Finally, someone in the media did seek out Cardinal Castrillon, who does not mince his words in reply to the allegations made by the Bishop of Stockholm in the Sept. 23 Swedish TV broadcast. I can only translate what is now available online from SZ, and other interview excerpts posted in Italian translation on the blog Fides et Forma.
'None of us had the slightest idea'
The scandal over the FSSPX* shook the Catholic Church.
A key role was played by the traditionalist Cardinal Hoyos
who talks for the first time in this SZ interview.
*
The scandal was not about the FSSPX exactly but about Williamson.
He is for many people in the [Catholic] Church the bad boy: Dario Castrillon Hoyos, 80, a cardinal from Colombia, who was head of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei till he retired last July, and who had been responsible for the dialog with the traditionalist Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X.
He is considered
the main person responsible for the scandalaround the FSSPX Bishop Richard Williamson, whose excommunication Pope Benedict XVI lifted in January.
[He certainly has been named the scapegoat by people as diverse as Fr. Lombardi, Cardinal Kasper and Cardinal Re.]
Was it not incumbent upon Hoyos
[the correct surname is Castrillon; Hoyos is his mother's surname and comes after the paternal surname in Spanish] to know that before the Pope's merciful act Williamson had given an interview to Swedish TV in which he said Jews were not gassed by the Germans? Or that the British bishop had held these views for some time?
In an interview with SZ, Castrillon takes a stand:
SZ: You say that you were not aware of Williamson's interview. What would the Pope have done if he had known?
I cannot hypothesize what the Pope might have done. I can only relate what he knew when the revocation of the excommunications was made public. At that time, none of us had the slightest idea about what Bishop Williamson had said. None of us! And no one was duty-bound to know it.
Since 2000, the arch-conservative prelate has handled the Vatican's liaison with the FSSPX, but not about the traditionalists' objections to important points made by the Second Vatican Council. Castrillon's concern were the canon law questions.
Did the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre commit an act of schism when he consecrated four priests as bishops in 1988? And were these bishops, who were excommunicated [automatically by virtue of their illegal ordination] considered to have defected from the faith?
[The writer misrepresents the problem. The FSSPX keeping the faith was never questioned. The problem was the legitimacy of their episcopal ministry and the acts that come from that; and more fundamentally, to find a way to bring them back into full communion with Rome, as some of their splinter groups had done.]
Do you share the positions of the FSSPX?
They believe that they are defending the truth of holy Tradition and that no one can be excommunicated for that. That is understandable, even if I don't agree with their view, because it is undeniable that they had violated a fundamental rule of the Church [episcopal ordination without the approval of the Pope].
Rome has always explained it simply: The FSSPX had violated Church discipline [more correctly, canon law], However, the illegally ordained bishops are not considered heretics, but had strayed from Church discipline. For this reason, Rome could carry on a dialog with them.
And for this, they have in Joseph Ratzinger an advocate. In 2007, Benedict XVI rehabilitated the traditional Mass. Cardinal Castrillon was among the very first to celebrate the old rite [in London's Westminster Cathedral]. Meanwhile, the lifting of the excommunication was being pursued in secret. The decision which had been made and passed on to the FSSPX one week earlier was
made public on January 21.
[NO! The date of Cardinal Re's signature on the decree was January 21, but the Vatican did not make the announcement until Jan. 24].
This would have been nothing more than an internal Church event, had not Williamson in November 2008, attending a priestly ordination in Zaitzkofen near Regensburg, given the now infamous interview to Swedish TV.
The channel waited to broadcast the interview until January 2008 when the lifting of the excommunication was already fait accompli. Castrillon considers it a 'slip' that the Pope and he were compromised accordingly.
And yet, Williamson's position should have been known [at the Vatican] beforehand. The Bishop of Stockholm claims that at the end of November 2008, he had learned what Williamson said in the interview and had informed the Nuncio in Sweden, who presumably informed the Vatican Secretariat of State.
It is probable that the information was simply filed away since the Secretariat of State was not aware of what the Pope was planning to do about the Lefebvrians.
But Cardinal Castrillon also explains the more basic reason why Williamson's negationist position has nothing to do with the lifting of the excommunication which was a prescribed discipline for a specific violation of canon law.
Did you ever ask yourself whether your decisions could have any political consequences?
Lifting the excommunications is not a political matter at all. It was an act of mercy. It had to do with a pastoral-theological problem. Nothing at all with the Church being drawn into the political sphere. So I was not concerned with that at all. My work was not to judge a fellow bishop. That is for the Congregation for Bishops and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
But the Catholic Church has a position on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust...
The Church has always been fully clear in its rejection of the extreme act of violence that was done to the Jewish people. Such a racially-motivated genocide is an immoral crime against humanity.
Then why did you lift the excommunication of a Holocaust denier?
Williamson was excommunicated because of his illegal ordination, not because of his theories, judgments or statements about the Holocaust. To see it any other way is a gross German mistake.
The whole interview with the ex Curial Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos can be read in the Friday issue of SZ, Sept. 25, 2009. The interview was done by Camilo Jimenez.
Francesco Colafemmina provides more excerpts in Italian translation on his blog:
Castrillon says the Bishop of Stockholm
has spoken a 'calumny'
Translated from
Cardinal Castrillon has shown himself to be a real Cardinal, a man (unlike other homunculi) dressed in cardinal red to remind himself of the blood he must be ready to shed for the Church of Christ.
