Is That Legal?

I'm willing to give Ratzinger a pass on his ersatz-Nazi past. He was only 18 when the war ended. If we're going to keep 17-year-old murderers off death row, a position I agree with, then I'm willing to forgive a 17-year-old German boy for not understanding the political nuance of national socialism.

I understand your point, and it's powerful; my primary interest all along has been more on how he remembers (and forgets) the past than on precisely what he did.

As history is memory (events recorded in various local forms, then sifted, selected, and packaged) and the new pope holds a powerful position of representational moral authority, it seems to me it's fair to presuppose that his record of events will be the controlling source of history through the Vatican's very powerful voice. Other voices are free to agree or not. (Compare Muller v. Malkin.)

As to the question of the "possible" v. the "impossible" in opposing Hitler, two moments come to mind. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and the failed attempt of members of Hitler's general staff to kill him. Nearly all involved paid with their lives. In the Warsaw group, many were no older than young Joseph Ratzinger. Those moments make clear that nothing is "impossible."

The only question is, what price is one willing to pay for the chance to be on the right side of events -- moments that will later be cast as someone's view of memory? For those opposed to the concept of moral relativism, isn't the answer clear? Should the answer change based on the promised future facing those who fought the Warsaw uprising versus the future for native Germans?

Finally, a word on the the capacity of people to overcome the native social prejudices of their adolescent surroundings. Perhaps wrongly, I subscribe to the view that propagandized biases learned in youth generally become the unconscious rules by which people instinctively arrange (and rearrange) old and new events.

Not to say that a conscious arrangement is not possible. But it's "conscious." One could argue then that, as a conscious act, subjective awareness of external events will influence not only the constituents of memory but, obviously, the arrangement.

So it's not that Eric won't let go of what happened 65 years ago. It's that none of us should understand what the new pope says happened 65 years ago without remembering what happened 65 years ago.

My primary interest all along has been more on how he remembers (and forgets) the past than on precisely what he did.

But the two are inextricably linked. If I understand you correctly, your objection to Benedict's recollection of his past is that it is "self-absolving" because it fails to dwell upon the morally troubling acts of his youth. But that presupposes that those acts were morally troubling; the whole argument hinges upon precisely what he did, or rather your implicit judgment that a former HJ member should by definition be ashamed of himself.

This discussion would be considerably improved if the terms of reference were given a little more nuance. What does it mean to say that "resistance to the Nazis", "open" or covert, was "impossible" or "futile", or the reverse? Whose resistance? Under what circumstances? To what ends? Your minute dissection of a few vague soundbytes in order to 'prove' by a process of implication that the Pope believes this or believes that strikes me as unfair and rather pointless.

I suppose one could argue that it's the Pope's responsibility to clarify this uncertainty by making a longer and more sophisticated commentary on his youth; on the other hand, I think the Pope could reasonably respond that he no longer even remembers his teenage mindset with any degree of reliability (how many of us could accurately recreate our consciousness of events sixty years past?), and that - given that no-one is seriously suggesting that he committed any specific acts of wrongdoing at all - the Vicar of Christ has rather more important things to do than pander to the historical obsessions of a few.

"We still know relatively little, it seems to me, about the less-than-open resistance to the Nazis practiced by the pope and his family. I hope we'll learn more."

And there, IMO, it is.

I'm curious Prof: What would it take the Pope to say for you to end what seems to be, again IMO, your nit picking at him?

It's your Web Site, if you want to use titles like:
"The Moral Importance of Papal Memory"
"Resistance Was Possible. Even for Young People."
"Airbrushing the Past"
(One of my personal Favorites)
"The Pope Has Been Untruthful About the Role of Nazism in his Early Life."
(My Absolute Favorite!)
"When Did the Pope Really Join the Hitler Youth?"
(Up there, but not as good as the Other two)
Well, Knock yourself out. It's your privilege.

We must never forget the past and learn from it, but it seems that the Pope Will never say what ever it is you'd like to hear.

As a Catholic, I'm feeling victimized by what I see as Catholic Bashing by many of the Commentators here.

Also, if you attributed what his brother said as to what the Pope Said (I'm unsure myself) then "This now seems likelier to me his brother's view than his own." isn't enough.

Heraldblog:

I'm willing to forgive a 17-year-old German boy for not understanding the political nuance of national socialism.

Well, "nuance" is not a word I'd associate with the Nazis. They were publicly rounding up "undesirables", destroying Jewish stores, and imposing harsh and oppressive "race laws." It didn't take a very mature understanding to see there was a problem.

Also, I don't see anything in Benedict's Nazi-era behavior that requires my forgiveness. He didn't participate in thuggery, and he didn't support the regime. He was never in any real sense a Nazi. He commited no crime and, in fact, acquitted himself better than many of his countrymen and no worse than most.

marc:

You raise a some interesting points. I don't think self-preservation is irrelevent, but I think we need to try to find a proper balance between preserving our own safety and trying to save others. Examining cases like Nazi Germany can help us better weigh our own choices if we should ever find ourselves in a similar situations. That's another big reason to resist the rewriting of history or even the propogation of unintentional mischaracterizations. If we gloss over what they did, it will make it that much easier to justify our own inaction in the face of future atrocities.

S.D.:

The story's different if you read beyond the headlines.

In "Airbrushing the Past," Eric writes, "I have not once suggested that he or his family were members of the NSDAP; indeed, I've said just the opposite.... I don't doubt for a moment that the Ratzinger family were no supporters of the Nazis." "The Pope Has Been Untruthful..." starts out, "Look, folks, the new pope is obviously no closet Nazi."

Maybe Eric should have been more careful in the titles of his posts, but I don't see much else to complain about. Assuming he really does have a legitimate reason for examining this issue, what should he have done? Should he ignore a subject he considers important because it raises sensitive issues? If not, how would you have had him handle it differently?

Beth, IMO, I don't think Prof. Muller will be ever satisfied by anything less than what he put forward in his next Post.

My Problem with those Titles is: This is the type of headline you'd expect from the NY Post and Othe Fox News engines.

It, Again IMO, invites Catholic Bashing.

I'd just like to echo a comment made by someone named "Thomas" to Muller's very first post on this issue.

Ratzinger himself was a child coerced to join the Nazi youth organization--and thus he was a victim! All this talk of how much he resisted, or whether he resisted at all, seems to get things awfully backward. Muller is essentially blaming him for being a victim, thus compounding the injury Ratzinger suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

The fact that Muller takes a personal interest in the Nazis (due to his family history) really does not excuse the kind of malicious harm that he is trying to do to Ratzinger, does it? Isn't what Muller is doing kind of like blaming a fourteen year old rape victim for not resisting her attacker more forcefully? (Far from congratulating Muller for his candor in explaining this personal interest in the question, it struck me as a pathetic attempt to salvage his ill-founded attacks on the Pope by an appeal to our personal sympathies.)

Muller's attempt to tarnish the Pope's reputation with irresponsible suggestions of complicity with the Nazis (when in fact Ratzinger was a victim!) is an astonishingly shameful display of malice, not to mention sloppy thinking. Perhaps Muller's new focus on what Ratzinger's "family" did to resist the Nazis is an implicit admission of the weakness of his attack on Ratzinger.

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