OK, folks, here you go...Ratzinger AND his family OPPOSED Hitler.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

...it all comes down to HOW MUCH BLAME you're gonna place on a FUCKING SIX YEAR OLD KID.

GRANTED...the BULLSHIT that Ratzinger pulled during the 2004 election is STILL an issue (writing the letter that DEMANDED that Catholics vote for the "pro-life" POS motherf**ker homocidal maniac spoiled frat boy COWARD George W. Bush). I don't think I will EVER forgive him for THAT.

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20050420/1009108.asp

The youngest of three children born to Maria and Josef, the family moved frequently for the first 10 years of his life. His father often sought work as a policeman in a triangle of southern Bavaria, between the Salzach and Inn rivers, near the Austrian border. It was a place whose "landscape and history marked my youth," he wrote. Catholicism and the simple liturgical life of the church dominated and Ratzinger recalled a warm and happy family life with his parents and older siblings, Georg and Maria.

But the happiness of those early years faded during the Nazi era. Ratzinger was 6 when Adolf Hitler came to power, and he says he was enrolled against his will in the Hitler Youth, as required of all German adolescents. He said he never attended any meetings. His father, who once wrote that "a victory of Hitler's would not be a victory for Germany but rather a victory for the anti-Christ," moved the family from the town of Tittmoning after a dispute with local Nazi leaders.

In 1939, when he was 12, Ratzinger entered the seminarian school in Traunstein, where he said the classes in Greek and Latin awoke his intellect. But four years later, his whole class was drafted into the Flak, an antiaircraft corps, specifically into a unit that was to defend a nearby BMW auto plant. There he saw slave laborers from the Dachau concentration camp. Ratzinger was soon dismissed from the corps to continue his studies. Then, in the late fall of 1944, he was drafted to dig ditches. Six months later, he deserted the army but was captured by the advancing American army as a prisoner of war. Two months later, he was released and hitchhiked home.

When the war was over, he re-entered the seminary with his brother, and the two were ordained in 1951. While his brother chose to be a pastor, Ratzinger began a career dominated by theological study. He was just 35 years old when he attracted attention in Rome during the Second Vatican Council, in 1962. He was appointed a chief adviser to Cardinal Joseph Frings.

[MindPilot]

1. Six years old? That's no excuse; he should be tried as a adult!!

:sarcasm:

[davidinalameda]

2. that doesn't make him any less homophobic or sexist today

[6000eliot]

4. Exactly

I find it so interesting that supposed "liberals" are so willing to sell their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, not to mention their mothers and sisters, down the river!

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

9. NO, that's NOT the point.

A few facts:

1). I'm not gay.

2). I have NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in standing in the way of my "gay and lesbian brothers and sisters" who want to be HAPPY in life. GOD BLESS THEM, and to HELL with anyone who would JUDGE them or put ROADBLOCKS in the way of their happiness. LIFE is FUCKING SHORT...MORE short than MANY of you REALIZE. BE HAPPY BE YOURSELF. FUCK anyone who "judges" you, be it a "president" or a FUCKING POPE.

This is ONLY about the NAZI aspect of Ratzinger.

TRUST ME...if you COMPLETELY REMOVE the "Nazi" factor, I STILL think the man SUCKS.

And I'm a CATHOLIC, so put yourself in MY shoes for a minute.

Let's deal with one issue at a time. We'll get to the homophobia and "Bush enabler" stuff LATER.

:toast:

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

6. But that's my point...

The things he may or may not have been "forced into" ABSOLUTELY do NOT give him a "free pass" today.

Based EXCLUSIVELY on the letter he wrote during the 2004 Election to U.S. Bishops, I DESPISE THE MAN.

I'm just trying to "compartmentalize" his life...if that's even possible.

EXAMPLE: Karl Rove SUCKS as a human being. He does not SUCK as the result of being a member of the Nazi Party in 1940s Germany. He SUCKS because he SUCKS.

