Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Le Figaro: poll shows most opposed to SSPX reconciliation

Approuvez-vous la décision de Benoît XVI de lever l’excommunication des évêques intégristes?

Le Pape a levé samedi l’excommunication de quatre evêques, frappés par cette sentence depuis 1988. Parmi eux, Mgr Richard Williamson, qui s’est notamment illustré par des propos négationnistes: il avait mis en doute l’existence des chambres à gaz dans les camps de concentration nazi. Le vote est clos. Vous êtes 13780 à y avoir participé.


13,780 votes were cast in this poll asking whether readers approved of the decision of the pope to lift the excommunications of what the French newspaper calls “the integrist bishops”. Perhaps intégriste is routinely used as a neutral term in French to denote Traditionalists in general and lacks the pejorative connotations it has in English, but Melancholicus somehow doubts it. In any case, the newspaper asks a leading question since Williamson’s denial of the historicity of the holocaust and the gas chambers is right in there.

43.3% of those who voted were in favour of the excommunications being lifted, but 56.6% were opposed, which, all things considered, is hardly a surprise.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The poll can hardly be taken seriously, as Le Figaro printed the bit about Bishop Williamson's historical views right above the Oui/Non options. I think we can safely assume that most readers did not know much about the SSPX apart from what the media had chosen to tell them, i.e. the Williamson controversy, so it's no surprise most of them hit "Non". Pretty slim majority all the same.

Regarding "intégriste" - I once met a French trad who attended what was then the Indult Mass. He used the term "traditionaliste" to refer to traditionalists like himself, and "intégriste" to refer to SSPXers. I haven't come accross the word in the few SSPX publications I've browsed through on visits to France, so I suspect it is slightly pejorative.