No serious person believes that Benedict XVI’s lifting of the excommunications of four dissident Lefebvrist bishops constitutes some sort of endorsement of the lunatic views of one of those bishops, Richard Williamson. It does seem to me, however, that there are some serious problems with this entire process.

The first is that the response from the Lefebvrist leadership has not, to date, displayed any remorse over the wounds that the Lefebvrists have inflicted on the Church for the past 20 years, since the illegal ordinations of bishops by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988; indeed, the recent letter to the Lefebvrist faithful from Bishop Bernard Fellay, Lefebvre’s successor as leader of the movement, suggests that it is the dissidents who have been right all along, and that the rest of us who accept Vatican II as a Council in continuity with the truth of Catholic faith are the real schismatics. It’s not easy to see how real reconciliation will be achieved, if this arrogance persists.

The second problem is that the Holy See continues to operate in a communications vacuum. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that neither the Pope nor any of his closest associates were aware of Bishop Williamson’s Holocaust-denying interview on Swedish television. But one simply has to know these things, in this kind of world. Moreover, Williamson is known for numerous other crazy statements, and that should certainly have been recognized in the Vatican and factored into any decision to reach out to the Lefebvrists.

That having been said, and meant, I would also hope that the chief rabbi would take a deep breath, read the Pope’s statement at the Jan. 28 general audience deploring anti-semitism and the Holocaust (points that Joseph Ratzinger has made repeatedly for decades) . . . and calm down. It would also be helpful if reporters and commentators would not read this entire business–which is, as I’ve said, fraught with difficulties–solely through the prism of Richard Williamson’s lunacy. But that, alas, may be too much to expect in a media environment in which too many people still believe in the caricature of Papa Ratzi, the Prada-wearing ex-Hitler Youth.

– George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow at Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. Editor’s note: Read more from Weigel on this here.