New Pope Was Nazi Youth
The London Times reports,
Ratzinger’s past includes brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German army […] anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp. Ratzinger has insisted he never took part in combat or fired a shot – adding that his gun was not even loaded – because of a badly infected finger. He was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to death camps.
According to Wikipedia,
On November 25, 1981 Pope John Paul II named Ratzinger prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which was renamed in 1908 by Pope Pius X.
Ratzinger also has a history of making comments which have been denounced as theological antisemitism. (c/o BoingBoing)
It would seem that the Catholic Church wants to make up for all those years of having a Jew-friendly Pope. Or not. Apparently Ratzinger’s been good to the people he once helped exterminate. The JTA reports,
But he also used his position as the Vatican’s chief theologian under John Paul II to play an instrumental part in his predecessor’s historic rapprochement with the Jews. In 2000, under Ratzinger’s editorial direction, the Vatican released “Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past,” a watershed document that acknowledged church errors in its past dealings with Jews, asking “whether the Nazi persecution of the Jews was not made easier by the anti-Jewish prejudices imbedded in some Christian minds and hearts.”
Ratzinger also oversaw the 2002 publication of “The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures,” which asserted that “the Jewish messianic wait is not in vain” and expressed regret that certain passages in the Christian Bible condemning individual Jews have been used to justify anti-Semitism.
Meh. Someone’s got a guilty conscience.
Ratzinger only “joined” the Hitler Youth at age 14 in 1941, when it became compulsory. Some have argued he could have refused, and got sent to the concentration camps. Some did do that. But choosing life shouldn’t be held against him.
He deserted the German army at age 17. War-time desertion, as one might expect, carried a heavy price if caught. At some point in his teen years, obviously, he realized he couldn’t condone what was happening. Some wish he had taken a more active stance.
Read the Jerusalem Post article.
I have to agree with John…compulsory membership and compulsory conscription were commonplace, and his desertion speaks all the volumes it needs to speak. There were a lot of reasons not to pick him, but this isn’t one of them.
His desertion was from the battlefront. It wasnt ideologically based. So not only is he a nazi, he is also a coward.
This is, quite frankly, unfair and unfounded criticism of the new Pope. As has been stated, his membership in the Hitler Youth was compulsory, and his desertion from the German army carried with it a penalty of death. People tried to tag Pope John Paul II with a similar Nazi past simply because he worked for a Polish chemical company during the Nazi occupation (after his university was shut down and all able-bodied men required to get a job). It’s utterly ridiculous.
As for his role as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I hardly see how his position at the head of an organization that several centuries before had overseen the Inquisition taints him. Is there a time machine at the Vatican I’m unaware of, into which the heads of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are required to step back into the days of the Inquisition and take part?
As for this “theological anti-Semitism,” the comments in question are assertions that “that Jewish history and scripture reach fulfillment only in Christ.” That is a position I would expect a Catholic to hold, clergy or not, and I’d be outright shocked if the new Pope felt that Jewish history (i.e. the Hebrew Bible, i.e. the Old Testament) finds its culmination only in the Christian Messiah. This does not amount to theological anti-Semitism — it amounts to devout Christian faith, and we have no business telling Christians they can’t have their faith.
Mobius, with all due respect, I believe you should retract your statement that “Ratzinger’s been good to the people he once helped exterminate.” There is no evidence whatsoever that he “once helped exterminate” Jews simply by being unlucky enough to live in Germany during the Nazi regime.
*correction: I would be outright shocked if the new Pope didn’t feel that Jewish history finds its culmination in the Christian Messiah.
Not that I’m a big fan of Ratzinger or the Catholic church, but my understanding of Ratzinger’s history is:
1) He was briefly in the Hitler Youth when membership was compulsory.
2) He got out of it, by using his religious studies as a reason for exemption.
3) He was drafted, manned an AA battery, was sent to Hungary for a time to erect anti-tank traps, then deserted upon coming back home, when the penalty for doing so was death.
4) His father was a policeman who was a known anti-Nazi, and was harassed and hounded out of several jobs because of it, after 1933.
So I agree that he did not have the moral courage as a teenager to resist the Nazis. But I also don’t see any evidence that he was an supporter of Naziism.
Ratzinger was clearly not comfortable with the Nazi regime. Post war, he was part of the crew of priests and then Cardinals whose anti war stances were rooted in their very personal experiences with its evils, and specifically with the evils of the Nazis. Count among them Ratzinger, Jean Marie Lustiger and oh yeah, Karol Wojltywa. I”m frankly surprised Mobius. Wghile Ratz was a theocratic conservative while in charge of the office of the iquisition under JPII, he was, up until 1965, considered a notorius liberal in the church. Show some Sheinit.
