ex-Nazi Pope calls for New World Order

[dutchdemocrat]

Bad choice of words more than anything. I just had to put that headline up though.

Unite against terror, Pope says in Christmas speech

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, in his first Christmas address, on Sunday urged humanity to unite against terrorism, poverty and environmental blight and called for a "new world order" to correct economic imbalances.

The Pope made his comments to tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered under umbrellas in a rainy St Peter square for his "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) message and blessing.

http://reuters.myway.com/article/20051225/2005-12-25T120239Z_01_SIB485953_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-POPE-CHRISTMAS-DC.html

[lvx35]

1. This the guy wore prada shoes after the novel "the devil wears prada"

Bright red shoes. This is his style, he is raising hell with conspiracy theories centered on the vatican regarding revelations, new world order, illuminati, etc. I don't know whether he has a killer sense of humor or I hate him yet...

[NMMNG]

2. Uh huh

He wants to unite against poverty and economic imbalances? How about selling off some of that fancy artwork at the Vatican and donating it to the poor for starters.

He wants to unite against terrorism? Try not preaching division, hatred and oppression, all of which sow the seeds of terrorism.

[soothsayer]

5. You can't really fix poverty that way, you know.

[NMMNG]

6. I know, I was just being a bit snarky

:shrug:

[neweurope]

3. That "new world oder" was a slap in the face for the Bushistas.

I'm sure it's no coincidence he used those words. A good speech. He also wants people to pray for peace in the middle east.

On edit: It's really not necessary to call him an ex-Nazi.


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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[acmejack]

7. Why not? Is it incorrect?

[neweurope]

8. In a way, yes.

He was a member of the Hitlerjugend, like just absolutely anybody else; no more, no less. That does not make him a nazi, believe me. If everybody else would be judged all their lives for what they did when they were 16, the world would be a sorry place. And I do NOT like this pope, but for totally different reasons.


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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[MaineDem]

11. Thank you

And I also agree with you about not liking this Pope - for other easons. That's my feeling, too.

[Caretha]

18. Hey

If your going to be the "chosen one" for the Catholic church, you really shouldn't have been joining the Hitler party when you were 16. I know plenty of 16 year olds who have a damn fine sense of what is right and wrong, and they wouldn't have joined.

[neweurope]

19. At that time it was obligatory.

There are some reasons to dislike this pope - but his youth in a dictatorship certainly should not be held against him.

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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[Media_Lies_Daily]

27. "Obligatory"? Hmmm. I don't think that's entirely correct.

[karynnj]

32. If you were in Germany that year and were 16, from published

accounts, you joined without any real thought. I amd Jewish. iF THIS is ALL he did - which is what his biography says - he gets no points for heroism, but this is not particularly damning. The NAZI party on the surface did not look as evil to Germans then than it does to us now - much was hidden.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

26. Sorry, but he is a former Nazi, no matter how much you may not like it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Remember he was the one that the boys in DC

were praying for, no pun intended

[TallahasseeGrannie]

9. A German citizen was not necessarily a Nazi

just like a Muslim is not necessarily a terrorist.

The Nazi party was comprised of officers and aristocrats and the upper class.

This pope was a child during the Nazi years. He was in Hitler Youth the way we went to Girl/Boy Scouts. It was expected. It was not something just for gung ho kids. My own mother in law was in Hitler Youth. And it is a good thing. She was away at overnight camp the night her hometown of 100,000 was bombed with 1500 tons of bombs in 20 minutes and 20,000 (including most of her family) were incinerated. That was February 23, 1945. The town had no defense, no guns, no armament plants, nothing.

[neweurope]

10. Exactly, see my post Nr. 8

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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[dutchdemocrat]

12. He shot at allied planes for the German military in WW2.

Unknown to many members of the church, however, Ratzinger’s past includes brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German army anti- aircraft unit - known as the Wehrmacht.

....Some locals in Traunstein, like Elizabeth Lohner, 84, whose brother-in-law was sent to Dachau as a conscientious objector, dismiss such suggestions. “It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others,” she said. “The Ratzingers were young and had made a different choice.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1572667,00.html

Look at the company the Pope now keeps - he is high up in Opus Dei, an ultra-conservative, semi-cult founded by a very close associate of another famous Facist with a tender appreciation for human rights (that would be sarcasm), Francisco Franco.

He shot at allied planes for the German military in WW2.

“We were just following orders.”

I have no probleming calling him a Nazi. My grandfather is 93 and spent four years in a German death/work camp with a lot of Germans who were 'just following orders'.

