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kathielee
Guest
I think we have here a kid who is just trying to find his way home, as he indicates. I say we dust off our sandals and not feed the troll.All we can do is pray.The Holy Spirit will have to do the rest.
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AmyS
Guest
It is hard to argue with a person who knows he/she is right even when they can be proven wrong. I will be praying too.All we can do is pray.
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AmyS
Guest
Some forums have ignore buttons. It might not be a bad idea to have one here too. Our pope is blessed, and we know the truth of his life growing up in Germany. Too bad this person doesn’t realize that his families life was in jeopardy. Good thing he did survive to be the man he is today. He now has the opportunity to bring change, God’s change.
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Mirdath
Guest
So what? Has anyone seen him goose-stepping to the strains of ‘Deutschland Über Alles’ lately?
You may not particularly care for many of Benedict’s ideas and actions these days (I know I don’t), but if you have a problem with those at least have the basic decency to argue against them directly instead of arguing against what his every word has struck out at for decades.
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weenerb
Guest
With yopur 500 + responses to this list, I presume you are the moderator. Continue defending the ex naxi Pope all you want. Okay, here goes concerning the Catholic link to Nazi Germany and the references your require:
German Historic Museum: Das Reichskonkordat (in German)
Mit brennender Sorge Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, 1937 (English translation).
The Vatican Concordat With Hitler’s Reich by Robert.E. Krieg
Hitler’s Concordat - text and background from www.concordatwatch.eu
German Historic Museum: Das Reichskonkordat (in German)
Mit brennender Sorge Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, 1937 (English translation).
The Vatican Concordat With Hitler’s Reich by Robert.E. Krieg
Hitler’s Concordat - text and background from www.concordatwatch.eu
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weenerb
Guest
How sick you are
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CreatioNova
Guest
Erm, no, that would be me - but thanks for recognising my youthfull good looks and vigor and calling me a kid
I havent been called a kid for, oh, maybe 45 years
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ibkc
Guest
Hello weener. Please read this article from the New York Times. Some excerpts for your edification:
Pope Benedict, 78, has not tried to hide his enrollment in the Hitler Youth at age 14, addressing his brief membership in his autobiography, ‘‘Salt of the Earth.’’
‘‘We weren’t in it to start with, but with the beginning of the obligatory Hitler Youth in 1941 my brother was enrolled as was required,’’ he recalled. ‘‘I was too young but later was enrolled into it from the seminary.’’
Benedict implies it was the school that did the enrolling, but he doesn’t make it clear.
He said he tried to avoid Hitler Youth meetings, creating a dilemma. He needed proof of attendance to get a tuition discount, which his father – a retired policeman – badly needed. So he finessed it, according to his book.
‘‘Thank God, there was a math teacher who understood. He was himself a Nazi party member, but an honest man who told me, ‘Just go so we have it,’’’ he recalled. ‘‘But when he saw that I simply didn’t want to, he said: ‘I understand, I’ll take care of it.’ And so I was free of it.’’
With so little active resistance to the Nazis, small gestures of defiance were telling, said Johannes Tuchel, director of the German Resistance Memorial in Berlin.
‘‘The color of resistance is not black and white, it’s a scale of gray,’’ Tuchel said. ''It was not a single decision, not a single choice – you don’t just say one day ‘I resist.’
‘‘Every day you had to decide if you were going to go with the Nazi system or step aside. To resist is a long-term decision,’’ he added.
The Ratzingers moved to Traunstein in 1937. The father was anti-Nazi and had to move from the town of Tittmoning to Auschau in 1932 after clashing with local Nazi party supporters.
…
He was drafted into the Army in December 1944 and stationed near Traunstein. With the German army collapsing and the end of the war just days away, he deserted in April or May of 1945 – he said he can’t remember the exact date. He knew he could be killed by SS fanatics, who continued to shoot or hang soldiers found out of uniform up until the end of the war.
Sneaking home by a roundabout way, he was stopped by two soldiers as he emerged from under a train overpass. ‘‘For a moment, the situation was extremely critical for me,’’ he remembered. But the soldiers ‘‘were ones who, thank God, had had enough of war’’ and let him go, treating him as wounded because he had his arm in a sling.
…
The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem doesn’t see a need for further investigation of Ratzinger’s Hitler Youth membership, said spokeswoman Estee Yaari.
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weenerb
Guest
I don’t see any need for further investigation either. The fact remains, he is an ex Naxi.
