Is That Legal?

Any resistance to Nazism, he has stressed, was impossible.

Well, not the direct quote I was hoping for, but interesting. I can see that there would have been no Christian Church if all its members had been Ratzingers: "Any resistance to Rome is impossible!"

After JPII's inspiration to Eastern Europe, this "resisting evil masters is useless" stuff is just sad. I hope the media picks this up and pushes Benedict XVI to either affirm or renounce such an opinion, if he actually expressed it. THAT, good friends, is what all this "Hitler Youth" stuff is about---not what little Ratzinger did, but how he describes it now, and why.

Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass had a young life almost idenitical to Ratzinger's. Born in the same year (1927), he was a Hitler Youth member and later served in the Wehrmacht. Why has there never been any outcry about him? Is it because he is a leftist?
Helmut Kohl (born in 1930) was also a Hitler Youth veteran, and no one seems to have ever cared. He was no leftist, of course, but I guess a mere Chancellor of Germany wasn't as tempting a target for the left as a Pope.

Exactly right, James. The left only targets practicing Catholics. What Eric is doing here is wicked. The unspoken assumption here is that Ratzinger isn't forthright over his Hitler Youth past because perhaps he really WAS a Nazi, and still believes in Nazi ideology, and thus the Catholic Church is led by a Nazi.

It's the same old Bush = Hitler garbage seen in the angry left's protest marches. This is a shameful, disgusting exercise in historical mud-slinging. Quite frankly, in my opinion, anyone who suggests that the Pope is a Nazi, or has some hidden purpose in lying or obscuring his connections to the Hitler Youth, is an anti-Catholic bigot.

Thanks for the mind-reading, Sydney. It's especially artful, given that it contradicts everything I've actually said.

How much do I owe you?

Why has there never been any outcry about [Grass]? Is it because he is a leftist?

Yes, that must be it. That also explains why there was never any outcry about Cardinal Ratzinger before this. It's because he was a lef... oh wait, he wasn't, was he?

Could the reason Pope Benedict is receiving more scrutiny than Gunter Grass or Cardinal Ratzinger ever did possibly be because he's one of the most powerful religious leaders in the world? (Just a thought.)

Personally, I don't have a big problem with either Grass' or Benedict's Nazi-era behavior. I believe it was wrong, and will certainly try in my own life not to imitate it, but it was also normal and I don't think it suggests any particular evil in either man. I am somewhat concerned with their response to it later in life, and here, they stand in sharp contrast. "The Tin Drum" is a massive and heartrending work about that period in German history and how people dealt with it. It's been years since I read it, but it still stands in my memory as a remarkable example of an artist taking a long hard look into his own past, and offering up the painful, unvarnished results for public inspection.

Contrast that with this quote from the JP article:

"...later as a seminarian, I was registered in the Hitler Youth. As soon as I was out of the seminary, I never went back. And that was difficult because the tuition reduction, which I really needed, was tied to proof of attendance at the Hitler Youth."

I believe that is honest. No doubt at the time, the higher tuition felt like a real sacrifice, and I'm sure that in making it, Ratzinger went beyond what many of his contemporaries were willing to do. What disturbs me is that so many decades later (the quote's from around 1997), his view seems little changed. "That was difficult." No, being sent to a concentration camp was difficult, risking execution for criticizing the Nazi regime was difficult. Paying full tuition was a minor inconvenience. That he would still characterize it as difficult suggests to me he's never gone back and revisited that time or held himself to account for his actions then.

I believe that Germans like Grass and Ratzinger made a mistake by not standing up to Nazism. It was a natural, normal mistake and I can't condemn them for it. I've made similar mistakes in my own life, ignoring things I didn't want to see and and putting my own small interests above other, much larger ones. None of my mistakes have had such tragic consequences, but that has more to do with luck than virtue. What bothers me is not that Ratzinger made that mistake, but that he has apparently not tried to come to grips with it. In Catholic terms, he has not repented.

I'm again amazed at the insistence on full moral agency and responsibility for children of ten and fourteen years old. The suggestion that these children are anything but victims of Nazism would seem to require an argument, but no argument is forthcoming.

