“... and I agree with the church on roughly half of its positions on such matters as war, abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment.”  Of those four abovementioned issues, I bet I can guess correctly with which “roughly half” he agrees.

Why the smarmy comment above?

I would think we would be well beyond the point where Vatican spokesmen would need to inform us that the Holocaust did, in fact, happen.

Unfortunately, we are not.

I think this says more about the “we” than the “Vatican”

#2 - because Mr. Prothero deserved it?

“I would think we would be well beyond the point where Vatican spokesmen would need to inform us that the Holocaust did, in fact, happen.”

The teachable moment here, is that the Holy Father has enemies in the Church who will collaborate with declared enemies of the Church, particularly in the media, to crucify Peter in the public square.
This man Prothero is fully the modern secularist; I don’t care what nominal religion he may belong to, he is an atheist in practice as he simply cannot see past modern leftish political sensibilities to realize that Benedict’s concern is to save souls. I doubt he even thinks such exist.

The question is whether the decision came about because the Pope was ill-advised.  His friend, Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, Archbishop of Vienna, has said so and has said that the Pope’s staff let him down badly by not doing enough background research.  This and other developments in the issue can be found in the Reuters round up at:
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/02/02/vaticansspx-the-fallout-continues/
In response to Tridentine Virginian above, sometimes, uncomfortably for us Catholics, secularists and the media speak the truth and help us to learn from our mistakes.  To say this is not incompatible with saving souls.  Perhaps to admit mistakes is even to advance to a certain kind of maturity.

I’m not sure I understand the wailing and gnashing of teeth here.  The bishops in question were not excommunicated because of their views on the Holocaust, so why should their reinstatement hinge on them?

I agree with Terry. We occasionally need the secular media to keep the Church honest. Unfortunately, there is such a closed mentality and tendency to “group think” that you do on occasion need an outside force to call the Church to account. Sad to say, but I don’t think the sexual abuse scandal and the various cover-ups by bishops in the RCC would have been exposed had the press not gotten involved and pursued the story. As painful as that has been, it is still a blessing that these sins were publicly uncovered and that the Church has finally had to deal with the whole ugly mess that it caused. Not to say that the media can’t get overzealous sometimes, but all in all, I’m glad they are there.

I think Prothero’s comments about evil are particularly illuminating and worth the article.

I think Rorate Caeli’s editorial sums up my feelings about this “teachable moment”:

Shame on you, “Liberal Catholics”, Pharisees of the “New Springtime”! You proclaim to tolerate all, and to respect diversity, but you loathe those whose only wish is to preserve the purity of what was always taught and of the prayers that were always offered, because their continued presence in the Church contradicts the new “house” you tried to build.

Shame on you, “Progressives”, official Scribes of the “Spirit of the Council”! You build monuments to the “Good Pope John”, but reject all that he stood for, in traditional doctrine and in liturgical beauty. You hail Paul VI, but have done all you could to ignore his greatest magisterial document, Humanae Vitae, and discredit him in the eyes of the world. You maligned John Paul II every single day of his pontificate, but now you praise him, for you have found your new scapegoat - Benedict XVI, a man who, as his last work on earth, has accepted the heavy burden of the Fisherman, trying to bring unity to the flock God entrusted him.

You crucify Peter in the global public square. You deliver him to the enemies of the Church of Christ. You hate him for his struggle to rehabilitate what the Church has always believed and the way the Church has always prayed. You persecute him for he removed the scarlet sign of “excommunication”, which you used to despise, but which you now view as good!

You hypocrites! You are accommodating towards abortionists and you pander to politicians dedicated to the culture of death - but you misrepresent Peter’s legitimate gesture of mercy as an act of uninformed weakness. Liberal serpents, pseudo-Conservative vipers, you are “witnesses against yourselves” for your relentless persecution of Peter. Yet, Peter will keep working for unity with charity, charity in Truth.

Those who love the Vicar of Christ will keep praying daily for him, so that he “will not flee for fear of the wolves”, so that he may persevere in the mission he set out to accomplish. What about you? “Your house shall be left to you, desolate.”

Standing with Peter.

From here:

ROME (AFP) — Attacks on Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust denier escalated Monday, with one theologian calling on him to step down as the head of the Roman Catholic Church. ...

... Criticism following the pope’s January 24 announcement has been particularly cutting in Germany, where denying the Holocaust is a crime punishable with a jail sentence.

An international uproar followed the decision to rehabilitate Williamson, an English bishop who has dismissed as “lies” historical evidence that six million Jews were gassed by the Nazis during World War II. Jews and Catholics alike have produced widespread criticism.

“A pardon that tastes of poison,” wrote Franco Garelli, an expert in religious history, in Italy’s daily La Stampa Monday.