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justinthemartyr
Guest
praise God.
This claimis a desperation attempt to try to make something out of nothing.
This claimis a desperation attempt to try to make something out of nothing.
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Mirdath
Guest
Nope – I doubt they’d let me within a mile of the moderation control panel!
I’m not even Catholic!By the way, since you emailed me: to become a senior member, basically just hang around. It’ll happen eventually.
Who’s defending?
I’m not trying to shield him, just saying you’re taking issue with the guy for all the wrong reasons 
Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve seen the picture of one of the Piuses shaking Hitler’s hand and all that. And you know what? I really couldn’t give a flying damn. It wasn’t like some of the Church’s other screwups where it permeated the entire institution – Catholic-Nazi collaboration really wasn’t all that deep, and besides, what the Church is doing now is just a teeny bit more important.
Same like the reason I don’t drive a Ford is because they tend to be total piles, not because old Henry was a raving anti-Semite Adolf pinned a medal on.
Long way to go before you match the other things I’ve been called, champ.
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weenerb
Guest
Still don’t see your reasons for not calling him an ex Nazi?
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Mirdath
Guest
I thought I said it just plain didn’t matter in light of everything he’s done since.
Let me reiterate: I don’t agree with Benedict on all kinds of subjects, I didn’t when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, I think the Church could have done a lot better after John Paul II, and all that blather. But even I have standards, and cheap shots like bringing up an artifact sixty-some years past that has had no bearing on how he’s led his life just won’t fly.
What exactly do you gain if an agnostic says ‘sure, ex-Nazi… who gives a rip’?
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weenerb
Guest
Just say it: “He is an ex Nazi”. No harm done. As stipulated, it is the truth.
The Catholic faith is based on the farce that the pope is infallible. When does he become infallible? When he is a Nazi, or after that?
The Catholic faith is based on the farce that the pope is infallible. When does he become infallible? When he is a Nazi, or after that?
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Stephen_C
Guest
nope only…
“When the Pope (1) intends to teach (2) by virtue of his supreme authority (3) on a matter of faith and morals (4) to the whole Church, he is preserved by the Holy Spirit from error.”
from ewtn.com/faith/teachings/papac2.htm
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hasikelee
Guest
I really like it that Benedict was a part of that time in history and that he had personal experience with the horror going on in that part of the world. I bet it has given him insight and wisdom beyond what we can even imagine.
The level of saturation in our culture, politics and legal system is increasingly mimicking pre-Holocaust Germany. I for one am glad that we have a Pope who will be able to recognize this on an intimate level.
I don’t think this is God acting weird or surprising us. It seems very logical and perfectly constructed.
The level of saturation in our culture, politics and legal system is increasingly mimicking pre-Holocaust Germany. I for one am glad that we have a Pope who will be able to recognize this on an intimate level.
I don’t think this is God acting weird or surprising us. It seems very logical and perfectly constructed.
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EasterJoy
Guest
He became infallible when he accepted his election as Pope.
You have to remember, the first Pope denied he even knew Jesus, when Jesus was enduring the “Final Solution” his enemies visited upon him. Paul, our greatest evangelist, was complicit in the murder of the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen. Call it a farce, if you like, but we’re hardly new at the exercise of accepting that God has chosen some unlikely men to be our inspired leaders and teachers.
Besides, we have had Popes whose personal lives were scandalous, even as they occupied the Chair of St. Peter. It is not their personal lives that are preserved from error. It is only what they teach. That is no secret.
As to your contention of “no harm done”, I have to conclude from your “farce” comment that if no harm has been done, you have failed in your intent.
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Harmony1988
Guest
Pretty much all youth in germany at the time were FORCED to be in it, it wasn’t a voluntary service like your boyscouts.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
One thing the Nazis believed in is you repeat a lie often enough, somebody will come to believe it, no matter how outrageous it is.
Seems to me, Weenerb has repeated the “the Pope was a Nazi” line long enough to convince anybody who is convinced by repeated lies, but nobody else.
Time to go back to the anti-Catholic sourcebook and get another line, pardner.
Seems to me, Weenerb has repeated the “the Pope was a Nazi” line long enough to convince anybody who is convinced by repeated lies, but nobody else.
Time to go back to the anti-Catholic sourcebook and get another line, pardner.
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AmyS
Guest
I am curious what weenerb thinks about Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood?
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