After unprecedented outcry in Pope Benedict XVI's home country of Germany by Roman Catholic and Jewish leaders worldwide, the Vatican this week clarified efforts to reconcile with an ultra-right-wing set of bishops excommunicated in 1988, one of whom denies that the Holocaust, or the Shoah, took the lives of 6 million Jews during Nazi rule here in World War II.

Bishop Richard Williamson of the hard-right St. Pius X Society "must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself" from statements denying the Shoah, stated the Holy See.

The Vatican has been in serious damage control for at least a week. German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked the Vatican Monday to clarify its position – amid some of the most open dissent and dismay by Catholic bishops in Europe under Pope Benedict, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

The crisis underscores the difficulties the pope faces in his project of reestablishing traditional Christianity in Europe and rolling back the liberal influences of Vatican II inside Catholicism – in a world more diverse and secular, a religious landscape more ecumenical, a church divided over doctrine and approach, and papal authority seemingly more subject to outside opinion, as in this week's virtual censure of the pope by Ms. Merkel.

Seeing revival in traditionalism

"Benedict wants the restoration of European Christianity, that's at the heart of this." says Catholic theologian Frank Flinn, of Washingon University in St. Louis. "He wishes to nullify the left, the liberation theologians. The Vatican seems to buy the theory that right-wing churches attract members, along the growth model of Evangelicals. A church making demands with stricter rules – the call of traditionalism – is seen as reviving the church in Europe."

Germans in particular – having spent decades confronting the Holocaust, fighting to end its legacy, making Holocaust-denial a crime – were unable to ignore a German-born pope who, in trying to promote church unity, nonetheless opened the door to misunderstandings about a central emotional project of postwar Germany. This week, the Bishop of Mainz, the Archbishop of Berlin, the leading theologian Hans Kung, and a host of German newspapers strongly and openly disagreed with the pope's decision to start restoring the St. Pius group.

The Bavarian-born pope has been especially popular in Munich, a heartland of German Catholicism. But the shine has been wearing off. "I am a Protestant and my wife is a Catholic, and we were both very proud to have a German pope," says Friedemann Losch, a retired professor. "But now we are unhappy with the mistakes Benedict is making. The church is split between modern Catholics and traditionalists, and Benedict is making it worse. We don't understand why."

Pope Benedict is known for a theological brilliance rooted in a traditional conception of Catholicism as the true church. As Cardinal Ratzinger, he held the highly influential post of "Head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith" and was known informally among liberals as "the Pope's Rottweiler" for his purges of Vatican II advocates. The Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, helped Ratzinger rise to the papacy, saying it was his destiny to restore the church, particularly in a Europe viewed as in spiritual decline and increasingly pagan. Benedict's project is to bring back some of the more devout faithful, such as the Pius X group – whose vision hearks back to a medieval period of stability, certainty, authority, and papal infallibility.

Yet Benedicts efforts are perceived, rightly or wrongly, as reversing the ecumenical focus of his predecessor, the popular John Paul II – and setting up "clashes" between faiths. The current outcry in the Jewish world comes in a context of other moves by the Vatican to step up to controversial religious lines: In 2006, at a speech in his academic hometown of Regensburg, the pope angered the Muslim world by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who said that Islam and the prophet Muhammad had brought only "evil and inhuman things." In 2007, he irritated Protestants by pronouncing their churches illegitimate and in need of reconciliation with Rome, in order to live fully in Christ. Even early efforts by Benedict to harmonize with the Eastern Orthodox world have run into criticism by Russian and other orthodox prelates for a lack of follow up and for aggressive missionizing in their lands.

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