A blanket lifting of excommunications by the Pope has had the effect of bringing back into the Roman Catholic church a bishop who also happens to be a notorious Holocaust denier.

Richard Williamson, from Britain, was one of four bishops appointed more than 20 years ago by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was himself ousted from the Roman Catholic church for his refusal to accept ‘liberal’ reforms such as the abandoning of the Latin Mass.

Now Williamson is back in the club, in spite of the fact that he is a forthright Nazi apologist. According to the BBC:

Bishop Richard Williamson recently told Swedish TV: “I believe there were no gas chambers. I think that two to three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers.”

The Vatican has said that the four bishops – who also include two Frenchmen and one Argentinian – have agreed to accept current Catholic teachings and papal authority. And that’s enough to save them from everlasting torment. Aligning themselves with some of the greatest mass murderers in history isn’t a problem, it seems.

Clearly the Roman Catholic church will take anyone these days. Maybe it’s a reaction to their dwindling numbers.

One has to wonder about the morality and ethics of a sect where a willingness to accept dogma and the word of the boss is deemed far more important than, say, the truth. Or simple decency. Or, for that matter, morals.

The Roman Catholic church was always far too cozy with the Nazis. During the war, the Pope liked to send Hitler birthday greetings and there is plenty of evidence of colusion. After the war, the Vatican was implicated in helping leading Nazis to escape. But one would have hoped that they’d have got over their infatuation with (other) vicious totalitarian regimes. Not entirely, it seems.