Latin Mass Chief Asks For ‘Harmful’ Podcast Platforming Holocaust Denier to be Deleted

Traditionalist Catholics vilify Oxford academic as Catholic Unscripted refuses to delete controversial podcast

Catholic social media influencers in England are defying a call from the head of the global Latin Mass federation to delete a podcast that showcases a traditionalist priest notorious for Holocaust denial.

Dr. Joseph Shaw, president of the International Una Voce Federation, a body that promotes the Tridentine Mass worldwide, warned Catholic Unscripted that their video with Fr. James Mawdsley was “harmful to the traditionalist movement” and “to the truth.”

Mawdsley’s inflammatory comments about Jews on the Catholic Unscripted podcast, released just before Passover and Holy Week, triggered a fierce backlash from both Jews and mainstream Catholics after Jihad Watch broke the story on the antisemitic video.

In response to the firestorm on social media, the co-hosts of Catholic Unscripted, Katherine Bennett, Mark Lambert, and Gavin Ashenden, published a statement endorsing Mawdsley as a “great Scriptural scholar,” whose “books are well worth reading,” Jihad Watch reported.

The trio’s advocacy for Mawdsley was discussed in a The Times of Israel essay, which explained how the priest was an “impostor” who had been “canonically expelled” from his religious order and had no qualifications in Scripture nor a canonical mandate to teach the Bible.

Mawdsley has “never published a peer-reviewed article or a book through an academic press. His seven books are all self-published. No biblical scholar has ever endorsed any of his works. No guild of Catholic biblical scholars would ever accept him,” The Times of Israel underscored.

Damage Control Backfires

In a bid to mitigate the fallout, the co-hosts of Catholic Unscripted, Katherine Bennett and Mark Lambert, and Dr. Gavin Ashenden, invited Dr. Joseph Shaw, president of the International Una Voce Federation (FIUV) to respond to Mawdsley’s views.

Shaw is also chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, an Oxford scholar and philosopher who has authored peer-reviewed articles and several books on the Tridentine liturgy. In 2015, Shaw was elected a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

Using the word “Shoah,” the Hebrew term for the Holocaust, Shaw, in his response, observed that Mawdsley had repeatedly denied the historical fact of Hitler’s genocide on the Catholic Unscripted podcast and on other websites. Shaw noted: “He says it is a lie.”

The philosopher explained how traditionalist Catholics who were “marginalized” by the Church’s hierarchy “tend to become radicalized” and “tend to move towards other marginalized views and opinions” by doubting the consensus on the Shoah.

Scholar Defends Historical Fact of Shoah

Shaw suggested that a possible reason for Mawdsley’s Holocaust denial was to gain a cult following.

“If you can get them to question that, then you’ve kind of got them because they can’t trust anyone after that. If you can get them to deny that, then everything’s up for grabs,” he said.

Instead of trusting the “ordinary experts” like books based on official sources, people who accepted a revisionist reading of the Shoah would have to depend on “special” experts like David Irving, “because, of course, people can’t do their own research on this.”

The Shoah is “one of the most well-researched things in history. In fact, perhaps the most massively researched thing because there’s a mountain of evidence and tens of thousands of historians have been looking at this and you can see oral testimonies,” he said.

Traditionalist Leader Warns of “Cultish” Situation

Shaw explained how historians were able to rely on primary sources like “thousands of hours of oral history which have been recorded,” as well as “census data” and the decisions made at the Wannsee Conference in 1942 which decided on the “Final Solution” for the Jews.

“It’s like saying the Second World War didn’t happen or there were no such people as the French,” Shaw added. “You can’t really have a conversation with someone who is determined to say the Shoah was just a few people who died of illness or something.”

“This conspiracy theorist sort of narrative gets us into the position where you can’t trust anyone and drives you into a sort of cultish position. You could only believe the leaders of the cult. Everyone else is lying,” he warned.

“It creates a wall around this little group and you can congratulate yourselves that you alone have the truth. And that is a classic conspiracy theory cult situation,” he reiterated.

Catholic Unscripted Hosts Refuse to Heed Shaw’s Warning

Shaw ended the interview by asking Bennett, mainly responsible for hosting Mawdsley, to delete the offensive video.

“I would say what I’ve already said by message to Mark [Lambert], is that I would advise you to delete the podcast with Fr. Mawdsley.”

“I think it’s harmful to the traditionalist movement and more importantly it’s harmful to the truth,” he stated. “That is your decision. No one can make that for you. But that I just feel I have to say that.”

Bennett and Lambert were at a loss for words and responded to Shaw’s exhortation with momentary silence. “Okay. Okay. Right. Thanks. Thanks for coming on. Joe,” a stuttering Bennett then replied.

“That awkward pause after Dr. Shaw advised CU to take down the Fr M interview seemed to last a lifetime,” commenter Christopher Griffin quipped. Another commenter wrote: “Loved the small smirk on Bennett when Shaw asked CU to take down the podcast.”

When Bennett was asked in the comments section if she would delete the offensive video, the Catholic Unscripted moderator indicated that the team would not heed Shaw’s advice, responding: “You will find the conversation with Fr. James Mawdsley linked here.”

Traditionalist Catholics Vilify Their Global Leader

Commenters on the Catholic Unscripted podcast featuring Shaw, who appear to consist of mostly traditionalist Catholics in support of the old Latin Mass, responded overwhelmingly by attacking the Oxford academic.

Scores of commenters asked Bennett, the Catholic Unscripted co-host who had hosted Mawdsley, not to delete her controversial podcast with him.

A majority of commenters, who are ironically supporters of the Latin Mass that Shaw has been defending for decades, vilified the scholar by claiming he was “twisting the narrative.”

Others insisted that it was important for both views to be left on YouTube so that viewers could make up their minds. Several hit back by questioning the mainstream historical view on the Shoah, with one asserting that “history is written by the victor, and quite often contains only what they want the masses to believe.”

Still other traditionalist Catholics maligned Shaw calling him a “gatekeeping fraud,” “bore,” “pompous and dismissive,” “modernist,” “pompous ass,” and “pedant” and even alleged that he is “most likely being paid by Jews” and “the fear of the Jews is raging in this podcast.”

A few responses in the comments section commended the scholar, with one noting: “Good on Shaw for denouncing Fr. M’s loathsome antisemitism.”

Shaw Rebuts Mawdsley’s False Claims on Jewish Infiltration

Earlier, Shaw also rebutted Mawdsley’s false account of the alleged Jewish influence on the reforms of Vatican II and the Good Friday “prayers for the Jews” in a recent journal article titled “The Liturgical Reform and the Jews” published in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review.

“On balance, it seems clear that the Consilium was not guided in its task in any systematic way by Jewish concerns. They quite literally did not receive the memo,” he concludes.

In his podcast with Bennett, Mawdsley had disingenuously claimed: “I think that the Jews have basically infiltrated the church, destroyed her liturgy, her dogma, her morals, and unless we call that out and overcome that and be honest about the governance in our Catholic faith then things are only going to get worse.”

The Times of Israel concluded its essay on the scandal by observing:

Ashenden, Bennett, and Lambert are guilty not by association but because they have rejected the exhortation of Psalm 1: Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

Ari Mordechai is a human rights and antisemitic campaigner who lives in Tel Aviv. He is married to Ofek. Two of the couple’s five children have served in the Israeli Defense Forces.