Hard times provide fertile ground for conspiracies and witch-hunts

SO the Vatican has rejected Bishop Richard Williamson’s carefully worded half-apology for his remarks about the Holocaust. About time, too. He only said sorry for the “distress caused” but there is no sign he has revised his view that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were a Jewish invention. Williamson hasn’t had a change of heart; that much is clear.

What was Rome thinking of when it lifted his excommunication then? It’s not as though his eccentric views about the Nazi death camps are out of character. Williamson has also written about Hitler “liberating” Germany from the control of Jewish money and preached that Protestants take their orders from the devil. He also believes that women going to university is “part of a whole massive onslaught on God’s Nature”.

To make matters worse, it’s not as though all this information wasn’t in the public domain before the Pope lifted his excommunication for being consecrated by the renegade archbishop, Marcel Lefebvre. But it was cock-up, not conspiracy: the Pope was apparently unaware of all of the facts. Besides, the Vatican points out, Williamson is still suspended from the ministry; being de-excommunicated is only one step towards reconciliation, apparently.