I think that the "Nazi" aspect of Ratzinger needs to be dealt with. His modern-day politics are a COMPLETELY separate matter.

:toast:

[Catt03]

20. I hear you

and I'm Catholic too. However, this selection of Ratzinger is much broader that the Nazi charges.

I think the boy was a man when he was guarding the aircraft and I have a problem that he watched slave labor and god knows what else in silence until he decided to desert.

You know what....I can sit here for an hour debate this issue. I have no argument on the Nazi issue. I just think the choice was poor, the Catholic Church is power hungry and ego driven by a bunch of old men who are control freaks and they have harmed more people than they have helped.

I will never comment on this again...

[LittleClarkie]

19. But he's not necessarily a sexist, homophobic NAZI

which is all the OP is trying to get across.

[sidwill]

3. So what your saying is ...

Ratzy was only lukewarm towards Nazism.

[Larkspur]

5. He was old enough to join the Hitler Youth when others his age resisted

He was old enough to join the German army and didn't bother to desert until all was lost for the Germans.

Ratzinger was a moral coward then and he's a moral nincompoop now. I don't judge average Germans who did what Ratzinger did to survive. They aren't Pope nor are they feigning to be moral leaders dictating to others how to behave and what to believe. Most are just trying to live out their days in anonymity, but not Ratzinger. He, the ex Hitler Youth member, wants to play God on Earth today.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

11. OK, maybe the issue IS that he is a coward.

Survival was a BIG part of it.

Did others handle it "better" than he did? Probably.

Is Ratzinger the WRONG man for the job TODAY?

PROBABLY.

But NOT because he was a Nazi when he was 6.

Because of the MAN HE IS TODAY.

THAT, my friend, is the point of this post.

:toast:

[lenidog]

13. As many people have stated before you didn't choose to join the

Hitler Youth. It was compulsory and if your parents kept you out then the least that could be done to your family was being sent to a normal jail more than likely a concentration camp. By the fall of 44 the German army was so desperate for manpower that they were grabbing anyone from 16 to 60 to serve in the armed forces. He probably never had a clear chance to desert until the German army was nearing the breaking point which would have been about the Spring of 45 even then one had to watch out for bands of SS who were excuting anyone they thought as deserters by hanging them from the nearest tree with piano wire. If you are going to hate the man and despise his beliefs then do it for the right reasons and try to make things up.

[wildmanj]

16. old enough

and i suppose you who has never made a mistake would have told those who were your superiors at age 13 hell no, im not doing this or that---and as far as being pope---so he could be an a@@hole and probably is but that should not deprive him of becoming all that he can become---100 or so people chose him to be pope and pope he will be---but---at 78 years of age things can change rapidly

[Larkspur]

25. Yet Ratzinger had peers who did refuse to join the Hitler Youth and who

either founded or joined youth groups to counter the Hitler Youth.

Ratzinger was a sheep following the herd into damnation. That is a major character flaw for someone being a major global religious leader.

[allemand]

30. If you really want to learn something about this topic, please see the

discussions in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3512353

[tabasco]

38. Hundreds of thousands of German troops deserted at the end ...

to be captured by the "Amis" rather than the Soviets. This number includes my father in law, who was the same age as Ratzinger. My FIL told me his entire squad deserted and headed west. It's not like Ratzinger was being a big hero by deserting. By the time he did it, everybody was doing it.

[Junkdrawer]

7. By now, the "Hitler Youth" non-issue is being used to hide the actual...

concerns of having an ultra-conservative (Fundamentalist???) pope.

Fully expect Ratzinger apologists to resurrect (no pun intended) and then defeat the "Hitler Youth" issue for quite a while.

[TacticalPeek]

8. He dishonors God and truth.

"At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just." - Ratzinger, 1990 (all grown up at last)

http://maxblumenthal.blogspot.com/2005/04/gop-flat-earthers-love-grand.html

[atreides1]

10. Here's the Problem

All of this is based on Ratzinger's memoirs and the accounts of his brother, in other words we only have their stories.