[knitter4democracy]

13. It's the Opus Dei thing that scares me the most.

Many of them (not all) are a bit touched. They want to completely repeal all of Vatican II and seal nuns back in the habits and cloisters. They tried to take over a girls school I taught in for two years after we got married, and everyone there hated them for their tactics and bullying ways. Then, they got to one of the religion teachers, and when that came out, Sister fired him. She wasn't about to put up with him teaching pre-Vatican II theology or scaring the non-Catholic students (which he did, from what my students told me).

[neweurope]

14. He was drafted. And he deserted later.

I think you have no idea how things were in Nazi Germany.

The soldiers who are killing Iraqis for your administration/rich elite in an illegal war right now weren't even drafted. They do it voluntarily and for the money. Still most people here don't see them at fault and "support the troops"...

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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[Raydawg1234]

24. They are not at fault. Many of these people joined the army to pay for

college, and because they do not have many viable job opportunities in their home towns. Lets not dis the soldiers. Lets save that for their commander in chief.

[neweurope]

25. If they aren't at fault - and they DO it for the money - then

Ratzinger who didn't do it for the money but who was DRAFTED at an extremely young age wasn't at fault, either. That's all I'm saying.

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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[Media_Lies_Daily]

29. He never deserted....where did you get that?......

Pope Benedict XVI
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI>

QUOTES:

"When Ratzinger turned fourteen, he was forced by law to join the Hitler Youth (membership was legally required from December 1936<4>.)"

MY NOTE: Ratzinger was born in 1927, therefore, he joined the Hitler Youth in 1941 at the age of 14.

<...>

"In 1943, when he was 16, Ratzinger was drafted with many of his classmates into the FlaK (anti-aircraft artillery corps). They guarded various facilities including a BMW aircraft engine plant north of Munich and later, the jet fighter base at Gilching, where Ratzinger served in telephone communications. After his class was released from the Corps in September 1944, Ratzinger was put to work setting up anti-tank defences in the Hungarian border area of Austria in preparation for the expected Red Army offensive. When his unit was released from service in November 1944, he went home for three weeks before being drafted into the German army at Munich to receive basic infantry training in the nearby town of Traunstein. His unit served at various posts around the city and was never sent to the front."

MY NOTE: If Ratzinger ever "deserted", it must have been just as the Allies were approaching Traunstein. It's more likely that his unit surrendered as a unit, or piecemeal, to the Allies, because he was later interned at the Allied POW Camp at Ulm. IMHO, the "desertion" story is designed to cast Ratzinger in the best possible light.

Here's more information on the Hitler Youth:

Hitler Youth
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitlerjugend>

QUOTE:

"The Hitler Youth had the basic motivation of training future "Aryan supermen" and future soldiers who would serve the Third Reich faithfully. Physical and military training took precedence over academic and scientific education in Hitler Youth organizations. Youths in HJ camps learned to use weapons, built up their physical strength, learned war strategies, and were indoctrinated in anti-Semitism. After outlawing the Boy Scouts in all the lands Germany controlled, the Hitler Youth adopted many of the Scouts' activities, though changed in content and intention. A limited amount of cruelty of the older boys toward the younger was tolerated and even encouraged, since it was believed this would weed out the unfit and harden the rest.

Members of the Hitler Youth wore paramilitary uniforms very similar to those of the Nazi Party, and the ranks and insignia of the Hitler Youth were similar to the ranks and insignia of the Sturmabteilung."

[Kellanved]

15. Unlikely

He was a Flakhelfer (AA Support), like about all boys his age were. They drafted whole school classes, teachers and students, into that program. The "Wehrmacht" label is poor journalism on the time's part. The "Flakhelfer" were halfay between the mandatory Hitler Youth and the Army (Wehrmacht). If someone is a Nazi because of a former service as Flakhelfer, then I have to ask: did you protest against Grass winning the Nobel Price? Do you read Habermas?

"Possible to resist" is a difficult phrase. Certainly it was not possible for a 16-year-old to resist without dropping out of the society; especially not without underground connections (like Socialists, Social Democrats, Unions,... - all unlikely in a Catholic household).

The Nazi claim holds no water, but that doesn't make Ratzinger a nice person.

[dutchdemocrat]

20. Whatever...

hen I have to ask: did you protest against Grass winning the Nobel Price? Do you read Habermas?

Strawman.

We are not discussing that.

This is really about semantics.

What you define as a Nazi is perhaps a lot different than I do. Then again - I live in a country which was stomped on by the Germans and you were either 'ahem' with them or against them. My family chose the resistance. My uncles were younger than Ratz when they were bypassing Germans Nazi roadblocks to get food so they did not starve to death. All they had to do was join and they would have had 'rivers of milk and fields of cheese' they told me.

In Holland, they called the German soldiers Nazis. Period.

Ratzinger was in uniform in an occupied country and I'm pretty sure the locals did not differentiate the subleties of his rank or psychoanalyse his youth trying to pigeonhole him as 'almost a Nazi' maybe.

