News story from MSN. In summary, Pope Benedict has lifted a 20 year excommunication on some ultra-right-wing bishops, one of whom is a Holocaust denier. He has made an apology for his statements about the Holocaust, but it reads to me a little like, "I'm sorry what I said caused trouble," rather than, "I realise what I said was wrong."
From his biography, I'd say he is a Catholic fundamentalist, but there's only one profound way to declare him a "Nazi pope" - when you make it not so much about the historical Nazi doctrine but about the one issue the Nazis and the Catholic church could agree on, and which after our standards is Nazi-ish in its anti-semitism. During the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic church declared, for the first time in its history, the following: (Wiki quote) Well, seems it needed to be said. The bishops this eclat broke out over were going to be excommunicated (if they were) not because of their specific views on the holocaust, but because they refused to accept the decisions of the Second Vatican Council, where pope John Paul II was speaking out for this declaration among others, and Joseph Ratzinger, now pope, advised a vocal objector of it. Allow me a small elaboration before I come back to pope Benedict the whatever... I know it's often being quoted that he joined Hitler youth as a young man, but do keep in mind that if your family couldn't leave the country -and apparently, his couldn't- you were, at that point, drafted into Hitler Youth. It was mandatory, as were the following services. My grandmother was drafted late in the war, the last year to be exactly, and then sent to the Eastern front as a radio operator. (I don't even know why they left her alone that long, maybe it was both her civil servant father and her not exactly aryan blueprint.) On the way she deserted together with her best friend. This desertation was treated like a desertation from the army, and hadn't time run its course, it would have resulted in a death sentence, many of which were still being carried out by overeager comrades weeks after the capitulation. (She walked from East Germany to Austria, her friend never arrived there.) So, I am not saying everyone who joined the Hitler youth at the time was doing so under duress, but it isn't clear evidence for a Nazi worldview either. (Ten years earlier, it was a different case.) Back to the pope: He was a hardwing fundamentalist before he became pope. I mean, he was known for holding, and executing views that were extreme even for the Catholic church itself. He was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, yeah...). He recently was applauded for his apology for a wave of unpunished sexual abuse cases within the church, even though his former Office set the guidelines on how they should be dealt with, and until 2005, church policy regarding these cases was within his responsibility. They also decided on church doctrines regarding homosexual rights ("although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder...", from 1986 and coming from his office), the treatment of liberal theologists from Ernesto Cardenal to Eugen Drewermann, cloning, abortion, HIV prevention, birth control and ecumenism, if I remember correctly. So, his crassly dogmatic views on many things weren't exactly a secret. Now he wants to re-establish these bishops after making it possible to read the mass in Latin again, also after re-establishing that it is possible to hold prayers for the Jews being "saved and brought to find the faith" half a century after the Second Vatican Council ended the policy of trying to missionize Jews at any cost... He wouldn't be pope today had he ever publicly spoken out against the Council, but you could draw connections. Surprise, surprise. In any case, all this man ever looked for when searching for answers was to old times and long agos. So I was mildly surprised when, after his appointment in 2005, he was cheered on by people who seemed to believe this was a time of opening and modernisation for the Church. I was actually a bit baffled by the euphoria I saw in people who had thought that his predecessor wasn't modern enough! His views on homosexuality, or on reuniting the Christian churches (or even just the various Catholic branches (yes, they exist)), or his paternalizing fundamentalists who think the mass should be read in Latin again, should come as no surprise. When it comes to the holocaust denying British bishop, I think Pope Benedict XVI's stance on that particular issue was either indifferent because it concerns, in his world, members of a different religion, or he is loosing it and oversaw this - or, worst of all, his view on all Jews is pre-Second Vatican Council, and holocaust denial is collateral damage for him. This collaborate damage is what he is currently trying to control. Let me close this by revealing I am a former Catholic, which, by Catholic doctrine as I know it, isn't even possible in the first place. (I admit it! I was an altar girl! My parents were astonished.) I was raised in a very Catholic setting -outside the family, that is- and fit myself into it for some time, but that completely crumbled away when I was 12.These days, I just happen not to believe in anything pinnable and wouldn't know how to do it even if I wanted to.
My guess is that Pope Benedict XVI attempted to draw back into the fold of the Catholic Church those elements he saw favorable to his point of view, as part of his general views on making the Church a more unified and traditional body. The Society of St. Pius X is a traditionalist Catholic splinter group, and one of those that the current Pope would appear to like to enter into the fold once more - not as much as going against Vatican II but more along the lines of playing at its boundaries. Unfortunately for him, he got Richard Williamson in the package, one of the Bishops whose consecration got the Society excommunicated in the first place - not due his views, which were largely an unknown like him, but due to the fact that said Bishops were ordained without approval. And Bishop Williamson is a nutter. A conspiracy-theorist, Holocaust-denying nutter. And now the Pope's in damage control mode, doing his best to get rid of any whiff of Williamson while he still can. I'm quite certain that he didn't have Bishop Williamson in mind when he lifted the excommunication of the Society of St. Pius X.
That would be the less paranoid possibility of the two. If only his determination to re-unite Roman-Catholic Church and its splinter groups would include only a few more liberal splinter groups as well - which it doesn't and never did.
I am likewise surprised that anyone thought that this was a step towards modernisation for Catholicism. The British media reporting on the appointment of the new Pope were all for some other guy (whose name I've forgotten now) because of his supposedly liberal outlook, and as openly opposed as they could be to the appointment of Joseph Ratzinger, thanks to his very conservative views, which have been seen in this country as a very big step backwards for Catholicism. The fact that he was in the Hitler Youth was just a kind of, "Well that just proves it," nail-in-the-coffin type thing. I think that, whatever his motives for ushering Holocaust deniers back into the fold, the fact that they are Holocaust deniers is the most sensational aspect and will therefore only further cement this reputation for being dangerously right wing, as suggested in my slightly tongue-in-cheek title to this thread. (Nazism is usually equated with the radical far right in this country, not just with the National Socialist Party of Germany.)
That's why I said unified and traditional. A bias exists, but the underlying cause seems to be reunification and restoration of the Catholic Church. And it's worth noting that the members of the Society of St. Pius X were only excommunicated due to schismatic actions - to whit, consecrating Bishops separately from the Church proper. Pope John Paul II also actively tried to return the Society back to the fold of the Catholic Church, albeit focusing on those members who did not actively participate in schismatic actions.
not bothering to read what the rest of you say, i'll just chime in with my own view anyway. well, more of a question this time... we know he was in the hitler youth, but does that make him an NSDAP faithful? and even if it did, we know there were those within the party that opposed the way hitler ran it. what evidence do we have that he was rooting for mr mustache?
This paragraph in particular: From what I know, he was 14 at the time, and his father was so sick the family found it too late to leave the country. Joining HY was mandatory and dictated by the law from 1939 on. It was made Germany's only youth organisation by law three years earlier (for boys, there was an equivalent for girls). From 1939, the joining of everyboy older than ten years could be forced by the police, even aginst the will of his parents. The boys of the family had dragged the issue until 1941, with the help of their Catholic school, and Ratzinger was 14 when he was incorporated into the HY (that alone was a bit risky and not exactly a sign of dedication to the Führer.) So the winesses and documents say. With a lot of strictly Catholic families not being eager to join the NS institutions I find that credible.
Just to make this up to date: Add the newest debate about condoms being part of the HIV problem rather than a solution, and you know this religion needs no bashers with a head of church like that.
So we should all just have unprotected sex and pray we don't get HIV? I swear this no condoms = no sex argument was on Beverly Hills 90210. He must be a fan.
Fidelity, spirituality and abstinence. Being somwhow monogamous might indeed improve matters, and I don't know about spirituality, but abstinence from the Catholic Church might help indeed at this point.
Well with abstinence you definitely would not contract HIV, bust you wouldn't contract any babies either. If all his followers adopt this strategy it's a win-win situation for all.
That's the paradox of any crusade for abstinence, and why I can't just shrug it off and say "preach whatever you want": Wherever relevant moral instances and role models preach it and people are expected to comply such standards, sex is still being had, but without protection against STDs, without birth control, and often enough without any proper knowledge what you're actually doing. And yes, I know I don't have to tell any of you.
