Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú

The man now known across the world as the Holocaust-denying bishop has made a public statement expressing regret at having made comments denying the full extent of the Shoah because of the international outrage his comments triggered. Earlier this month, his controversial views. In the bishop's statement, published (and in English ), he uses the word "regret" but fails to acknowledge that his initial claims were wrong. His language is careful, but many will regard this latest statement as falling short of the repudiation that was called for by the Vatican. The full text is as follows:

"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."

"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.

"On Swedish television I gave only the opinion (...I believe"...I believe"...) of a non-historian, an opinion formed 20 years ago on the basis of evidence then available and rarely expressed in public since. However, the events of recent weeks and the advice of senior members of the Society of St. Pius X have persuaded me of my responsibility for much distress caused. To all souls that took honest scandal from what I said before God I apologise."

"As the Holy Father has said, every act of injust violence against one man hurts all mankind."

Update: Dr Stephen Smith MBE, Director and Founder of the Holocaust Centre, and chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, has responded bishop's statement: "If Bishop Williamson is sincere in his apology and - recognising the harm caused by his original statement - wishes to understand the truth that was the Holocaust, I invite him to visit us at the Holocaust Centre at any time, so that in future his views will be based on historical fact rather than 20 year old antisemitic myths."

Update: . The Pope's spokesman says the apology by Bishop Williamson falls short of fully recanting his holocaust denials.

I took this picture of Ian Paisley yesterday at the launch of the new edition of his history of the 1859 Revival. Dr Paisley is standing in the vestry of Martyrs' Memorial Free Presbyterian Church, where we had just finished recording a fascinating interview about the revival, which you can hear on Sunday morning. He's wearing a very striking tie that was painted, for the occasion of the book launch, by his daughter, the artist Rhonda Paisley.

Read the rest of this entry

Those churches and Christian groups who have challenged the homophobia of the Westboro Baptist Church are now facing calls from other Christians "to face up to their own discriminatory policies and behaviour." Accepting Evangelicals, Courage, the Network of Baptists Affirming Lesbian and Gay Christians, the Evangelical Fellowship for Lesbian & Gay Christians, and the Christian think-tank Ekklesia have joined their voices in a joint statement which questions the moral consistency of Christians who express outrage at the anti-gay rhetoric of the "godhatesfags" movement, while asserting what others may regard as another version of theologically-based homophobia. Read the full statement .

Read the rest of this entry

The Rev. , a , has been awarded the . The Niwano award is often said to be the Nobel Prize of the religious world. It is awarded by the Buddhist Niwano Peace Foundation and the accompanying prize-money amounts to more than £100,000. First presented in 1983, in 1997, the prize was awarded to the Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland. Other well-known winners include the Catholic theologian Hans Kung and Prince Hassan of Jordan. on the Christian Aid website.

Six UK Christian churches and organisations repudiating the actions of , the Kansas base for the . The Home Secretary has from the UK, following a performance of in Basingstoke.

Read the rest of this entry

On tomorrow's Sunday Sequence, I'll be talking to , pictured, a British evangelical Christian who founded an ex-gay ministry called Courage UK in 1988 and served as President of Exodus International Europe and on the board of Exodus International, the world's largest ex-gay ministry. Organisations like Exodus are motivated by the belief that same-sex relationships are sinful, and they encourage those with same-sex affections to seek counselling, therapy and pastoral support in order to remain celibate or begin heterosexual relationships.

Jeremy Marks's story is fascinating because, by the end of the 1990s, he became seriously concerned about the long-term effects of ex-gay ministries. "I came to understand that our approach was sowing isolation, loss of faith, broken marriages, and even attempted suicides. I knew I must change our ministry approach," he says. In 2000, in spite of from the evangelical community, Marks transformed into a gay-affirming evangelical ministry. He has issued to "my fellow Gay, Lesbian Bisexual and Trans-gendered people ... for my part in colluding with the religious right in the Western world." Today Courage UK serves gay and lesbian Christians "seeking a safe space to reconcile their faith and sexuality".

Read the rest of this entry

Alex Byrne, a philosopher at MIT, thinks those seeking "proofs" or "arguments" for God's existence have rather . After fairly summarizing the state of play in current philosophy of religion, with impressive succinctness, he concludes with this:

"If a persuasive argument for the existence of God is wanted, then philosophy has come up empty. The traditional arguments have much to teach us, but concentrating on them can disguise a simple but important point. As Anselm and Paley both recognized, the devout are not exactly holding their collective breath. For the most part, they do not believe that God exists on the basis of any argument. How they know that God exists, if they do, is itself unknown--the devout do not know that God exists in the way it is known that dinosaurs existed, or that there exist infinitely many prime numbers. The funny thing about arguments for the existence of God is that, if they succeed, they were never needed in the first place."

