So, for Catholics, it’s other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play? I sure hope not.
Well said. It’s like debating the rules of calvinball.
Ol’ Joey Ratz finally got whacked eh.
If we can assess the life of, I dunno, Lyndon Johnson as more than just his policy in Vietnam, we can do the same for Pope Benedict.
Now now, let’s be fair: he’ll also be remembered for his membership in the Hitler Youth and service with the Wehrmacht.
If by you happen to have any interest in the context around those facts, you can find it in most of the hundred obituaries that are out there today.
Oh, no doubt; as I’m sure anyone in the public eye who served would have to give. But I’d wager if you were to survey the public about what they knew of the man “Hitler Youth” would be in the top five answers.
If the question is how he’ll be remembered, to a massive, massive portion of people it’s “Ex-Nazi Pope who hid sex abuse and resigned.” Of course that’s not the full story, but that’ll be the takeaway.
But he was a deep thinker, man.
He thought long and hard about the rules of his fantasy world
Timex
1794
But they’d be wrong, right?
There isn’t anything suggesting that Benedict was actually a Nazi, is there? He was enrolled in the Hitler Youth when he was 14, because it was legally required of all German youth at the time. I thought that the actual record showed that Benedict and his family were pretty anti-Nazi, and this actually caused a number of troubles for them under the Nazi regime.
Perhaps. But I think the broader populace will flatten “membership in the Hitler Youth, and served in the German armed forces in WWII” down to “Nazi”.
There are a lot of people we label as Nazis without really digging into the nuances of their political beliefs.
wisefool
1797
It is my understanding that the notion the wermarch were blameless is a myth. Whitewashed after WW2 so they could oppose the soviets
The guy who ran the honors program at the university I went to for undergrad (before I um sort of flunked out of the honors program, heh) had been in the same boat so to speak as the ex-Pope. Teenager in the Reich, forced into the HY, all that. Didn’t stop us from using it against him though, dicks that we were at that age.
Thanks for clarifying what you meant, anonymgeist. I apologize for reading it less charitably and replying with a bit of snark.
People do a lot of bad things. When those people are in positions of immense power, the effect of those things is magnified. So, one would imagine, are the impacts of the good they do, hence the complexity of most people whom we consider “great” (not necessarily good). It’s never a case of this or that, but of this and that.
Benedict certainly seemed exactly like what I would expect a German theologian turned pontiff to be though, with all the baggage good and bad that might entail.
Timex
1801
In the case of the Pope, he was drafted and then deserted from the German army.
Well, he deserted in April of 1945, when pretty much everybody deserted. I’ll grant that he was a reluctant participant — who would not have been? — but I don’t think he gets much anti-Nazi credit for running away from the Soviet advances of March and April 1945.
Timex
1803
Actual Nazis?
I think that’s the point here. The fact that he was German in the 40’s doesn’t really mean he is a Nazi, especially given that he was a child during the rise of Hitler. He wasn’t exactly singing “Tomorrow Belongs To Me,” from what I can tell.
