HOLOCAUST DENYING BISHOP HAS BEEN ' SILENCED'

VATICAN CITY - An ultraconservative society recently rehabilitated by Pope Benedict XVI silenced one of its bishops Tuesday and distanced itself from his claim that no Jews were gassed during World War II.
Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, also asked for forgiveness from the pope for the "dramatic consequences" of Bishop Richard Williamson's comments.
The Vatican press office issued Bishop Fellay's statement as part of its own efforts to quell an outcry among Jews that Benedict had removed Bishop Williamson's 20-year-old excommunication, despite his views on the Holocaust.
Bishop Fellay said he has forbidden Bishop Williamson from speaking publicly about any historical or political questions and that his views "don't reflect in any way the position of the society." Bishop Fellay himself referred to the "genocide of Jews" by Nazis.
"We ask forgiveness of the supreme pontiff and all the men of good will for the dramatic consequences of this act," Bishop Fellay said.
Benedict rehabilitated Bishop Williamson, Bishop Fellay and two other members of the society last week as part of his efforts to bring the traditionalist society, which opposes many of the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, back into the Vatican's fold.
Bishops Williamson, Fellay and the two other bishops were excommunicated 20 years ago after they were consecrated by the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre without papal consent.
Jewish groups denounced Benedict for embracing Bishop Williamson, who denied during an interview broadcast last week on Swedish state TV that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. He said about 200,000 or 300,000 were killed.
The Vatican has stressed that removing the excommunication by no means implied the Vatican shared Bishop Williamson's views. But amid increasing outcry from Jewish groups, it intensified its defense of Benedict's record denouncing anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.
On Tuesday, Vatican Radio aired a lengthy program to mark Holocaust remembrance day, recalling Benedict's 2006 visit to Auschwitz, his 2005 visit to the main synagogue in Cologne, Germany, and other remarks in which he has denounced the "insane, racist ideology" that produced the Holocaust.
Video clips of those remarks were posted on Vatican links on the Holy See's new YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/vatican. Vatican Radio also ran an interview with an Auschwitz survivor.
On Monday, the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, ran a front-page article saying Bishop Williamson's views were "unacceptable" and violated church teaching.
The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants said the Vatican's attempts to reject Bishop Williamson's views were necessary but insufficient.
"At a minimum, the Vatican should now demand that Williamson repudiate his heinous views," said the group's vice president, Elan Steinberg.

AMERICAN CHURCHES HITTING HARD BY TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES

The nation's economic fallout has hit both the sacred and secular worlds of Central Florida. Many local churches now are struggling with the same money issues that confront businesses: budget crises, salary reductions and staff layoffs.

"We're facing what our members are facing in their companies and at work," said the Rev. David Loveless, pastor of Discovery Church in Orlando. Its four campuses serve about 4,000 members."We've probably cut $700,000 out of the budget this year," Loveless said.

Although his church has not missed any loan payments, it had to lay off about a dozen of its 75 paid staffers and recently instituted across-the-board pay cuts of 10 percent.

Loveless said some cuts could be reinstated if the economy improves, but he pledged to be the last person to return to his previous salary.Meanwhile, he has encouraged parishioners to keep giving in practical ways, such as gift cards from grocery and hardware stores, so they can continue to help those both inside and outside the church.

"One of the smartest things we can do is to give [despite] our need," Loveless said. "We're just trying to act contrarian to show we have faith in the future and demonstrate we believe God will take care of us."Although donations are down, Loveless and others have reported strong attendance as the economy spirals."Attendance is not the problem," said the Rev. Randolph Bracy Jr., pastor of New Covenant Baptist Church of Orlando. "That's the irony."The economy's impact on church finances mirrors a national trend. Many churches are facing the prospect of "needing a bailout," according to a year-end report by Cargill Associates Inc., a Christian fundraising development firm in Fort Worth, Texas.

Working closely with Catholic and Protestant churches -- both mainline and Evangelical -- across the United States in 2008, the firm monitored the financial effect of the economy on church giving."There's no question churches are feeling the pinch on a national level," said Pat Graham, president of Cargill Associates.Church members in needFor the first time in its 16-year history, New Covenant has not met its budget goal. Diminished collections caused the church to bring in $500,000 less than anticipated in 2008."We're in dire straits right now," said Bracy, pastor of the 2,000-member church. "I'm 64, and I've never seen anything like it."As a result, Bracy and other church leaders ordered several budget cuts, staff layoffs and a delay in expansion plans.The church's emergency and charitable funds have been focused more than ever on its own struggling members.

The Rev. Jon Dunwell said his Westwood Church in Orlando faces similar challenges.As lean times hit, Westwood started a directory for those in need. That way other congregation members could offer aid, from job leads to simply inviting folks to dinner so that cash-strapped parishioners wouldn't feel isolated.Some Westwood members also have offered to drive families to services, allowing out-of-work churchgoers to save on gas.

CHIEF RABBINATE CUTS TIES WITH VATICAN

Pope Benedict XVI insisted on Wednesday that he felt "full and indisputable solidarity" with Jews.
Benedict spoke days after his decision to revoke the excommunication of a bishop who says no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust provoked an outcry among Jews.
Benedict said Wednesday that he hoped the memory of the Holocaust would also serve as a warning against the "unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the hearts of men."
He spoke during a public audience at the Vatican.

The Vatican already distanced itself from comments by bishop Richard Williamson, who has denied that 6 million Jews were murdered during World War II. The Holy See said that removing the excommunication by no means implied the Vatican shared Williamson's views.
But on Tuesday the Chief Rabbinate of Israel broke off official ties with the Vatican indefinitely in protest over the Pope's decision to reinstate a known Holocaust denier.

The Chief Rabbinate also canceled a meeting scheduled for March 2-4 in Rome with the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.
In a letter to the commission's chairman, Cardinal Walter Casper, Chief Rabbinate Director-General Oded Weiner wrote that "without a public apology and recanting, it will be difficult to continue the dialogue."
According to a Chief Rabbinate source, the letter was leaked to the Israeli press before it was received by the Vatican, which might further complicate relations between the Chief Rabbinate and the Catholic Church.
Last week, in an attempt to heal a decades-old rift between the Church and a group of ultra-conservative breakaway group of clergymen, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of four bishops. The four Catholic bishops belong to the Society of Saint Pius, which opposed changes in Catholic doctrine made in the 1960s under the Second Vatican Council.
One of them is Britain's Bishop Richard Williamson, who is being investigated for Holocaust denial in Germany, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
In a recent interview with Swedish state television, Williamson denied the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.
"I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews died in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them in gas chambers," Williamson told the interviewer.
"The historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers," Williamson reportedly said.
He has also reportedly endorsed the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion and claimed that Jews are bent on world domination.
In a parallel development Tuesday, Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior general of the Society of Saint Pius, distanced himself from Williamson's comments.
Fellay said he has forbidden Williamson from speaking publicly about any historical or political questions and that his views "don't reflect in any way the position of the society."
"We ask forgiveness of the Supreme Pontiff and all the men of good will for the dramatic consequences of this act," Fellay said.
Haifa Chief Rabbi Shear Yishuv Cohen, chairman of the Rabbinate's commission, told The Jerusalem Post that he expected Williamson to publicly retract his statements before meetings could be renewed.
"I understand the Pope's efforts to bring about unity in the Church, but he should be aware that, indirectly, he hurt Jews. We expect him to do the best to repair the situation." Weiner's letter called Williamson's comments "odious" and "outrageous."
Rabbi David Rosen, Director of the American Jewish Committee's Department for Interreligious Affairs, and an advisory member of the Chief rabbinate's commission, said that the Pope's decision has created an atmosphere of "bad faith."
Rosen reckoned that the Pope's move to lift Williamson's excommunication, which was made public just days before International Holocaust Day, was made due to a lack of proper consultation.
"I tend to believe that the Pope simply was not informed about Williamson in advance and now he is in a very uncomfortable situation."
Rosen said that the Pope had a history of improper preparation, leading to large-scale blunders. He cited a speech made in Regensburg, Germany, in which he quoted a medieval emperor who called Islam "evil and inhuman," comments that sparked a wave of Islamic-led violence against Catholic churches around the world.
Rosen said that the Rabbinate expected the Pope to take tangible steps against Williamson.
"I don't think it is my place to tell the Church precisely what to do. But Williamson should be censured in some way or forced to retract his statements.
"Until that happens, we may be in contact with the Vatican on an individual level, but there will be no official meetings."

