Can a Catholic priest who dwells in the demonic dungeon of holocaust denial be considered a “great Scriptural scholar?” One might as well ask if Josef Mengele, dubbed the “angel of death” by his Auschwitz victims, should be honored as a “distinguished medical professional.”

Inexplicably, three of Britain’s top Catholic influencers are persuaded that Fr. James Mawdsley, a radical historical revisionist who calls the Shoah “the biggest lie in history,” deserves to be canonized as the patron saint of biblical scholarship.

The accolade heaped on the Holocaust denier has attracted media attention mostly because Dr. Gavin Ashenden, the best-known member of the triumvirate, is a media pundit, celebrity Catholic convert, and a former chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II.

Along with his colleagues Mark Lambert and Katherine Bennett, the trio host the Catholic Unscripted podcast — a show favored by traditionalist Catholics who love the Latin Mass, hate the late Pope Francis, and despise Vatican II for expunging the prayer for the “perfidious” Jews from the Good Friday liturgy.

If you are a Jew who sings with John Lennon “Imagine there’s no antisemitism (in the Catholic Church), It’s easy if you try,” just spend an hour scouring traditionalist Catholic websites. Alternatively, take the “Candace Owens Crash Course in Jew-Hating” and ask why Owens’ antisemitism coincides with her conversion to traditionalist Catholicism.

This year, Rome is celebrating the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the Vatican II document that, in an epochal U-turn, turned the Jew “from enemy to brother,” using the Latin superlative carissimi to describe the Jews as “beloved by God.” Paradoxically, this is triggering a meltdown among Catholics who believe in the “myth of magisterial continuity.”

Astutely anticipating the annual ritual of traditionalist Catholics bemoaning the Vatican’s alleged capitulation to the “Jewish lobby” in amending the prayer for the “perfidious” Jews, Catholic Unscripted hosted the arch-antisemite, Fr. Mawdsley, just before Passover and Holy Week to discuss the Good Friday liturgical changes.

Mawdsley began his maledictions almost as soon as his host Bennett flagged off the interview: “I think that the Jews have basically infiltrated the church, destroyed her liturgy, her dogma, her morals, and unless we call that out and overcome that and be honest about the governance in our Catholic faith then things are only going to get worse.”

Jews like Nahum Goldmann, then head of the World Jewish Congress, had a “Talmudic element” whose goal was to........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)