And again I ask--I'm sure it won't be posted--is this the standards we hold for our own children?

If a child of ten can be held morally responsible for not actively resisting the moral wrong done to him by Nazism, then surely an 8 year old is capable of reading a book on her own, isn't she?

Or is there some new theory of development which holds that year 9 is the critical year? Perhaps those who hold to it--Eric, I'm thinking of you--could spell it out more exactly, so that the rest of us can examine it and possibly accept it. The refusal or inability to do so suggest that this attack (and that's what this series of posts is) is founded in an irrational and unflattering animus.

Beth's comment is of the same sort. To be honest, I don't often hold myself to the standards of a child (which isn't to say that one can never learn from a child)--so it wouldn't occurr to me to congratulate myself, as Beth appears to, with the thought that I have avoided and will avoid the "mistakes" made by those children coerced under threat of violence into the Hitler Youth.

On the substance of his actions, I'd note that the apparently heroic resistance cited in the quoted material is entirely consistent with the lack of resistance demonstrated by Ratzinger. He didn't go back; how is that different, or less noteworthy, than growing his hair long, or listening to the BBC? It seems of the same sort, all of which fall far short of resistance in the ordinary sense of the word.

I think people expect the Pope to have been way Above normal in their life prior to becoming Pope. IMO, this is unrealistic.

I think people should remember that the Pope was a Teenager when all this went down. IMO, While it was possible to resist, I wouldn't hold a teenager responsible for not resisting, but rather on What he actually did.

Did young Ratzinger Particaipate in Anything?
Did he publically advocate Anytyhing?
Was he a "leader" in the Hitler Youth?

These types of questions concern me more than what that teenager didn't do to Resist.

I am having a difficult time figuring out why this blog has not moved from dead horse-beating and seemingly misconstruing the point of commenters to outright intellectual flaccidity or dishonesty.

The link on this post does not go to a quote of Cardinal Ratzinger's but to a book review by a person who is obviously critical of Ratzinger as a whole. Moreover, that book review does not quote Ratzinger. So, where does this quote come from? It was Joseph Ratzinger's brother Georg who called resistance "truly impossible."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15003155%255E39835,00.html

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

If the blog is patently incorrect on the front page, both in citation and ultimate accuracy, I would expect a front-page correction, non?

"Why has there never been any outcry about" Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass?

(1) Novelists may be opinion leaders, but I am unaware of any sect (certainly none with a number of adherents comparable to that of the Catholic Church) that regards Grass (or any novelist, as a novelist) as the epitome of living human virtue or paramount source of ethical guidance. When one claims to be divinely endowed with the right to comand and the concurrent right to be obeyed (rather than merely the human right to express one's opinions) on ehtical questions, one legitmately invites scrutiny of one's ethical character.

(2) Grass is not the head of state of a recognized sovereignty, maintaining diplomatic relations with other nations around the world, and holding permanent observer status in the United Nations. Given the status of the embassadors of the Holy See as persobnal represetatives of the Pope, who serve at his pleasure, it could fairly be said that the Pope personifies and epitomizes the power of personal *access* to the governmental decision-makers of the world.

it wouldn't occurr to me to congratulate myself, as Beth appears to

How is saying I've made those same mistakes and it's due to luck not virtue that I'm not in their situation congratulating myself? I'm certainly glad not to have been born into that time and place, but it's really not something I can pat myself on the back for.

Also how much "moral agency and responsibility" do we have to attribute to someone in order to suggest that they made a mistake? That's all I accused the teenage Ratzinger and Grass of, and I don't think Eric even went that far.

I can't say I'm favorably disposed to the new pope, but I think the quotation from Hitler Youth actually undercuts your main argument. If I understand it correctly, your main argument is that the pope must have been in the Hitler Youth (or its junior counterpart) earlier than he says because membership was compulsory. Yet this quotation shows that that compulsion was fairly easily shirked. Perhaps the pope was able to avoid membership at an earlier age, but later felt pressure to join. The explanation could be as simple as a lax local leader of the junior organization (who made little effort to track down shirkers) and a more zealous leader of the Hitler Youth.