I am quite suprised by the top–level posts both here and at Jewlicious regarding Ratzinger. The overall Jewish consensus is very good on Ratzinger. The only significant opposition is coming more from the secular left (and even that seems relatively light). Jews have real opportunities to build bridges to Catholics. We shouldn’t burn those bridges by spouting hateful descriptions of the leader of their faith. What Ratzinger was FORCED to do over 60 years ago is just not relevant to what he is today. He has been a friend to the Jewish people, as was JPII before him. That is how we should approach him, until he does something to show otherwise. That he is a German from an anti-Nazi family probably leaves him with enough guilt that he will always be our friend. Let’s support that inclination to friendship.
So, let’s see, how does it work around here? If a Palestinian actually supports terrorism against Jews, it’s wrong to denounce him and every excuse must be made for him. But for a Christian, it’s OK to say something like “Apparently Ratzinger’s been good to the people he once helped exterminate” with no evidence, in fact, with all the evidence showing the contrary (I refer to the “helped exterminate” part, of course). And it’s also OK to use the cowardly line “Ratzinger also has a history of making comments which have been denounced as theological antisemitism”. “Which have been denounced.” As if any public figure hasn’t been denounced by someone. Why not show us the comments and make the argument that such comments deserved to be denounced? And to top it off, when Ratzinger does something good, it becomes evidence that “Someone’s got a guilty conscience”.
Disgraceful. Morally wrong, and gratuitously damaging to Jewish-Catholic relations. Where’d all that universalism go?
Neither Yad Vashem nor the ADL had any problem with Ratzinger’s appointment. The latter even said that it has had good experiences talking with him about Jewish-Catholic relations. Not only that, but Ratzinger’s justification for Jewish refusal to accept Jesus is so groundbreaking in that it overturns doctrine that has been used for centuries to justify the persecution of Jews.
As for his record, I believe that there was little that he could do to escape the Hitler Youth or service in the German army. And even though soldiers in the German army had little to do with Hitler’s twisted antisemitic theories, Ratzinger left the army as soon as possible. Plus, his father opposed the Nazis and tried to evade them by moving to Czechoslovakia.
Neither Yad Vashem nor the ADL had any problem with Ratzinger’s appointment. The latter even said that it has had good experiences talking with him about Jewish-Catholic relations. Not only that, but Ratzinger’s justification for Jewish refusal to accept Jesus is so groundbreaking in that it overturns doctrine that has been used for centuries to justify the persecution of Jews.
As for his record, I believe that there was little that he could do to escape the Hitler Youth or service in the German army. And even though soldiers in the German army had little to do with Hitler’s twisted antisemitic theories, Ratzinger left the army as soon as possible. Plus, his father opposed the Nazis and tried to evade them by moving to Czechoslovakia.
Neither Yad Vashem nor the ADL had any problem with Ratzinger’s appointment.
If this is vindication then we have problems.
Ratzinger might have been anything sixty years ago, none of you know telepathy or time travel let alone in combination, but what he is now and has been for much of his church career is what Hunter S Thompson called a Nazi (not necessarily the same thing). This guy has been extremely clear in the past few years about his positions and they are very harmful (although, harmful specifically to Jews we don’t know).
“…but what he is now and has been for much of his church career is what Hunter S Thompson called a Nazi…”
And who could argue with such a lucid thinker as Hunter S. Thompson?
Some people like Thompson throw the word Nazi around like candy. From what I can tell, it means something like someone less socialist (even though Nazism is socialism) than Gerhard Schröder or Ralph Nader. Stop faulting the Pope for being … well … Catholic. His positions are harmful to no one. Though he opposes birth control, abortion, he also opposes casual sex. People decide how to adopt his positions, and they are the ones who are responsible for obeying the prohibitions on condom use while violating the prohibitions on casual sex with high-risk populations.
What Thompson called a Nazi was something entirely happy with the police state, and being not specifically anti-Jewish entirely inoffensive to the ADL. Nixon for example (at a time when his dirty mouth was not public knowledge). This is a bigger problem than it sounds. Y’all wet yourselves at finding that this guy isn’t Hess, whoopteedoo, what if he’s Haldemann? Look at his record. Ranting about unnatural homos, etc.. There’s throwing the term “Nazi” around like candy and then there’s seeing the danger of fascism as something possible outside of certain positively neutering criteria.
“Y’all wet yourselves at finding that this guy isn’t Hess, whoopteedoo, what if he’s Haldemann?”
Well, then, eleven million people don’t get murdered in firing squads, ghettos or gas chambers. A war that kills tens of millions more, civilians and soldiers, doesn’t break out. Just little things like that.
If you had a problem with McCarthy calling liberals “communists”, you ought to know better.
Absolutely. We’re not getting murdered, so what do we have to complain about? As long as it’s only Indochinese, hell, are there even eleven million of them to begin with? (thanks for rememvering 11 by the way.) Remember, the word Nazi is only allowed after the killing.