Above all, the Cardinal is not naive or ill-prepared, and despite his age (80), he has always been known to be an expert on software and computers (though he does not use it to send e-mail to journalists!).
Cardinal Castrillon spells out his positions [on the Williamson case and the second Swedish TV broadcast about it] in a lengthy interview with the Munich-based
Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
He bluntly calls the statements made by the Bishop of Stockholm, Anders Arborelius, as a 'calumny', adding, "Excuse me, but I find his statements very questionable because it is wrong... We archive all the documents we receive [at Ecclesia Dei] in digital form. Bishop Arborelius should say how, to whom, and when he communicated his information [about Williamson's Nov. 2009 TV interview], and if he did it in writing or orally."
As we have said before, one must seek responsible parties in the office that is responsible for relations with the Apostolic Nuncios: the First Section for General Affairs in the Secretariat of State.
[This was and is under Mons. Fernando Filoni, who, Andrea Tornielli says, was among those who met at the Secretariat of State after the first Swedish TV broadcast in January and before the decree lifting the excommunications was made public. Tornielli says that the Williamson interview was never even brought up at the meeting! Which is really unnatural since everyone was buzzing over it.
And is it really conceivable that if Mons. Filoni had indeed received information about it as far back as November, he would have kept silent at this post-broadcast meeting? Normal fallible human beings who are not men of the cloth would most likely just shut up, but a man of the cloth is supposed to be more upright than the rest of us.
But let us give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that if the Nuncio in Sweden had indeed forwarded Arborelius's information to the Secretariat of State, whoever received it never passed it on to Filoni. If the Nuncio in Sweden did send up the report, did he ever follow up to find out what action was taken, especially if no one acknowledged getting the report?]
In what drawer of which office did Arborelius's report on Williamson end up?
Castrillon says, when asked about his relations with Benedict XVI.
"We always worked very closely together. The Pope is an excellent theologian, a champion of the faith, and a friend who has always shown his trust in me."
Castrillon's interview is not available in full on the site of the newspaper. But thanks to a reader, we have been able to translate most of the interview which essentially makes clear the position that the Church of Christ must take on this issue.
You knew nothing about Williamson's negationist statements in 2009?
I knew that he had been interviewed when he ordained a deacon last year. But I did not know what he said until February 5, when the Nunciature sent me the information in a sealed envelope.
But the Bishop of Stockholm, Anders Arborelius, says he informed the Nunciature in Stockholm back in November 2008...
I truly deplore this statement, which cannot be taken seriously, because it is false. It is a calumny to spread this kind of information.
We save all documents we receive in digital form. Bishop Arborelius should say how, to whom and when he furnished the information, and if he did so in writing or orally.
The magazine Der Spiegel reported the interview with Williamson in 2008. Did no one ever read it in the Vatican? [Let me check back, but I am almost sure that Spiegel only wrote about the interview on January 19, in the article that pre-announced the Swedish TV broadcast on July 21.]
It is possible that the German department in the Secretariat of State may have seen it. Not me.
Mons. Fellay, the Superior General of the FSSPX may have already known the contents of the interview with Williamson, if we go by the letter he sent SVT on January 21 seeking to stop the broadcast... [I was under the impression then that Mons. Fellay wrote the letter on the basis of what Der Spiegel printed, that is why he only wrote on the day of the broadcast itself.]
I know nothing about that.
Williamson says that he met you at lunch once...
That was when I had just been named president of Ecclesia Dei. And I had noticed a group of priests in full cassock although it was the height of summer. So I asked my secretary who they were. He said they were Lefebvrians. So I invited them to lunch.
What impression did you have?
That they were fine men, but sometimes a bit fixated on the idea that everything wrong with the world has its origin in the reforms of Vatican II. So I sought to lighten the mood, and jested that If I had to choose a language for the Mass, I would prefer Aramaic, the language Christ spoke, and that it beats me who could have had the terrible idea of replacing the language of Christ with that of his persecutors. They found it a terrible joke. After that meeting, there was some dialog with John Paul II, and then in August 2005, Mons. Fellay met with Benedict XVI.
Can you give us a description of Richard Williamson?
He is an honest man, in some ways eccentric. He is not foolish, but he is obsessive and stubborn.
An honest man?
Yes, he says what he thinks. He does not strike me as one who wants to deceive anyone. Rather, he is an uninhibited person who, however, has extreme positions. But, I think, with simple and honest conviction.
....
Cardinal Re [prefect of the Congregation for Bishops] has said he felt you deceived him...
As far as I know, he has never said that. But I know that he did say some indiscreet words about me to the media. So I wrote him a letter saying that if anyone should have known beforehand about Williamson's interview on the Holocaust, it would have been he. He worked for years in the Secretariat of State. In his present work, it is part of his task to monitor bishops.
Has this scandal changed your relationship with the Pope?
Yes, for the better! We have always worked closely together. And not just as the Vicar of Christ but as a first-class theologian and defender of the faith, he has always placed his trust in me. That has not changed.
Have you felt knocked up by the media?
I have had distinct experiences with the media, and now I am hardened to it. I have never asked them to correct themselves, because it is useless. Truth finds its own way. And the truth is what I have just said [in the interview].
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/09/2009 04:06]