I think that the Pope's comment about membership becoming compulsory in '41 makes perfect sense given that he turned 14 in '41, and membership would have become compulsory for him at that time. His statement is false, but it seems like a fairly easy mistake to make. And I'm sure he would have no trouble admitting it.

As for whether resistance was impossible or what he should have been expected to do, there seem to me to be two related, but importantly separate, issues here:

1. Should Ratzinger be held morally culpable, or be considered morally deficient, because he did not resist the Nazis or membership in the Hitler Youth?

2. What significance does his behavior under the Nazis have for his papacy and its suitability?

Of course, our answer to the first question makes a difference for our answer to the second question. Few people here seem to be suggesting that we ought to answer the first question affirmatively. Instead, the suggestion has been that his present attitude to that past is what matters. I would invite a clearer statement of how it matters, though. The clearest statement so far has been Hasbrouck's, but I am not too impressed with it.

To begin with, the Church does not necessarily hold the Pope to be "the epitome of living human virtue." Clearly the Pope will be regarded as virtuous, but impeccability has never been the claim of any legitimate Pope that I know of, and no thoughtful Catholic would claim that any Pope has been such. Furthermore, the Pope does not claim the divine right to order and be obeyed on ethical questions unqualifiedly; papal infallability only accompanies papal decrees given by the pope in his capacity as the Church's leader; any particular pope may in fact have personal opinions that he does not enshrine in papal encyclicals simply because he does not wish to claim infallability for them. Whatever we think of papal infallability (I'm not too fond of it myself), misrepresentation of it is never an option for an honest person. Clearly the Pope's character should be open to scrutiny, and he would be the last person to deny that. The question is not whether or not it is, but whether or not any relevant flaw of character has been identified in the stories of his involvement with the Hitler Youth or with his current attitude to it. It is, finally, unclear what would follow if we agreed that he was morally culpable for his involvement with the Hitler Youth, his failure to actively resist the Nazis, or his present attitude to his past. Would he be unfit to be Pope? Why? Again, no Pope is impeccable; Peter, the archtypical Pope, is the most ostensibly flawed of the apostles in the Gospel stories. It just simply isn't clear what anyone thinks the consequences of the Pope's flaws are.

I doubt that we want to insist upon extraordinary moral excellence as a requirement for political office. It is, at the least, unclear whether one would be more morally culpable for failing to resist the Nazis than for the moral offenses of the two most recent presidents of the United States of America. But the idea of moral mathematics seems a bit distasteful to me, so I will leave it to you all to decide how morally 'pure' an individual ought to be before he is suitable for any given office. I would only suggest that we remember that the Church insists that all of us are morally culpable, and though not all sins are equal, most of us are in about the same situation.

Beth has it right for the most part, I think, and her attitude seems like the proper (and properly Catholic, though I will not presume to speak for them) attitude, combining recognition of the mistakes with a realistic appreciation of how easy they are to make. But I do not think that the Pope would really make the comparison that she makes, between the difficulties of additional tuition and the difficulties of concentration camps. To imply that he has made that comparison is dishonest.

But perhaps the Pope has indeed failed to repent adequately. Church officials do continue to take the sacraments, after all, including confession...

Herr Grass does not deserve the same kind of ethical scrutiny that a pope does, it is true, but there is something to be said for the idea that the Pope is a target simply because he is a pope, and is not a good liberal. The comparison with Grass illustrates this well not because Grass deserves the same level of scrutiny, but because in his case nobody seems to think that his failure to resist was a problem (until compelled to admit that in argument). If it matters in the case of the Pope, it matters because it was a serious moral error. But if it was a serious moral error, then it was a serious moral error for both Ratzinger and Glass. Failure to recognize that is akin to the Republicans in the States who lambasted Clinton for smoking marijuana but looked the other way over Bush and coccaine. And furthermore, I invite all Americans to ask themselves whether they would be legitimately held culpable for failing to resist the atrocities that our country has been engaging in lately. I, for my part, am willing to forgive a child in seminary for failing to take up arms against the Nazis...