Given the unique status of the Holocaust as an icon of evil in a morally confused world, Holocaustdenial triggers revulsions similar to those triggered by blasphemy in the Middle Ages: the Holocaust-denier must be shunned for everyone else's moral health.

Thus it was completely understandable that, when Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of four bishops illegally ordained in 1988 by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, reporting and commentary focused on the fact that one of the four, Richard Williamson, is a Holocaust-denier and a man given to extolling that hoary anti-Semitic forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
 
Understandable, but something of freakish sideshow, for Williamson is an internationally known crank and no serious person can believe that Benedict XVI's act constituted an endorsement of Williamson's lunatic view of history. As the pope made clear at his Jan. 28 general audience, he has long recognized the Holocaust as a unique icon of wickedness-one that should call all of us "to reflect on the unpredictable power of evil when it conquers the heart of man."