Simon Wiesenthal Center Statement
Feb 17th, 2009 by Tom White
1-29-09 The Simon Wiesenthal Center today responded to Pope Benedict’s recent statement on Jews and Judaism, saying that “the Vatican’s actions must match its words,”.. Mark Weitzman, the Director of the Center’s Task Force on Hate and Terrorism, said that the statement “contained wonderful sentiments about the Pope’s feelings toward the Jewish people and their religion” but that these are still “directly contradicted by his actions in welcoming back into the Catholic Church a group that maintains an extremist theology of antisemitism despite Vatican II and a generation of Church teachings to the contrary.”
Weitzman, who was one of the American Jewish leaders who met with the Pope during his visit to the US last spring added that “any attempt to portray the statements of Bishop Richard Williamson, who has denied the Holocaust, as isolated and limited are contradicted by the statements on the website of the Society of Saint Pius X which claim that ‘Judaism is inimical to all nations in general, and in a special manner to Christian nations.”, and that “the unrepentant Jewish people are disposed by God to be a theological enemy, the status of this opposition must be universal, inevitable, and terrible.” Such overt antisemitism must be rejected, not welcomed back with open arms. Pope Benedict has often spoken movingly about his feelings toward the Jewish people – it is time that his actions match his words.”