{"id":684,"date":"2009-02-04T16:52:55","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T16:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html"},"modified":"2009-02-04T16:52:55","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T16:52:55","slug":"the-fallability-of-papal-googl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html","title":{"rendered":"The Fallibility of Papal Googling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/imgs\/Pope_Internet.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Pope_Internet.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/128\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/02\/Pope_Internet-thumb-130x130-3160.jpg\" width=\"130\" height=\"130\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/a><\/span>The Vatican has changed course and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/05\/world\/europe\/05pope.html?hp\">declared today that Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson &#8220;must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah,&#8221; or Holocaust.<\/a><br \/>\nGood for Pope Benedict XI, admitting error that way.<br \/>\nOh, wait &#8212; that may be over-stating it.  The statement asserted that Willamson&#8217;s views were &#8220;unknown to the Holy Father at the time he revoked the excommunication.&#8221;<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20090204\/ap_on_re_eu\/eu_vatican_jews\">Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said<\/a> that while he took Benedict at his word that he didn&#8217;t know about Williamson&#8217;s views, a few keystrokes would have given the Vatican all it needed to know:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;If they Googled the name `Bishop Williamson,&#8217; they&#8217;d find out he was a Holocaust denier. This did not require advanced research at the Vatican Library or Oxford.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This raises a theological question: given <a href=\"http:\/\/www.catholic.com\/library\/Papal_Infallibility.asp\">the doctrine of Papal infallibility<\/a>, when is he allowed to admit error? My understanding is that Papal infallability only referred to his pronouncements on official doctrine, so in this case he could have simply said he&#8217;d made a mistake without causing a theological crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Vatican has changed course and declared today that Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson &#8220;must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah,&#8221; or Holocaust. Good for Pope Benedict XI, admitting error that way. Oh, wait &#8212; that may be over-stating it. The statement asserted that Willamson&#8217;s views were &#8220;unknown to the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Fallibility of Papal Googling - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Fallibility of Papal Googling - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Vatican has changed course and declared today that Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson &#8220;must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah,&#8221; or Holocaust. Good for Pope Benedict XI, admitting error that way. Oh, wait &#8212; that may be over-stating it. The statement asserted that Willamson&#8217;s views were &#8220;unknown to the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-04T16:52:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/02\/Pope_Internet-thumb-130x130-3160.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Fallibility of Papal Googling - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Fallibility of Papal Googling - Steven Waldman","og_description":"The Vatican has changed course and declared today that Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson &#8220;must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah,&#8221; or Holocaust. Good for Pope Benedict XI, admitting error that way. Oh, wait &#8212; that may be over-stating it. The statement asserted that Willamson&#8217;s views were &#8220;unknown to the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2009-02-04T16:52:55+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/02\/Pope_Internet-thumb-130x130-3160.jpg"}],"author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html","name":"The Fallibility of Papal Googling - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/02\/Pope_Internet-thumb-130x130-3160.jpg","datePublished":"2009-02-04T16:52:55+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-04T16:52:55+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/02\/Pope_Internet-thumb-130x130-3160.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/02\/Pope_Internet-thumb-130x130-3160.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/the-fallability-of-papal-googl.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Fallibility of Papal Googling"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}