Over at Slugger, . Defending his controversial stance on climate change, the environment minister has compared himself to Galileo, another public figure "who stood against the conventional wisdom of the time and was regarded as a heretic, they wanted to prosecute him. When you talk about scientific consensus you have to bear in mind that as things change, as people discover things, as ideas are found and new information comes to light then sometimes people are left looking very foolish."

Galileo was of course, standing with the new science of his day, not against it. But Gonzo cheekily asks, "Didn't Galileo prove the Bible wrong on several counts?" If he did, it would come as a surprise to Galileo, who thought he was engaging in "Catholic" science and offered a reading of the Bible that harmonized with Copernican cosmology. , but they continue to be repeated. The historical record is clear on this much: Galileo was not anti-church, he was not anti-Bible, and he was not anti-God.

I confess that I'm not quite sure what to make of this, the latest Vatican attempt to rehabilitate the sacrament of reconciliation. A 95-year-old priest has been conducting a survey into the kinds of sins being confessed in churches and concludes that. I wonder if Fr Roberto Busa has considered the possibility that men and women simply confess in different ways.

Incidentally, , a distinguished Jesuit professor at the Gregorian University in Rome, will be remembered most for producing the an of the entire works of the Angelic Doctor.

A quick search in Fr Busa's index will reveal that Aquinas had some pretty odd views on the . Aquinas reiterates Aristotle's belief that "the female is a misbegotten male".

Thankfully, both philosophy and theology have made a considerable journey beyond that kind of claim -- at least as an unchallenged orthodoxy. Aquinas was a person (indeed, a man) of his time. Nevertheless, he said a great deal that continues to make sense. Not least this: "Beware of the person of one book."

It will come as a surprise to historians of science if it's shown that he was, since the great naturalist has whose detestation of slavery is an under-acknowledged motivation for his scientific work. According to in yesterday's Guardian, an MLA has suggested that Darwin was a "racist".

Mervyn Storey argues that Darwin's language in The Descent of Man would earn disapproval today. This is undoubtedly the case. Darwin certainly referred to Aboriginal people as "savages". There is also the language of "favoured race" in Origin of Species. But that language would not have raised an eyebrow in the nineteenth century; as always with historically placed language, we must be careful about extending our contemporary sensitivites to the past. Some of the language of the Bible would appear deeply objectionable by our contemporary lights.

The more serious question we should ask is whether Darwin, judged by the standards of his day, would have been considered a racist -- or, quite the opposite, as a campaigner, in his own way, for the abolition of slavery based on the conviction that all human beings have a common biological parentage.

That said, even if it were to be demonstrated that Darwin was -- even by the conventions of his day -- a racist, this conclusion may have consequences for our moral evaluation of Darwin as a man; it would contibute nothing to our evaluation of his work as science.

You may have imagined that I have fallen into a deep well with no wifi zone at the base. This is only partly true. I will have climbed into a hot spot by next week. Already, there is much to write about: I will leave the writing to you: what are the stories that have rattled, enraged, inspired or amused you this week? Was it the story of the Northern Ireland Environment minister who blocked an ad that invited the public to use less energy? Or the British home secretary's decision to exclude a Dutch MP from the UK because he described the Koran as a "fascist book"? Or are you currently trying to edit Titian's Wikipedia entry to re-write his lifespan? If Orwell were alive today, he'd have a field day with those three stories alone.

That's a slightly tabloid-style summary of the latest turn in the sage of Bishop Richard Williamson, . In a very rare move, Pope Benedict has, in essence, admitted that he made a mistake when he lifted the excommunication on the controversial bishop last month. The Vatican emphasizes that the 1988 excommunication was for an unrelated matter -- namely, the bishop's participation in his own unauthorized consecration against the explicit ruling of Pope John Paul II. Nevertheless, the international outrage occasioned by Pope Benedict's decision, in the light of the bishop's comments on the Holocaust, has forced this step-down by the Vatican.

We know now that Richard Williamson attended a garden party . This will come as no surprise to those journalists who have interviewed Irving, since Williamson's discussion of the Holocaust, still available on YouTube, amounts to little more than a rehearsal of the bogus arguments and flawed evidence presented by Irving.

Williamson says he values truth. But if he now "recants", will anyone believe that he has truly changed his mind, that he has revisited the evidence for the Holocaust and concluded, openly and honestly, that he was wrong?