Seems that Richard Williamson, the Holocaust-denying traditionalist bishop whose excommunicaton Pope Benedict canceled last week, just can’t help himself.

On Tuesday, his superior announced that he’d forbidden Williamson from speaking publicly “on political or historical questions.” But the very next morning, an Italian newspaper quoted Williamson insisting: “There is no proof that there were gas chambers.”

For what it’s worth, Williamson may have not have violated the letter of the gag order. His latest remarks were apparently made to a group of devotees visting him in the Argentinean monastery where he is currently staying.

In any case, other spokesmen for the bishop’s views are evidently more than ready to fill in. An Italian newspaper today quotes a priest in Williamson’s schismatic group saying that the Nazis used gas chambers only for “disinfection.”

(Here’s an idea. How about putting these revisionist gas-chamber theories to the test once and for all-with the theorists themselves as the guinea pigs? If they believe what they say, they ought to be eager to prove it …)