Sorry, but an ex-brownshirt doesn't deserve a medal for this

It shouldn't have required global outrage, including a smackdown by Germany's Prime Minister, Angela Merkel, to make Pope Ratzo realize that when you were a member of the Hitler Youth, you probably ought not to be "palling around" with Holocaust deniers:

Responding to an extraordinary burst of global outrage, especially in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany, the Vatican for the first time on Wednesday called on a recently rehabilitated bishop to take back his statements denying the Holocaust.

Late last month, the pope revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops from the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X, including Bishop Richard Williamson, a Briton, who in an interview broadcast last month denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the Vatican Secretariat of State said that Bishop Williamson “must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah,” or Holocaust, or else he would not be allowed to serve as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church.

How do you "distance yourself" from your own thoughts? This is a ridiculous request on the face of it. It's one thing to garble a sentence so it means something other than what was intended. But Richard Williamson has spoke quite plainly and succinctly about his view that perhaps 300,000 Jews died in Hitler's camps, and that there is no evidence that there were any mass executions in gas chambers.

Sorry, Ratzi. You blew it big time on this one. And if there's any "taking back" to do, it's your "rehabilitation" of this guy. Unless, of course, you knew damn well what you were doing and hoped no one would notice.