Mistakes Were Made

Catholics have long been taught that the Pope is infallible. It thus comes as something of a surprise that Benedict XVIQVC has now admitted to having made "mistakes" in readmitting a previously excommunicated Bishop who has questioned whether the Holocaust ever happened.

This becomes even more confusing when you consider that by readmitting the guy to the fold, Benedict was essentially saying that John Paul II had made a mistake in 1988 when he excommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson in the first place. So either way you look at it, one of the two Popes failed.

Benedict now says that he was unaware of Williamson's background. Critics, on the other hand, point out that all kinds of information about the Bishop and his views on The Holocaust have been long available on the internet. Of course, checking that out would have required going online.

Perhaps the Vatican should finally get a phone line so it sign up for a really cheap dial-up service. An additional benefit would be that priests would find it easier to locate kiddy porn.

But enough with the cheap shots. What makes this story even more hilarious is that Richardson has been living in Argentina, a nation long rumored to be a haven for for ex-NAZI war criminals. But when word of the Bishop's anti-Semitic views got out, the Argentinian government kicked him out of the country.

Out of fairness, it's unclear if Williamson is really a Jew hating NAZI sympathizer. Technically, all he did was question the "historical accuracy" of the Holocaust. Apparently eyewitness accounts, photographs, concentration camps, tattooed arms, mass graves, and industrial size gas chambers aren't sufficient evidence in his mind.

Still, for someone who's so big on historical evidence, it's somewhat surprising that Williamson has no problem believing that that some guy once walked on water, turned water into wine, and rose from the dead.