NO PLACE FOR CHILDREN IN RASHTRAPATHI BHAVAN

Our former President Abdul Kalaam would surely be shocked at this incidence as I am sure the present President Pratibha Patil when they will come to know about this. There is a protocol in which no kids are allowed in Rastrapati Bhawan in formal ceremonies and only those invited by names can enter. This restriction is for security reasons, but it seems security sometimes goes overboard.
Late Havildar Bahadur Singh Bohra was bestowed Ashoka Chakra posthumously. On Republic day the President bestowed the award to his widow 29 year old Shanti Bohra in front of the whole nation. Last September he lost his life while fighting with terrorists in Lawanz’s area in Jammu and Kashmir. He managed to kill three militants before succumbing to his injuries. He was awarded the country’s highest peacetime gallantry award “The Ashoka Chakra”.
But after being bestowed the award when his widow went to collect the award a few hours later at a ceremony in the Rastrapati Bhavan with her two daughters aged five and three, she was not allowed to enter with her daughters. Being an outsider and a stranger to the Capital she had no place where she could leave them. Despite repeatedly pleas she was not allowed to enter “The Rastrapati Bhavan” to receive her award along with her daughters.
There should be some arrangements at the President’s house where people who like Shanti are strangers in the city and have genuine problems can be accommodated. At least a widow with two baby daughters who has lost her husband fighting for the country deserves a little consideration.

HBO'S ' THE TRIALS OF TED HAGGARD' DETAILS THE PASTORS FALL

Ted Haggard liked and trusted Alexandra Pelosi. The once-powerful evangelical leader had become friendly with the HBO filmmaker when she was making a documentary about evangelicals in 2005, even taking Pelosi and her husband camping at one point and teaching them how to shoot rifles.

So when Pelosi called Haggard after he was ousted from his church following a gay sex scandal, he was delighted to hear from her. She visited frequently, often filming the disgraced pastor with her hand-held camera, footage she said she wouldn't use unless he was comfortable with it.
Haggard was less than thrilled a year later when Pelosi told him she had made a movie about his exile.
"We were enjoying our privacy," he said. "As the months were passing, we were increasingly able to go to Wal-Mart without being watched. So I told Alexandra that we were not going to be comfortable with it and that I was not happy because I thought she had violated her word."
Pelosi initially shelved the movie. But she was unrepentant about making it.
"As a friend, I wanted to tell his side of the story," she said. "I thought the media had done a disservice to Ted. Am I a vulture, am I a buzzard for showing up at his house and exploiting our friendship? I think anyone who invites Alexandra Pelosi from HBO to their house with a video camera should assume it will end up on HBO."
"The Trials of Ted ," which premieres Thursday on HBO, is the product of both fortuitous coincidence and the kind of guerrilla filmmaking that marks Pelosi's work. Her best-known documentary, "Journeys With George resulted from personal footage she took as she covered George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign as a producer for NBC. As with Haggard, Bush was taken aback to find his musings stitched together into a film.
It's an approach that may make traditionalists cringe, but the filmmaker, daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), stands behind her technique.
"I would rather beg for forgiveness than ask for permission," she said. "Because asking for permission, everyone is going to be on. That's why, even if people don't like Ted in this movie, you have to feel sorry for him, because he was genuine."

