holy Father’s Jesus book called it a “love letter” to him) and visit their synagogues and invite them to important Synods. The point is, the Popes treats non-believers as rational people whom it is WORTH talking to, both because they have intrinsic dignity
and because perhaps if they are rational they can eventually be led further towards the truth (as can we through dialogue with others, and with them). But Bishop Williamson explicitly says, “It is not worth it…just go home.” Implying, “keep the Church as small as possible. It is an in-club: only reasonable people who ‘get it’ are allowed.”
CONTINUED —>
