Word: church
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With pressure mounting after his controversial reconciliation with a breakaway church group, Pope Benedict XVI has ordered one of the bishops of the arch-traditionalist Lefebvrite movement to publicly retract his statements denying the Holocaust. The Vatican issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon saying the Pope had not been aware of the claims by Richard Williamson - one of four Lefebvrite bishops brought back into the fold late last month after 20 years of excommunication - that Nazi gas chambers didn't exist and no more than 300,000 Jews died in concentration camps...
...Bishop Williamson, in order to be admitted to the episcopal [bishop] functions of the Church, must in an absolutely unequivocal and public way distance himself from his positions regarding the Shoah," the statement said, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. (See pictures of Holocaust survivors sharing their memories...
Even Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was confronted with the issue when an elderly parishioner collapsed near him on Feb. 1, during a church service in the Australian capital Canberra. In what was a dream photo op for any politician, Mr Rudd was photographed carrying the parishioner out of the church and later urged residents to "pop in and check" on their neighbors in the extreme heat...
...issue of the Lefebvrites' recognition of Vatican II (interfaith dialogue, religious freedom, et al.). It will ultimately fall to these same Vatican offices shut out from the original decision to work out the details. It may turn out that the Pope has introduced into the already difficult work of Church unity a problem that simply cannot be resolved...
...Pope no doubt understands that too, and is simply praying that the process of reconciliation takes on a life of its own. But Benedict's momentous leap of faith runs a high risk of running head on into the realities of a modern Church and the powers of its ancient bureaucracy...