A TEACHABLE MOMENT FOR BOTH SIDES:

Jews Tell Vatican: Holocaust Denial Is A Crime: `Today we strongly reaffirmed that the denial of the Shoah is not an opinion, but a crime`, said Richard Prasquier, president of CRIF. (Javno, 2/09/09)

World Jewish leaders told Vatican officials that denying the Holocaust was "not an opinion but a crime" when they met on Monday to discuss a bishop they accuse of being anti-Semitic.

The meetings, the first since the controversy over Bishop Richard Williamson, who denies the extent of the Holocaust, began last month, took place three days before Pope Benedict is due to address a group of American Jewish leaders. [...]

"Today we strongly reaffirmed that the denial of the Shoah is not an opinion, but a crime," said Richard Prasquier, president of the French Jewish umbrella organisation CRIF, using the Hebrew word for Holocaust.

Prasquier and Maram Stern, deputy secretary of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), held talks with Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Vatican office that handles religious relations with Jews.

"We want the Vatican to realise that by accommodating anti-Semites like Williamson, the achievements of four decades of Catholic-Jewish dialogue ... will be put into doubt," WJC President Ronald Lauder said in a statement.

"We now believe that our message has been understood. The controversial debate of the past three weeks has had a positive impact," said Lauder, who did not attend the meetings.

While this kerfuffle exposed an anti-Semitic problem on the Church's fringe, the continuing vile insistence that Pope Pius aided the Holocaust plagues the mainstream. But no one is held comparably accountable for Christophobia. How about Benedict cracks down on his kooks and Jewish leaders call out bastions of the latter slander, like The New Republic?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 9, 2009 12:42 PM