JTA: Bishop Richard Williamson - a bizarre man and an apology denier

When is an apology not an apology? When it is a sick game. But that guy does not care.

Bishop Richard Williamson apologized today for nothing. He did not retract his Holocaust denial or his lifetime of antisemitic preaching and teaching. To an antisocial personality like Williamson everything is a game. To the rest of the world, it's a disgrace.

Here is who this bizarre man is according to an NPR report:

Williamson champions The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic forged document from the late 1800s that blames Jews for the problems in Russia at the time. He has called Jews the enemies of Christ and says that they, together with Freemasons, have contributed to the corruption of the Catholic Church.

Rizzo says Williamson expressed such opinions and ultra-orthodox views during spiritual conferences held on Thursday afternoons.

"He was always insisting that women should not wear pants, because that would be an occasion of sin, that women when married should be subjected to their husbands to such a degree — I'll never forget this — that if the wife misbehaves the husband should be willing to beat her," he said.

The 48-year-old priest says Williamson had bad things to say even about a 20th century icon of Catholic charity.

"He would criticize Mother Teresa for false facade of charity, saying, 'Oh yes, she may take care of the poor, but she is still a modernist. We shouldn't fall for her liberal tendencies,' " he said.

Rizzo also recalls that when Williamson taught sacred scriptures, he would often espouse conspiracy theories and attack the American government — a theme he would pick up in a 2007 lecture in London where he described the United States as a police state.

"And I hope none of you believe that 9/11 is what it was presented to be," Williamson said at the time. "Of course two towers came down, but it was absolutely for certain not two airplanes which brought down those two towers; they were professionally demolished by a series of demolition charges from top to bottom of the towers."

And here is his latest non-apology according to a JTA report and I just don't know why they gave it the misleading title that it bears...

Bishop apologizes for Holocaust remarks

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Bishop Richard Williamson apologized for making comments minimizing the Holocaust, but he did not recant them.

"The Holy Father and my Superior, Bishop Bernard Fellay, have requested that I reconsider the remarks I made on Swedish television four months ago, because their consequences have been so heavy," Williamson said in a statement published Thursday by the Zenit Catholic News Agency.

Pope Benedict XVI sparked a furor last month when he reinstated Williamson and three other excommunicated bishops, all members of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, just days after Williamson told Swedish TV that he believed "that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler." He said no more than a few hundred Jews died in Europe during World War II.

This week, Williamson expressed regret for making the remarks.

"Observing these consequences I can truthfully say that I regret having made such remarks, and that if I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the Church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under the Third Reich, I would not have made them," he said.

Williamson concluded, "To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said, before God I apologize. As the Holy Father has said, every act of injust violence against one man hurts all mankind."

The founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Survivors, Menachem Rosensaft, called Williamson's apology unacceptable, noting that the bishop expressed regret for voicing his opinion but did not disavow his views about the Holocaust.