By the way, in September of 1944 was when he was drafted, a second time to dig ditches on the Austrian border with Hungary. His unit was released from service in November of 1944 and he was drafted a third time. Only now he was placed in the infantry, and posted near Munich, his unit never went to the front.

In the waning days of the war, which would be April to May 1945, he deserted and returned home. He was picked up by US military personnel
and incarcerated until June of 1945.

But remember this is according to him and his brother, who is also a priest.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

12. Absolutely correct.

SO...in 2005, what do we have?

We have a man who wrote a letter to the U.S. Bishops during the 2004 elections which ESSENTIALLY said that Catholics MUST elect Bush because he was "pro-life," while "Catholic John Kerry" was a BABY KILLER as the result of his "pro-abortion" stance.

The whole point I am trying to make here is that RATZINGER SUCKS AS A HUMAN BEING in 2005.

FUCK what he may or may not have done as a "Hitler Youth."

RIGHT NOW, he is a BUSH ENABLER, an EXTREME conservative, and a DANGEROUS MAN IN THE DRIVERS' SEAT.

[leesa]

14. The point is that NOW he is spewing fascism

[Dave Sund]

15. Personally, I'm less offended by his interference in the election

than his condoning of sexual abuse within the church.

He actually wrote a letter to the U.S. Bishops who were taking the matter into their own hands, well, six of them anyway. Ratzinger's letter actually pointed out that a Catholic could vote for a candidate if they weren't voting for him because of abortion. It still pisses me off that he, or the bishops, decided to interfere in the election.

But it's nowhere near the sickness of calling the sex abuse scandals nothing but a media conspiracy.

[Hosnon]

17. Good job...and I agree with you. eom

[LittleClarkie]

18. According to the resident theologian

Ratzinger was actually pretty cool about the voting situation. He made the distinction that if would be bad to vote for a pro-choice person IF THAT WAS YOUR ONLY REASON FOR DOING SO, but that voting for a pro-choice person was alright if you had OTHER REASONS FOR DOING SO.

Hence, if you were voting for Kerry precisely because he was pro-choice, that was the no no.

But if you were voting for Kerry because you liked his foreign policy, or health care stance, et al, that was a different story.

Nuanced, isn't it.

[Zynx]

26. That's a classic Vatican position.

Just like how Leo XIII opposed the socialist movement but demanded a fair wage for workers.

[DoYouEverWonder]

21. So him and his family

were good little germans and went along because they didn't have the courage to resist. I have no respect for people then or now who don't do what they can to resist tyranny and oppression. That doesn't necessarily mean subjecting yourself to situations where you may be arrested but many families found ways to keep their kids out of Hitler Youth and the military. Seems that neither he nor his family even tried. All he could muster was to desert at the end along with everyone else. A real future Jesus in the making, not.

[Charon]

39. No Respect

How about respect for those hundreds of thousands of Americans that were press ganged in to Mr Johnsons army to fight in VietNam. Suppose they were "good" Americans and went along because they didn't have the courage to resist.

[DARE to HOPE]

22. It is not what he did as a child, but the lessons learned...

I have an aunt who was raised in the Nazi era in Germany, and after all these years in America (she married my uncle in 1948) she still has the same beliefs about the world and God (very negative, very Nazi-like, and doesn't believe in God at all.)

And then there is the matter of a person's life showing on the face as the years go by. His does not have the gentleness, the love that should go with a churchman of 78. And I know many German faces that DO have that within. It is the glow of the Holy Spirit from the inside out. JPII had it. This man does not.

[Lindacooks]

23. Yep - what has he said since then? Anything condemning Hitler

or the Holocaust?

[Hav]

31. .

Of course did he condem antisemitism and the Holocaust (who wouldn't do that).