[Kellanved]

23. Certainly

My family survived in the British/Swiss exile; the underground was an almost impossible choice in Germany, due to the lack of people willing to keep their mouth shut.

As to Ratzinger: he was a German national during WW2, a Nazi by that definition. I doubt that the locals around Munich had a problem with that, though - it wasn't exactly occupied territory at that time.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

31. Sorry, but Ratzinger served in a flak unit in 1943 guarding high-value....

...targets that were definitely attacked by Allied bombers during the period of time Ratzinger was a member of that flak unit.

From my post #29 above....

"In 1943, when he was 16, Ratzinger was drafted with many of his classmates into the FlaK (anti-aircraft artillery corps). They guarded various facilities including a BMW aircraft engine plant north of Munich and later, the jet fighter base at Gilching, where Ratzinger served in telephone communications.

[Kellanved]

33. a matter of perspective

Those "FlaK" units were nothing else than deployed school classes. The actual name was "Flakhelfer" or "Luftwaffenhelfer" ("AA-support").
The London times wasn't willing or not able to write about that detail; I'll correct the WIkipedia later.

[ComerPerro]

16. The neocons are gonna hate that.

[malaise]

17. Well I have to disagree with you

sicne Reagan, Thatcher and their clueless economic gurus called this neoliberal and globalization bullspit their new World Order. This rubbish has made corporations more powerful than governments and has made the rich richer and the poor significantly poorer. Clearly this model must be overthrown for a different world order.

I hope popie recognizes that any unity against terrorisn means getting Bushco, Poodle and that corrupt SOB in Italy to the Hague for crimes against humanity. I'm not sure he realizes how much his predessor was involved in Eastern Europe or the Philippines for that matter.

[goforit]

21. Unfriggin believable!!!....Once a Nazi always a Nazi!!!

Dan Brown was right!!!

These secrect societies are so corrupt and need to come to a close!!!

[McCamy Taylor]

22. I think this pope is closet gay and that is why he is so homophobic.

Remember how his brother hinted that there was some reason he didnt think that Benedict was really suited to be Pope? The press implied it was because Benedict was too high strung or something like that. But I have been thinking. What would a priest's brother know about him that he would not tell anyone but which he might be worried about affecting pope ability?

Cloest gayness would explain his really wierd preoccupation with gay issues to the exclusion of everything else in the early days of his tenure as pope. Plus, he dresses gay compared to John Paul II.

[mmonk]

28. Remember, the Church doesn't like the economics

of the bush administration. The gap between rich and poor is what they don't like. Everyone needs to temper their bigotry while assessing what he means.

[Bridget Burke]

30. How few here have actually read the speech....

"A united humanity will be able to confront the many troubling problems of the present time: from the menace of terrorism to the humiliating poverty in which millions of human beings live, from the proliferation of weapons to the pandemics and the environmental destruction which threatens the future of our planet," he said....

He also urged respect for the rights of people suffering in the Darfur region of Sudan, made another appeal for peace in the Holy Land and called for "actions inspired by fairness and wisdom" in Iraq and Lebanon.

The Pope asked God to favor dialogue on the Korean peninsula so that "dangerous disputes" there and elsewhere in Asia can be solved peacefully.

What a dreadful prospect! This "New World Order" is far from the one proposed by Bush the Smarter. But many people prefer to dwell on occult conspiracy theories--sorry, "The Da Vinci Code" is fiction.

Of course, I can see how someone from a country occupied by the Nazis would be sensitive to the past. Many in the Netherlands resisted. Others helped--like the Dutch who turned in Ann Frank & the others hiding in the House Behind.

[neweurope]

34. Thanks, Bridget. I don't like this pope but the speech was good.

A slap in the face for the Bushistas in my opinion.

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Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[CBHagman]

35. No, you didn't "have to" put that headline up. Moreover...

...the fact that Joseph Ratzinger was in the Hitler Youth and was conscripted into the German army during World War II does not make him a Nazi, ex- or otherwise.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/050419/137/2kugm.html

Excerpt:

"Joseph Ratzinger, elected Roman Catholic pope on Tuesday, served in the Hitler Youth during World War Two when membership was compulsory, according to his autobiography.

"But he was never a member of the Nazi party and his family opposed Adolf Hitler's regime, biographers have said.

"Ratzinger's experiences during World War Two have been a source of controversy in some newspapers which probed the German pope's past after Pope John Paul died and he quickly became a frontrunner to succeed the deceased pontiff.

"In his autobiography 'Milestone: Memoirs: 1927-1977,' Ratzinger said he and his brother Georg were both enrolled in the Hitler Youth when membership was obligatory."

On edit: From what I've read about the current pope, he is actually very skeptical that there's even such a thing as a just war. His leanings are more pacifist than anything else.