The sad, sinister and silly figure of Bishop Richard Williamson is back in Britain, having been expelled from Argentina. Traditionalist Catholics - including those in the Society of St Pius X - should turn away from him, as they would from a ranting loony on the top of a bus.
Oh, to be sure, Williamson is a bishop: that has never been in dispute. He is also now no longer technically excommunicated. But he is a suspended bishop, a suspended priest, as are all the clergy of the SSPX. Rome failed to make this clear before lifting his excommunication. (Actually, it failed to make anything clear.)
Williamson's presence in this country should deeply embarrass British members of the SSPX, for it was on their society's behalf that Benedict XVI made his controversial decision. The Pope wishes to see the followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre back in the fold, and he knew that the excommunications were a barrier to reunion.
His magnanimous gesture was handled with extreme incompetence by the Vatican. But this we know, and now it is time for the Church to move on from this sorry episode. That can only happen if all traditionalists loyal to Rome shun Richard Williamson. I'll be keeping a close eye on the SSPX in this country, to see whether (as I suspect) some of their nastier members form a Williamson fan club.
This is a truly appalling man. I realised this last year, when - in a fruitless attempt to warn the Vatican what he was like - I commissioned a front-page exposé of his poisonous anti-Semitism in The Catholic Herald. Like most Holocaust deniers, Williamson has a soft spot for the Third Reich: that much is clear from his pathetic diatribe against The Sound of Music, of all films, for painting the German authorities in an unsympathetic light. He also thinks 9/11 was an inside job.
The SSPX has know for many years that one of its four bishops was a Far Right conspiracy theorist. It was irritated by him, it pushed him to the margins – but it allowed him to continue exercising episcopal ministry in the Society. That is a scandal that its leader, the arrogant Bishop Bernard Fellay, has never got round to addressing.
Williamson has done more to damage the conservative reforms of this pontificate than any other person alive. That is why the faces of Catholic liberals light up at the mention of his name. They are using the Williamson affair to sabotage Summorum Pontificum - with some success, it must be said. Catholic bishops in this country have employed this cheap tactic.
No one who supports the Holy Father should have any dealings with Richard Williamson. If he wants a congregation, let him set up his soapbox at Speakers' Corner and gibber about Jews and Freemasons alongside all the other nutjobs. I personally volunteer to heckle him.
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