He also condemned Christian complicity in the Holocaust:

"Over the centuries, prejudices about the Jews piled up, and thus one tolerated more easily the aggressions against them. This lack of Christian (sensibility) isn't the immediate root of the Holocaust, but it helped facilitate this crime."

"Even if the ultimate, execrable experience of the Shoah (Holocaust) was perpetrated in the name of an anti-Christian ideology that sought to strike the Christian faith at its roots in the people of Israel, it cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance by Christians to this atrocity is explained by the anti-Judaism present in the soul of more than a few Christians."

[Lindacooks]

32. Have any links to those statements?

[Hav]

33. .

I have links where he was quoted saying one of the statements in an interview with the L`Osservatore Romano some time ago.

The other was from: http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/9803/16/vatican.holocaust/

[Lindacooks]

34. Those are some pretty mild responses from him.

Not impressed.

[zann725]

24. Me thinks ye defendeth him too much. If WE elected a leader here who was a

prior member of the Communist Party in their youth, do you seriously believe the world) would be saying 'it means nothing...ignore it.' A person IS influenced by things they do PARTICULARLY in uniform (a 'band of brothers'), and PARTICULARLY in one's impressionable youth. That he left the Nazi's when the Nazi 'ship' was sinking, is not exactly an indication of loyalty to the free world. Nor does it show character strength.

As I said on another thread about this, "A rose, is a rose, is a rose..."

[w4rma]

27. I find it interesting how his defenders skip over so much that happened

between 1939 and 1945.

[hippiechick]

28. And ?

Does that absolve him of his current misogynistic, homophobic, hush-up-the-pedophelia, intrude-in-US-politics antics ?

I think not. He's still a very unChristian prick.

[Unions]

29. It's well documented

that the catholic church opposed the nazis primarily because they weren't getting a piece of the pie. This is clear from the fact they negotiated with hitler an agreement of "We'll support you as long as you let members of our church do as they want in areas you occupy"

In fact, after the war the catholic church told jewish parents they didn't know where their kids were when they were in fact in catholic church custody as they didn't want them going back to jewish parents.

This guys views are worse than bush who is already approacing nazi levels. If he opposed the nazis it's only because he knew catholics were taking a back seat.

[ComerPerro]

35. Kind of ironic, then, since he apprently supports fascism today.

[Malva Zebrina]

36. He is a wonderful and holy man

Yes? He loves women and is concerned abouty their health and their rights. Yes? He is really educated on homosexuality, and would condemn them for what they are. Yes?

He sent out a letter to the US Bishops, skewing the vote in the US toward Bush, threatening those who would vote for Kerry with withdrawel of the sacrements if they did indeed vote for Kerry.

He put out NO letter to US Bishops, declaring that Bush's war was immoral and anyone who voted for Bush would be denied the sacraments. He is holy Yes?

He is a good man who respects the US constitution and the separation of church and state, Yes?

He willingly covered up the disgusting pervasiveness of pedophila in the US priests who abused and caused great harm to hundreds if not thousands of innocent trusting children.

But he is holy, Yes?



From the age of six to the age of eighteen, he was a participant in Hitler's regime. But, it is not his fault because he was little then, and is holy, and that indoctrination at an early age now has nothing to do with his fascist views now because he was secretly was against the Nazis and he is the Pope and is holy now, yes?

and he has never expressed any remorse at his participation in the Nazi regime. But he is a humble man and holy, yes?


Why would anyone be an apologist for this man? What does that say? Does a religion cause people to blindly support the harm to other people for the sake of---simply defending it no matter what? If so, there seems to be not that much difference between blind apologists for Benedict 16, than those who adamently and blindly support Pat Robertson or any of the radical dominionists that are supporting facism under Bush here in this country.

[lala_rawraw]

37. So he made up for it by getting together with the Bush family?

Come on. Pope JP II did not support the Bush family. So why is Ratz?