The Pope Admits His Mistake!
Many Roman Catholics were shocked by the Pope’s decision to lift the excommunication of a Bishop Richard Williamson (a member of the ultra-traditionalist Society of St Pius X), who claims that the number of Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps was a small fraction of the six million generally believed to have perished, and denies that any were killed in the gas chambers. Following vociferous criticism from inside and outside the Church of Rome, the Vatican has ordered Williamson to recant his denial of the Holocaust. He has now apologised for causing controversy but has not withdrawn his views.
A senior cardinal at the Vatican has publicly admitted that the Vatican mishandled the issue. David Willey of the BBC, an authority on the workings of Rome, says that “it is almost unheard of for a pope to admit publicly that he has made a mistake. But that is, in effect, the significance of the urgent statement put out by the Vatican.”
In the minds of many people, Roman Catholics and others, the whole issue must surely put a question mark over papal authority. The Pope has not only blundered in re-instating Williamson but has subsequently failed to rein him in. Yet, according to the First Vatican Council, the Pope has “the whole fulness of supreme power, ordinary and immediate, over all and each of the parish priests and the faithful”.
The incident also highlights the preposterous and blasphemous nature of the further claim of Rome, articulated in, for example, an official Roman Catholic catechism that the pope “is the infallible ruler, the founder of dogmas, the author of and the judge of councils; the universal ruler of truth, the arbiter of the world, the supreme judge of heaven and earth, the judge of all, being judged by no one, God himself on earth”.
To the godly it is a wonderfully-encouraging truth that, in the face of such arrogant and oppressive claims, Christ ever continues to be “the head over all things to the Church” (Eph 1:22). It is their expectation that Christ shall yet exercise His royal prerogative and power (see 2 Th 2:3-10) in destroying the papacy, and in freeing multitudes from its bondage. NMR