Red Carpet Treatment – or the Lack Thereof

By Terry of Abbey-Roads

We're pleased to introduce a new addition to our stellar collection of guest contributors: Terry Nelson of Abbey-Roads. I've admired Terry's writing for a long time, and I'm very happy he's agreed to do some pieces for us. Enjoy him here, and be sure to check him out at Abbey-Roads.

With that title I’ll bet you think this post will be a critique of Sunday’s Oscars and the Red Carpet style and etiquette of the stars and starinas of the movie industry. But it is not.

Rather, this post is about a Bishop, sporting a baseball cap and shades, being spirited out of Argentina in reverse Odessa File style – a thriller which would play rather well as a comedy, perhaps starring Steve Martin, as the pathetic Bishop Richard Williamson of the SSPX.

Yes, the Argentine government expelled Bishop Williamson from the fabled South American hide-away of Nazi war criminals. Reason? The Bishop failed to notify Argentine immigration of his change in status at the seminary where he had been positioned, a crime of negligence against their immigration laws. In addition, the Government was not very appreciative of Williamson’s denial that the Nazi Holocaust ever existed – such sentiments were a bit too retrospect for a country which became a refuge for former Nazis such as Mengele and Eichmann after WWII.

Today’s expulsion was anything but red carpet treatment, and the dogged Bishop was anything but dignified as he scurried through Buenos Aires’ Ezeiza international airport to board his flight to London – where I doubt a red carpet reception awaited him. The Bishop tussled with a journalist, raising a threatening fist, shouldering the man into a support column, and as the Bishop sped away, his security people restrained the reporter. How Gestapo is that?

Williamson isn’t alone in his thinking, I assure you. Of course not all trads and sedes are holocaust deniers… or are they? I wouldn’t know. However, I do know a couple of men who left the SSPX in Winona, where Williamson once taught, who share the man’s racist views. On the other hand, I know others – Catholics in union with Rome - who insist the Jews brought the holocaust upon themselves (they say the Jews controlled the media and contributed to the decline in traditional morality – no, I’m not quoting Mel Gibson). They also have told me not a few wealthy Jews funded the extermination. Anti-Semitism is real and increases in popularity when the economy tanks, although some will defend themselves by saying they are simply anti-Zionist. There is a difference.

Still, I can’t help but wonder about the conversation if these types all got together:

Sr. Immaculata: “Well your Excellency, you know the Jews brought the holocaust upon themselves and the Rothschild’s paid for it.”

Bishop Williamson: “My dear reverend Schwester Immaculata, that is impossible! Nein! There never was a holocaust! They all moved to Manhattan.” (Canned laughter)

(I know – bad joke – and I can’t remember who the author is. I also ought to clarify; Bishop Williamson is actually a British subject.)

So anyway. I wonder if The Bishop will end up floating around the world, looking for asylum as did the Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis on the ship St. Louis, just before the start of WWII. Wouldn’t that be ironic? That said, I really do not believe it is a crime to deny the holocaust nor to blame the victims for the crime; neither is it a crime, much less a sin, to condemn such lies and the bigots who propagate them in the name Christ and His Church.

Links:
“Holocaust-denying bishop scuffles with reporter”

“What’s the true story on South American Nazis?”

“Voyage of the Damned: Jewish refugees aboard the SS St Louis”