Italian SSPX priest: Jews are the ‘people of deicide’

January 30, 2009

In an interview with an Italian newspaper yesterday, Father Floriano Abrahamowicz, spokesman for the Society of St. Pius X in northeastern Italy, called the Jews “the people of deicide.” Insisting that the Society is not anti-Semitic-- “it’s truly impossible,” he said, “for a Catholic Christian to be anti-Semitic”-- Father Abrahamowicz nonetheless came to the defense of Bishop Richard Williamson’s “imprudent” comments on the Holocaust. Father Abrahamowicz added that he does not know how many Jews died in the Holocaust and whether the gas chambers were used for purposes other than disinfection. The priest added, “If Bishop Williamson had gone on television to deny the genocide of 1.2 million Armenians by the Turks, I don’t think that all the newspapers would have talked about his statements in the same terms they’re using now. Who has ever talked about the Anglo-American genocide in the bombing of German cities? … And the Israelis certainly can’t tell me that the genocide they suffered from the Nazis is less serious than that of Gaza, simply because they’ve taken out a few thousand persons, while the Nazis took out six million. This is where I fault Judaism, which exasperates rather than honoring the victims of genocide decently. It’s as if there were only one genocide in history, that of the Jews during the Second World War.” The Jews, he added, are “the people of deicide.” In the 16th century, the Roman Catechism (the Catechism of the Council of Trent) taught that Catholics, more than Jews, are the authors of Christ’s Passion:

Besides, to increase the dignity of this mystery, Christ not only suffered for sinners, but even for those who were the very authors and ministers of all the torments He endured. Of this the Apostle reminds us in these words addressed to the Hebrews: Think diligently upon him that endured such opposition from sinners against himself; that you be not wearied, fainting in your minds. In this guilt are involved all those who fall frequently into sin; for, as our sins consigned Christ the Lord to the death of the cross, most certainly those who wallow in sin and iniquity crucify to themselves again the Son of God, as far as in them lies, and make a mockery of Him. This guilt seems more enormous in us than in the Jews, since according to the testimony of the same Apostle: If they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; while we, on the contrary, professing to know Him, yet denying Him by our actions, seem in some sort to lay violent hands on him.

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council taught, “Even though the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ (cf. John 19:6), neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during His Passion.”

 

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Further information:

• Italian Lefebvrite priest questions Holocaust (National Catholic Reporter)
• Roman Catechism
• Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate