Is That Legal?

"Professor" Muller,

Is it too much trouble to ask you to perform even basic research before you carelessly drag a good name into disrepute? I am, and have been for 9 years now, President and CEO of CatMatic(tm) Brand Farm Equipment Co., specializing in feline production and post-production. My attorneys tell me that your use of our registered trademark to define the "slacker" end of organized religion is actionable, but it is my hope that you will respect this humble request: leave CatMatic(tm) out of your religious war. If you will not silence your tongue, we will have it once we drag you into court.

Please be more careful in the future. Your site, which perhaps you thought beneath the notice of a corporation like CatMatic(tm), has now been brought from its sack of secrecy into the full light of day. It has been my experience that when a company is absent from forums like this one, any number of abuses of its good name will be bandied about.

--J. McGeechern
CatMatic(tm) -- "the only way to decorticate a cat!"

Eric,

He is describing what it was like for a normal, 14 year old boy. He probably doesn't even remember any compulsory organization in a pre-Hitler Youth group, because it is irrelevant. It's the Hitler Youth that always gets brought up because that was the organization with the stigma, not something before it.

In describing the fight against the Nazis as "impossible," you really take the cake for engaging in wild speculation and hyperbole. The man was describing his feelings AS A 14 YEAR OLD BOY. How many 14 year old boys think it possible to bring down their government? I'll bet none of them do.

This is just another instance of the same old Bush=Hitler argument, that any "conservative" must be a Nazi. It devalues the true evil of men who willingly engaged in wicked acts. Making conscripted boys who risked their lives in deserting the German Army into the equivilent of the SS is ridiculous. You guys on the left are like the boy who cries wolf: Nazi! Nazi! Nazi! Give me a friggin break. If the Pope starts goose-stepping, then you have a point.

But until then, how about some friggin' charity for the Pope? Is that too much to ask? From the left, I guess so.

It's not for nothing that Kos, Democratic Underground, and now YOU are trying to smear this guy.

Sydney,

Who is "making conscripted boys who risked their lives in deserting the German Army into the equivilent of the SS?" Not I. You are ... so that you can have someone to scream at.

Have you read I word that I have actually written, or are you content simply to post here based on your imaginings of what somebody on "the left" thinks?

Beautifully put, Eric. Thank you. At the Jewish Museum in NYC, there's a wonderful exhibit on Maurice Sendak, whose journeys into the memory of the Holocaust (more from your perspective than the pope's, to be sure) have only deepened and become more complex.

"Recently, however, the artist has admitted that the initial sense of release [after writing the opera Brundibar] has elapsed, that Brundibar [an opera he created (with Tony Kushner) featuring a Hitler-like bad man who in the end is down but not out] has opened things, instead of bringing closure. He now feels that we can never truly overcome our own demons, 'never tame "the wild things."’”

Eric, this is, in my opinion, the entry you should've made before everything else. Now everyone has context, now your passion is personalized.

Even though I do agree with everything you wrote in the previous entries on this topic, I started feeling like some people might think you're off the hook a bit. Thanks for sharing your history, I think it may help some people better understand not only the history of what happened (through personal stories) but also the implications of painting this issue with broad strokes.

Thanks again.

The troubling history of Nazism does not excuse intellectual flaccidity, to which I contend this blog has currently descended.

It was far easier for someone in the United States in 1941 to criticize Nazism than for a child in Germany who could bring death to his family if he started demonstrating in the streets.

There can be zero question whatsoever that Ratzinger has since condemned Nazism in the highest terms. No question. To ignore this fact and pretend that he soft-pedals it, even to the point of inaccurately referencing him, simply fails the basics of intellectual rigor. If the posts on this blog were formulated into a law school exam essay, I would give it about a 2.5 for obvious lack of rigorous, objective consideration for the whole issue. While I haven't taught law school, I have taught undergraduate, so I guess I have some experience in that matter.

One can be a "dogmatic" Catholic, or any kind of Catholic, and still recognize that the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, in the twentieth century, far too often either supported fascism (Italian, German, and elsewhere) or stood by and did nothing as fascism took hold. To a lesser extent, the same applies to Protestants.

I've studied the Third Reich for a long time. Yes, deciding not to be in the Hitler Youth in Germany then would be like admitting you're a homosexual in a baseball team in a Red State today. Yes, in either case, it could get you killed. It's just safer to join or keep your mouth shut. When you're 14, you're just a kid, and you try to protect yourself. Reasonable. Understandable.

But -- Ratzinger is no longer a child. And it's what he's doing now that counts.

We know that it's bad to to bad things to Jews. Ratzinger admits it and works against it.

However, he thinks its perfectly all right to do bad things to homosexuals.

It's SAFE to say treating Jews is bad. It's NOT safe to say treating Homosexuals is bad.

Looks like Ratzi is taking the safe way out again... Do you think he will ever grow up?

The point is not that the pope was in the HJ; joining was compulsory, and can't be blamed on him personally. Not actively resisting as a child of that age disqualifies him from sainthood, and shows that he was at that time still fallible.

No-one is accusing him of being a Nazi; as the protege of a Polish pope, that kind of goes without saying.

The problem is more to do with the hole in to which his recollections of the period have fallen. It's a syndrome that many from that age have fallen in to, as a way of dealing with their feelings of guilt. I think it's almost certainly the case that Pope genuinely believes everything he's said about the matter.

If you want to know about how reliable human memory is, ask a criminal law professor

Wouldn't jesus have resisted the nazis? If the pope is jesus's representative on earth, couldn't he(jesus) have chosen someone with a little more balls? Should jesus have just joined the roman legions because it "was impossible to resist"? He wound up dead, like all good christians should do, when faced with evil,to do other wise is an insult to the premise of christianity.
My only other point is that when the "Pope" says his father was angry with the nazis, it was only because they were restricting catholics. He didn't give a rats ass that they were slaughtering jews, gypsies, queers, and "communists". You know what they say, "the nut doesn't fall far from the tree."
To be fair there were lots of catholics who deserve our admiration for resisting at many levels, unfortunately the "pope" isn't one of them.

His self-justification is quite at odds with his position on abortion, interestingly.

If a thirteen year old girl is raped, and she has a pregnancy with medical complications such that the child has no hope of being born alive, and the pregnancy would risk her own life--the Church says: too bad. Youth is no defense. Futility is no defense. Potential fatality is no defense. Obey, or else.

Saying that there was nothing a teenager could do insults the memory of teenagers like Sophie Scholl, who was executed for her resistance against the Nazis.

I agree with Ryan...

For far too long I have watched academic blogs toss off egghead concepts, without revealing the true passion vested behind the mask.

Thanks Eric, for showing us a little vulnerability.

John

I think one reason people are struggling with the argument you're giving is that what you've actually put up on your blog is not very much. For instance, perhaps there's good evidence for his having forgotten participation in the Deutsches Jungvolk, but nothing you've actually posted exhibits it; all you've posted is, as far as I can tell, a single passage from a single work, and not (for instance) even a rough survey of the works and interviews where he might be expected to mention something like that but doesn't. Likewise, there may be good evidence that he's exaggerated his father's resistance, but you haven't posted any of it -- all you've actually posted is a rumor, which you state, without evidence, could only find its source in the Pope himself or his family. Since you say you have excellent evidence for this, I presume you do, but from this end of the computer, there's very little of it to see, and given that, it very much looks like you're twisting what the evidence you've posted so far shows (which isn't much) simply in order to force a conclusion. Perhaps if you posted more of your evidence it would be easier for us who are reading to follow your argument, which seems very sketchy at the moment.

Donna,

If you can point me to a single instance in which the Pope has said it's "OK to do bad things to homosexuals," I'll eat my shoe. That is not the position of the Catholic Church. Paragraph 2358 of the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church -- which received its Imprimi Potest from then-Cardinal Ratzinger -- holds that:

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible . . . They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided . . . "

In 1986, as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then-Cardinal Ratzinger signed a letter entitled Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. That letter -- which was primarily a defense of the Church's teachings on the immorality of homosexual conduct -- firmly proclaimed:

It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.

No, the Church does not accept the proposition that the state should sanction homosexual conduct by elevating it to something approaching marriage. But I don't think that's the same as saying it's "OK to do bad things to homosexuals."



Katherine,

My sense is that the Catholic Church has long recognized a distinction between private murder and conscripted military service -- even in the service of terrible regimes -- but it's a harder question than Donna's straw man. If I get a chance, I'll try to look into it.

Well, the distinction I see is "sex/everything else" or "men/women" or "people like us/people unlike us" or "situations we face/situations we never will face" or "our understandable imperfections/your mortal sins" or "sins of the powerful/sins of the powerless" but all right.

As far as homosexuals, he said "it is to be expected" that people react violently when gay people demand civil rights, that one disorder breeds another. Absolutely blatant blaming the victim.

Well, I don't know if this will get past the internal censors' mandatory "nice" requirement, but--

Those who say "there were no other choices" are ignorant of history. Look up "The White Rose" and see what a bunch of Catholic teens whose parents were also jailed resistors, some of them, and their non-Catholic friends went on to do - some of them from within the Wehrmacht itself - in the way of chronic resistance, ultimately resulting in martyrdom. (But they were liberals, seeking ecumenism and openness against the hierarchy, so you never hear about them from the Church...)

Look up a guy named Martin Niemoller, too.

The thing is, he *never* resisted - not when he was a teen, like the Scholls - Sophie's brother went to jail for a while for refusing to mitmach in the HJ, not in the seminary, not after. (Deserting from the Eastern Front - remember that's the infamous "Send you to the Eastern Front"? doesn't count as courage - sure, he could have been shot if they caught him, but he was deserting from the battlefield facing the winning Russians, not a cushy office job. Contrast with the White Rose kids being battlefield medics, then coming home and being dissident writers.)

No, Ratzinger wasn't a Nazi, he was worse.

He was a Good German.

And he remains an authoritarian, power-worshipping, kiss-up/kick-down type. (crushing liberation Theology, muzzling academic dissenters, saying that gays bring their own beatings on themselves - you've got *decades* of evidence to go on of his middle-monkey behavior.)

And one who compulsively denies reality: his own personal failings, the problems of the church (sex abuse an *American* media-generated issue), and the facts of the world that don't match up to his ideology.

--What *is* interesting is the number of people who feel impelled to leap to his defense, though...

As to the idea that nobody, early on, could have had any idea that things were wrong w/fascism - still less in 1940s - well, then, why were there dissidents writing and publishing denunciations of fascism for their tyranny, based on what they'd already done as well as their manifesti in the 20s and 30s, until silenced? Who exactly was being arrested for dissent? Obviously *some* people knew what was going on - and yes, I've even met one, as a kid.

The rest chose to believe that these macho guys with their talk of Traditional Moral Values and Law And Order and Making Us Respected In The World Again and Stopping the Godless Commies were going to be the salvation of Italy/Germany/Spain. (Even Paster Niemoller thought they were great to start with - but unlike Ratzinger, he both saw that they weren't and did something as a result.)

Sinclair Lewis, in 1935, imagined a fascist America, influenced by the corporatists who at the same time backed Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, complete with concentration camps, firing squads, tanks and machine guns turned on demonstrators. It was pretty clear what was going on, to anyone who paid attention in the 20s and early 30s, unless you chose to accept the official version.

But the fact that the Catholic Church still takes the passive voice in terms of responsibility (where is *our* Martin Niemoller?) for just about *everything* and that Catholics refuse to confront their collective institutional failings (but think that we should get goodies and pats on the back when we make even minor concessions, as in the Galileo affair, or deciding that "The Jews" aren't all responsible for deicide) is revealed in this, very clearly.

Prof, I'd like to personally thank you for inviting Catholic bashing at it's best.

To be certain, There are things that need to be discussed, but the end result seems to me, IMO, just an opportunity for many to Bash the church, expect a Teenager to be superhuman, Or on the other end, Call you a Pope Basher etc.

After all, A 78 year old man is expected to be Superhuman, Do extraordinary things as Teenager, right? Many of you people seem to hold the new Pope Up to a standard that you or I would not be able to achieve. The Excuse, "He was going to be the Pope" is silly.

Prof, I doubt that's your intention, but from the quality of the Comments, that seems to be the case. Well Done.

As a Catholic, I'll personally give Pope Benedict a Wait and see.

-S.D.

Katherine,

Can you point me to where he said that regarding violence against homosexuals? I'd like to see the statement in context. I tried a couple of Google searches, but nothing jumped out at me. (In any event, it's a different claim from Donna's.)

As to the other matter, you say those are the distinctions you "see." Have you looked into why the Church teaches as it does on the specific issues that trouble you? I'm not asking you to agree; I'm just asking you whether you've made any effort to understand.

I would request to see the "it is to be expected" quote in context before giving Katherine's accusation any credibility. The number of selective and inaccurate or blatantly false quotations and attributions on this blog in the last three days is already disgraceful enough.

Ratzinger has repeatedly expressed great sympathy for homosexuals. He believes it is conduct which is against God's message. There is a huge difference between that belief and homophobia (some sort of hysterical fear). To use that word to describe Ratzinger without having read his thoughts on the matters is flatly incompatible with quality intellectual discourse.

If anyone would like to discuss why there are reasons to discourage homosexuality, both from a secular and a religious perspective, feel free to take it to email with me. In my experience, it takes a lot of discussion to explain the argument to someone who casually ascribes such church teachings to homophobia, especially without having done nearly adequate reading into the church's positions.

One perspective on the blogosphere's implosion over Bendedict XVI:

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050421-050120-7643r

Donna wrote:

...would be like admitting you're a homosexual in a baseball team in a Red State today. Yes, in either case, it could get you killed.

Citation, please.

I know that the new pope has done much in his adult life to work against anti-Semitic aspects of Church doctrine and to build good relations with Jews. That is very much to his credit, and perhaps it reflects his own way of engaging and working through his experiences with Nazism. Even so, the symbolism of electing to the papacy a Nazi-era German who remembers self-protectively and maintains that resistance was impossible disturbs me greatly.

So what is the fuss? The events you are complaining about took place 60 years ago. Why are you still living in that time? In a previous post on school books, you fell back to describing events in Alabama in 1928. Are you unable to move on from certain historical periods?

Thanks for proving me right. The fact that liberals have turned this into a discussion on abortion & homosexuality proves that this really isn't about the Pope, but about the Church's dogma and theological teachings.

seth- "wouldn't jesus have resisted the nazis?"

Jesus did not resist the Romans and was passive to the degree that they executed Him. That would indicate that Jesus would not have resisted the Nazis. Jesus consistently advocated compliance with Roman law.

Donna- "However, he thinks it's perfectly all right to do bad things to homosexuals."

There is no indication that the Pope thinks this at all. I assume that you are arguing that his stance against homosexual marriage is equivalent to doing "bad things", but your opinion on that is not universally accepted. It IS universally accepted that Nazis are bad, but even if you do not agree with him, it is wrong of you to put opposition to gay marriage in the same category.

Dave S, If Jesus wasn't resisting,even passively(sometimes the best way to resist) why did they kill him. And don't tell me to "read the bible" I don't read fiction.

Quite a lot of extrapolation based on one out of context regurgitated quote.

The other quote isn't even from the Pope.

"Any resistance to Nazism," the new Pope has stressed, "was impossible."

Well he might of stressed that somewhere some time but in this instance the above quote is not the Pope's but rather John L. Allen Jr's summary of the Pope's views. John L. Allen Jr said 'Any resistance to Nazism, he has stressed, was impossible.'

If you look carefully at what you wrote you can see how it would lead many to believe that the pope said, "Any resistance to Nazism, was impossible" You know with quotes on either end and the Pope in the middle.

Though I suppose this is a minor point. Since I would think that we would all agree with the sentiment that such resistance was impossible and understand that the Pope probably does not subscribe to the literal meaning of John L. Allen Jr' summary of his views. That we know that the Pope understands that nothing in the laws of physics made such resistance impossible but rather that the Pope probably holds the view that any resistance would have in any practical
sense been a futile exercise that could quite conceivable and often did result in serious injury.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Pope had a selective memory and applied it to his youth in Germany. After all that would make him human and unlike many, who view the Pope as semi-human or consider being semi-human a job criteria, I am guessing he his very human.

I guess it just me but, if I was to make a big deal about his selective memory, I would want more evidence than a regurgitated quote from the J-Post and John L. Allen Jr's opinions.

But that is just me.

seth- Simply because the Romans perceived Jesus as resisting their empire does not mean that He was in the way that they thought. His concerns were for us in His heavenly kingdom, not here on earth. People often have the wrong impression of another person's intent. For example, I wasn't going to tell you to "read the Bible." Perhaps you jumped to the wrong conclusion, friend.