B’nai B’rith International has issued the following statement:

B’nai B’rith International condemns a statement made by Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the extremist Catholic group Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), calling Jews the “enemies” of the Catholic Church. Fellay made these latest inflammatory comments while addressing Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy last month in New Hamburg, Ontario.

Fellay was discussing the reforms made by the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965, which his sect rejects as heretical, and said Jewish support for those reforms shows that the steps are the Jews’ “thing, not the Church’s.”

With such outrageous claims being made, B’nai B’rith is compelled to speak out against the promotion of old, dangerous forms of anti-Semitism that contravene the historic friendship between the Catholic and Jewish communities. Fellay’s reported statement—and many others like it—demonstrate continued SSPX harboring of precisely such retrograde and hateful views.

We applaud the Vatican for dismissing Fellay’s comments and reiterating the Catholic Church’s commitment to positive engagement with the Jewish people.