January 8, 2010: At the beginning of the new year, the head of Germany's section of the archconservative Society of St. Pius X, Franz Schmidberger, emphasized that the brothers of the St. Pius Society would continue to speak in clear terms on moral issues despite the widespread criticicism of their statements during 2009. According to Schmidberger, the Society considers it a duty "to call a spade a spade concerning the anti-faith zeitgeist, the dictatorship of relativism and permissive morals" in society. Included in the latter is public protest against "such unworthy spectacles as the homo parade in Stuttgart," a reference to the annual Christopher Street Day parade that takes place in several German cities.

Last year the Scoiety was widely condemned for its criticism of the Stuttgart parade. In an internal publication the Society appealed to Catholics to line the streets of the parade route and shout: "We don't want our homeland to become Sodom and Gomorrah!" The article also compared resistance to the moral decline in modern Germany with resistance against the Nazis: "How proud we are when we read in a history book that there were courageous Catholics in the Third Reich who said: 'We won't go along with this madness!' Today we again need courageous Catholics."

The Society called Stuttgart's Christopher Street Day event a "propagande parade for the sodomite sin" and sounded the alarm concerning the possibility of further erosion to Germany's Basic Law [constitution]. "The homosexuals have already had the criminal nature of their actions removed from the law." The Society describes the desire of German justice minister Brigitte Zypries to provide constitutional protection for gays and lesbians as an attempt to legalize "sexual perversion." "If that happens, it will become tough for Catholics in Germany," was the Society's assessment of the situation.

Charges against the Society resulting from the article were dropped when the local prosecuting attorney ruled that the Society's comments were a personal opinion rather than a defamation. With its vow to continue speaking out on moral decline, the Society of St. Pius X in Germany is clearly the most conservative Catholic voice on such issues.

The Society of St. Pius X has had trouble staying out of the headlines in Germany in recent months. Just one year ago Pope Benedict XVI reversed the excommunication of four bishops from the Society in a desire to heal an internal schism in his church. Benedict's predecessor John Paul II had approved the excommunication of the four bishops in 1988 after rebel archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated them without papal authority, an action the Roman Catholic Church considered "unlawful" and "schismatic."

However, what was supposed to be an act of healing became a source of great embarrassment for the Roman Catholic Church when one of the restored St. Pius bishops, British-born Richard Williamson, was revealed to have repeatedly denied the Holocaust. During a trip to Germany in November 2008, Williamson confirmed his views in an interview recorded for Swedish television network Sveriges Television AB, asserting that "not one single Jew died in a gas chamber" during World War II. In a strange twist, the interview was broadcast on the very day that Pope Benedict signed the decree lifting Williamson's excommunication. News media reported the Holocaust denial, and within hours of the news release announcing Williamson's restoration, the Vatican had a full-blown scandal on its hands.