The Pope's Dilemma

In politics, if a story runs continuously for three or more days, it has legs. If it's a bad story then whatever you've done to kill it has failed and it gains an independent life as it's released into the ether where it freely metastasizes.

Right now, Pope Benedict has such a story on his hands in the case of his recent revocation of the excommunication of Richard Williamson, a priest who went rogue long ago.

If you were the Pope's political consultant in this, the City of Man, what would you advise him to do in this now decidedly public matter?

If you're worth your salt, you have to be brutally honest with him in devising a public strategy. You can't b an ego cozy or adoring sycophant trying to protect him from or denying the relevance of public criticism. You have to help him understand the criticism and figure out how to most effectively absorb and then deal with it. You must be able to look in the eye and say: "On this matter, Your Holiness, you have not spoken ex cathedra, but ex ignorare.

Oh, and don't forget that just as it is with presidents, governors and mayors, a staunch cadre of loyal insiders are ever present and dedicated to protecting their own interests ad power in their relationship with the Boss. This means they will do anything to discredit you, the outsider, who doesn't understand the way things really work and who doesn't understand that they are different from everyone else.

Your Brief:

1. Richard Williamson, and Englishman and current resident of Argentina, is a 1971 Roman Catholic convert from Anglicanism who was ordained a Catholic priest in 1976. In 1988, he was excommunicated because he represented himself as a bishop in direct and willful contravention of a papal edict against it. He was excommunicated for violation of Canon Law for that act. This excommunication has now been reversed.

2. Much of the world has the impression that Williamson was excommunicated for his Holocaust denials and an additional string of ultra right-wing ideological pronouncements. This impression has complicated the public reaction to the revocation of the excommunication because it seems to them he had been cut off from the Church for those actions, not a procedural canonical violation. It, therefore, seems to the public that he has been fortiven his Holocaust denials and asociated views.

3. Among his publicly pronounced and recorded views are these samples:

• During a 1989 speaking tour of Canada he stated that Jews, the "enemies of Christ," fabricated the Holocaust as part of a Zionist scheme to found the state of Israel.
• He called the claim that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime another fabrication and stated that no Jews were gassed to death in concentration camps. He gussied up this claim by saying that "no more than 200,000-300,000 died in the camps and that none of these were gassed." Somehow, murdering only 300,000 Jews by means other than asphyxiation was OK?
• He blamed Israel for the 1991 Gulf War and called it another consequence of their "false Messianic vocation of Jewish world domination."
• He condemned the film, "The Sound of Music," for "putting friendliness and fun ahead of authority and rules," which is to say ahead of the authority and rules of Nazism!
• Since "modern man does not want women to do what God wants them to do, namely have children, she takes her revenge by invading all kinds of things God intended only men to do." For example, women should not attend universities or seek formal education of any kind, and "if you want to stop abortion, do it by example. Women should never wear trousers or shorts."
• Women make poorly focused and incompetent lawyers because before going into court they would look in a mirror to check their hair and, if they did not do so, they would make poorly focused and incompetent women. Williamson holds in common with Islamic terrorists' views on the primacy of God in civic matters, misogynistic views of women, irrational resistance to "modernity" as if it could be prevented by opposing it, and virulent anti-Semitism.

4. You are a German pope and greater sensitivity to the Holocaust is particularly expected of you, who have been forgiven for serving in the Hitler Youth because you were conscripted into it as a boy. You are the first German pope in 500 years and your action, on one hand, and lack of action, on the other, has caused the most horrific response among not just the worldwide Jewish community and concerned Catholics everywhere but, in particular, among the citizens of your homeland. Germany's Chancellor Merkel has rebuked your lifting of Williamson's excommunication, saying that the Vatican has "given the impression that Holocaust denial might be tolerated." As you know, Germany is the only country in the world where it is a civil crime to deny the Holocaust and, for that reason, a public prosecution of Richard Williamson for Holocaust denial is being prepared consequent to statements he made in Germany. Some theological historians hold the view that Williamson is "not a heretic, he's just a liar."

This may be canonically accurate, but in the City of Man, perception equals truth and you and counselors are on the wrong side of perception on this one. While the world prosecuted and denounced Nazis and their sympathizers for crimes against humanity, the Church seem stuck with a morally indefensible position wherein they excommunicate and then forgive a mere violation of Church law but seem unaware of the big picture--crimes against humanity.