The 45-minute film offers an intimate if fragmentary look at Haggard's attempt to recover from the sex scandal that drove him from his Colorado Springs, Colo., church in 2006. His contrition takes on new resonance with allegations made this week by a former parishioner, who said Haggard performed a sex act in front of him when Haggard was still a pastor.
In a statement, Haggard expressed regret for having "an inappropriate relationship" with the man. HBO is adding a postscript to the documentary noting the latest development.
In an interview last week, Haggard said he has made significant progress in healing his marriage since his spectacular public downfall. After intensive counseling, the father of five children now sees himself as "a heterosexual with issues."
"I have an incredibly satisfying relationship with my wife, and I no longer have the compelling and obsessing thoughts attached to same-sex attraction that I used to," he said.
"I believe sexuality, at least for me, is confusing and complex," he added. "I really wanted to be a virtuous, wonderful man, but I had to fight hard to be a man of integrity."
Although Haggard was initially horrified by the idea of the documentary, he said he now views it as a bracing dose of honesty.
"There are so many human lessons in this," he said, including a very stark one about personal responsibility.
When Pelosi first met Haggard in 2005, she said she had no inkling of the secret harbored by the then-head of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, who had the ear of the president and commanded a huge following. She was floored when, shortly before her film "Friends of God" aired, Haggard admitted to "sexual immorality" involving a male prostitute and was forced to leave New Life Church, the 12,000-member congregation that he founded.
"I felt personally deceived," she said.
But Pelosi said she didn't think about doing a follow-up film, even when she learned during a visit to her sister in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 2007 that the onetime evangelical superstar was quietly living around the corner with his family, banished from Colorado.
Pelosi and her husband ended up going over to the Haggards' home for lunch, an encounter that stretched into nine hours of emotional recriminations and apologies.
"We were so desperate to be able to speak openly with somebody," Haggard said.
Pelosi said she left the visit "feeling like there were a lot of different sides to the story. It's not that simple."
She checked in with Haggard every time she was in Scottsdale to visit her family, intrigued by his efforts to cope with his abrupt fall from grace. Eventually, she pulled out her camera and began filming him, without explaining her plans for the footage.
Pelosi said she herself didn't know. Making a documentary about Haggard's turmoil seemed out of the question. He had agreed not to speak to the press as part of two legal contracts he had signed with the church, separation agreements that also barred him from Colorado or returning to his church.
"At the time, I was filming because it was so surreal to watch this man go from here to here," she said, holding her hands wide apart.
Haggard said he viewed her filming simply as "an ounce of comic relief" during a bleak time.
The scenes Pelosi captured were far from lighthearted: The onetime national figure leaving a job interview, hoping the prospective employer wouldn't Google him. Knocking on doors, trying to sell health insurance. Sitting alone in the desert, reading Scripture.
Early last year, Pelosi said she realized that material amounted to something. She put it together in an edit bay at HBO, called Haggard and told him she had made a film. The former pastor reacted angrily, and Pelosi quickly told him she would drop it.

But when she learned from news reports last June that the church had allowed Haggard to move back to Colorado Springs, she tried again. Haggard and his wife, Gayle, flew to New York to watch the film, expecting to say no.
Haggard said he found the documentary "incredibly embarrassing" but was surprisingly comfortable with it airing.
"There is nothing in the documentary that is pleasant for me personally, but philosophically I believe it's important for stories like this to be told," he said. "As I watched, I thought, 'I wished I would have seen a documentary like this before I got myself in trouble.' "
Haggard's wife and their children, ages 15 through 27, also signed off on it. But before it could air, Haggard had to get released from a final contract with the church that prevented him from speaking to the media. In December, New Life pastor Brady Boyd met with the Haggards and agreed to dissolve the agreement. But he is not pleased about the film.
"I told Ted I think it's premature to tell the story," Boyd said. "We still believe in redemption and restoration, and there's obviously been hurt. His family has been hurt, and our church family has been hurt. There's no way this has been healed in just two years. It's too big a wound."
Boyd, who said the church wasn't asked for its input in the film, said he's distressed that the congregation is portrayed as casting Haggard out. He said that the former pastor agreed to leave Colorado in the spirit of a "fresh start."
"I think the whole truth hasn't been told," he said.
Pelosi said she made numerous attempts to contact members of the church's board and never got a response.
For his part, Haggard said he's sorry if the film causes any of his former parishioners pain.
"I created the complex situation that they were in, and they all did the best they could," he said. "I love the people of New Life Church, and I am devoted to them to this day."