Alumnus Says Anti semitism Ruled Sspx Seminary, Rick Hellman, The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, April 2, 2010

Alumnus Says Anti-semitism Ruled Sspx Seminary

By Rick Hellman
The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle
April 2, 2010

http://www.kcjc.com/201004029172/news/alumnus-says-anti-semitism-ruled-sspx-seminary.html

J. Christopher Pryor attended the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minn., in the early 1990s, while it was under the rectorship of Bishop Richard N. Williamson.

About a year ago, Pope Benedict XVI found himself in hot water when Richard N. Williamson — one of the four schismatic bishops whose ban of excommunication he had just lifted — made worldwide headlines when a Swiss TV program aired a recent interview in which Williamson denied the Holocaust. At most, he said, the Nazis killed 300,000 Jews; none by gas.

The Pope then took the unusual step of publicizing a letter he wrote to bishops worldwide, explaining why he had tried to welcome the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X, or SSPX, back “to full communion with the Pope — to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

The Pope, in essence, pleaded ecclesiastical ignorance of Williamson’s anti-Semitism.

The United States District Headquarters of SSPX — the Regina Coeli, or “Queen of Heaven,” House — is located in the Kansas City area, near the small town of Farley, Mo., north of the river.

“I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on,” Benedict wrote. “I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See will have to pay greater attention to that source of news.”

Many Jewish leaders — including some who met with the Pope at the time — were skeptical. Many sources of information were available about Bishop Williamson’s promulgation of anti-Semitic beliefs.

Inside the seminary

Now J. Christopher Pryor, an Overland Park, Kan., attorney, has written an expose of his time as a student in Bishop Williamson’s American seminary, charging that anti-Semitism was and is “a key component of his dangerous worldview” and that it is “both shocking and dangerous because it masquerades as part of the Roman Catholic faith.”

In an article titled “Traditional Catholicism and the Teachings of Bishop Richard Williamson,” published late last year in the second issue of the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism (jsantisemitism.org), Pryor tells of his year and a half of study at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Winona, Minn., in 1992 and ’93.

Pryor says in his journal article that the Traditional Catholic movement, “having been primed by Bishop Williamson’s teaching, … is a prime target for subversive and radical organizations that promote the practical application of Williamson’s philosophical ideology.”

He calls on Jews to undertake “an intensive education effort … to alert members to this possible shift in the anti-Semitic threat.”

Jewish-defense organizations see things similarly. The Anti-Defamation League issued a report Jan. 26, 2009, stating “The Society of St. Pius X is mired in anti-Semitism, which it disseminates through its Web sites and publications.”

Exposing what he sees as the errors of Williamson and fellow travelers has become Pryor’s obsession. A banner on the home page of his personal blog, christopherpryor.blogspot.com, notes “This site is dedicated to the study of anti-Semitism and neo-fascism.”

Pryor, who grew up in New York and is now 37, tells in his 19-page journal article how he wound up in Williamson’s classroom. His father was dismayed by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, particularly its elimination of the Latin Mass, and so the family began attending SSPX chapels, where Mass is still conducted in Latin.

What is SSPX?

SSPX was founded in 1970 by French-born Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in direct reaction to Vatican II, whose actions included the Nostra Aetate declaration of respect for Jews and other non-Christians.

SSPX’s world headquarters (and original seminary) is in Switzerland. It has its U.S. headquarters and several affiliated institutions in the Kansas City area. (See below for details)

Bishop Richard N. Williamson

As a teen, Pryor writes, he became attached to Traditional Catholicism, and he entered the SSPX’s American seminary after high school. However, once he arrived in Minnesota, he found “the spirit of the seminary … was totally different than the simple Catholicism I had grown up with. The source of the peculiar orientation and ideology permeating the intellectual and spiritual life was the rector of the seminary, Bishop Richard N. Williamson.”

Williamson, Pryor writes, “directed us toward the ocean of politically subversive literature common among radicalized political conservatives.”

“Against a backdrop of the ‘International Jewish Banking Conspiracy Theory’ paraded anti-government paranoia, doomsday propaganda, and an unending plethora of anti-establishment diatribes, all designed to discredit the ‘official story’ of every major historical event and every noteworthy figure of the past five centuries.”

Williamson’s anti-Semitism was pervasive at the seminary, Pryor writes. On Pryor’s first day as a student, Williamson gave a discourse on how “Catholics had lost their faith and virtue, bringing about the disorder of world domination by the Jews.”

“So it was that, sitting in our first class on the first day of our formation to the Catholic Priesthood, we were already being indoctrinated by the rector’s anti-Semitism.”

The promulgation of conspiracy theories, including Holocaust denial, continued unchallenged — and reinforced by outside guest speakers — until Pryor left the seminary a year and a half later. Williamson was rector from approximately 1983 to 2003.

Pryor asks in his journal article “Why was everyone silent?” He concludes that some “simple-minded” seminarians believed Williamson’s theories immediately. “Others were certainly extremists themselves,” he writes. And others, if they questioned the rector, tended to write it off as eccentricity.

Broaden the focus

Pryor’s article also outlines the connections between SSPX and European neo-fascism and warns that Jewish defense groups must “broaden the focus with which (they) search for evidence of anti-Semitism. Instead of just looking for evidence of hatred of Jews, they must look for erroneous political and historical opinions concerning Jews and Israel.”

“(W)ith the spread of the new anti-Semitism, there is a trend away from radical, overt, and hate-filled expressions of anti-Semitism,” he writes. “The new threat is from false indoctrination that strives … to take ordinary, caring people and turn them into political agents and anti-Semites in the name of defending their religion that they believe is at risk of attack by the Jews.”

Pryor recommends that Jews fight back, rhetorically and legally.

“If there is to be an organized opposition to the neo-fascists and conspiracy theorists, it must begin with the victims of the slander. Jews and other targeted organizations must confront their detractors.”

After reading Pryor’s article, Marvin Szneler, executive director of Kansas City’s Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee, praised him as “courageous” and “someone who really gets the issue of anti-Semitism.”

Are there radicals in your parish?

As to the question of how much Bishop Williamson’s anti-Semitism infects the overall SSPX enterprise, Pryor is far more equivocal than ADL.

“Does every priest teach anti-Semitism? No,” Pryor said in a recent interview. “But there’s a flavor of it. You couldn’t put your kid in one of their schools, or consistently attend their chapels, and not run into anti-Semitism. It’s not as blatant as a Nazi banner displayed across the hall, but you would hear it discussed in conversation, and see it in books that are sold.”

Pryor wrote a blog post March 13 titled “Are there radicals in your parish?” saying in part: “The SSPX’s statutes and theological positions do not touch upon Fascism and Antisemitism. But there is an undercurrent among many of the faithful and priests that tends in that direction. This undercurrent has been exacerbated by thirty years of indoctrination from Bishop Williamson.”

And in his journal article, Pryor writes that “Twenty years ago, I knew most Traditional Catholics in the United States as typical, conservative, flag-waving Americans. Today, because they have been so taught by their Bishop and his priests, they believe that a small group of Jewish bankers runs the world, and that the U.S. government is a tool of Israel. Many believe that the Holocaust did not occur …”

SSPX’s local institutions

The United States District Headquarters of SSPX -- the Regina Coeli, or “Queen of Heaven,” House -- is located in the Kansas City area, near the small town of Farley, Mo., north of the river. According to its monthly bulletin, there was a ceremony earlier this month, consecrating the relatively new building “to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

SSPX also has a priory, or priests’ quarters, and its Angelus publishing house headquarters in Kansas City, Mo. Both are located near the St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church and School, 3106 Flora Ave., which is affiliated with SSPX.