Slow move from the right

It should come as no surprise that Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson is a member of the right-wing Society of St Pius X (SSPX).

Alas, the Church has always been quick to see and fear the “splinter” of communism on the left rather than the “beam” of racist fascism on the right. One has only to compare the cautious approach of the bishops to apartheid in their 1952 and 1957 letters on the subject, with their committed opposition to it in their pastoral plan issued on Pentecost Sunday 1989, 32 years later.

That’s how long it took Archbishop Denis Hurley and other vigorous opponents of the evil system to get the bishops finally to speak out. The irony of all this is that the Church flourished in communist Poland and is floundering now under the greed of rampant capitalism, far more materialistic than ever Marxism was.

That more than half of the followers of SSPX should be French was to be expected. An earlier version of the movement, Jansenism, flourished in 17th century France, with Port-Royal as its heart and soul. Its rebirth in that country is only a return to its roots.

Aideen Gonlag, St Michael’s-on-Sea, KZN