The Pope's Sins of Omission

[donsu]

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=ub9r5bmf7jyxlb2y1gxhkudst3vvz6p


(this is a long article so a 4 paragraph posting can hardly tell the story)

-snip-

"White Smoke, Black Past," trumpeted the headline in Israel's Yediot Aharonot. "From Hitler Youth to ... Papa Ratzi" roared London's Sun, indelicately describing Cardinal Ratzinger as an "ex-World War II enemy soldier." German papers proved harshest on his doctrinal present and personality. "Ratzinger is the Counter-Reformation personified," asserted the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Berliner Zeitung described his hold on the Vatican as "autocratic, authoritarian," deeming the new pope "as shrewd as a serpent." Die Tageszeitung described him as a "reactionary churchman" who "will try to seal the bulkheads of the Holy Roman Church from the modern world."

To Benedict XVI's post-ascension claim that he sees himself as a "simple humble worker in the Lord's vineyard," Die Tageszeitung commented, "Simple he is not, humble hardly." A Der Spiegel poll revealed that a plurality of Germans didn't want him to be pope -- he's unpopular for blocking German priests from counseling pregnant women and keeping German Catholics from sharing communion with Lutherans.

-snip-

Almost all information on Ratzinger's wartime experiences comes from his own testimony or that of surviving family and friends from Traunstein, his hometown between Munich and Salzburg.

Ratzinger's own accounts sometimes clash with one another. In Milestones, for instance, the future pope writes of his policeman father that, "Time and again, in public meetings, Father had to take a position against the violence of the Nazis." But in Salt of the Earth, a book-length interview, he says of his father's criticism of Nazism, "He made no public opposition; that wouldn't have been possible." His father, he adds, only "spoke freely to people whom he could trust."

(there is much on what ratty actually did during WWII)
-snip-
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the article ends with:

The character of a new pope matters because the respect he personally commands produces life and death differences in whether the faithful obey doctrine. The biography of Benedict XVI should trouble any who believe the pope ought to be a morally inspiring figure, like Jesus himself.

[Demeter]

1. There's Nothing More Unseemly

than this Pope railroading the canonization of his predeceasor through before the grass has grown over the grave. What CAN they be thinking? It sounds like the routine elavation to godship of ancient Roman Caesars, and about as meaningful.

[CatholicEdHead]

2. Vatican really has turned the clock back lately

WAY back.

[Eloriel]

3. Well, in my book, there's LOTS that's way more unseemly than that

but you're right: it's pretty unseemly. Let's just call it symptomatic. Fascists everywhere think they have a unique (God-given?) right to make/bend the rules as they see fit.