Benedict isn't a real Nazi. He's just a worm without any moral strength.

First of all, I admit he's not a Nazi. Secondly, I admit he was only fourteen when it started (although he stayed in service of the Nazis past his eighteenth birthday). Thirdly, no, I doubt I would have done any better.

But my problem with it is that Benedict, as far as I've been able to tell, has throughout his life been a 'moral hardliner' that's vascillated with the times. He reports that he was anti-Nazi, but when the Nazis came to draft him, rather than take the moral ground at any point in the next four years and resist as John Paul II did--even when guarding that Dachau-labor warplane plant or laying traps for Russian tanks coming to liberate those in Austrian camps--he simply went along with what was easiest. He remained a Nazi. "They told me to" is not a moral defense. It is the defense of the weak man. I am a weak man. Most people are weak men. The man who would be Pope--and would be a moral hardliner--ought not be intrinsically morally weak. And yes, eighteen years is certainly old enough to be able to make a moral decision. He made his decision. He decided to go along and fight with the German army.

However, he finally did desert, right? Yeah. In May 1945. And I've heard, "No, idiot, it's 1944" from more than a few DUers, but I'm inclined to believe actual news sources over anonymous ramblers on the internet.

http://www.nysun.com/article/12501
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15421103&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=the-panzer-cardinal-name_page.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/19/world/main689498.shtml
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1692974,00.html

I don't see much moral strength in a man who decides, the month after the Russian flag flies over the Reichstag and Hitler shoots himself, that perhaps being in the German army isn't the best idea in the world. And, after literally hundreds of thousands of German soldiers had deserted, defected or surrendered, I don't think he was taking any more of a moral stand than everyone else did—the "oh, shit, it looks like the guys who told us to do this are powerless now, and now there are new guys with guns, so I better make nice with them instead." moral stand. It's not impressive to suddenly renounce your involvement with the Nazis once American guns are pointed at you.

But we can forgive him for being a weasel at eighteen. After all, it would have been difficult to take a moral stand. I mean, sure, thousands of Catholic priests and seminarians chose to endure work camps rather than serve the Nazi regime, but it would have been really unpleasant, and we can't expect the Pope to show moral clarity above and beyond the average man.

But that was then. Let's move forward a bit--to 1962, when the winds of change are blowing in the Vatican and liberal reform are the words on everyone's tongue. What is our friend Cardinal Ratzinger doing? Why, of course, he's at the forefront of the liberal-reform movement! Yes, Cardinal Ratzinger was a liberal, progressive thinker.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:ZB6MXz50a1gJ:www.time.com/time/archive/printout/0,23657,959871,00.html+%22ratzinger+was+a+progressive%22&hl=en&client=safari
http://www.missourinet.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=DD9BF46F-FC8C-457B-BC5CEEED0EAA63AF&dbtranslator=local.cfm

He claims he switched to being a conservative after seeing German student protests in 1968, but that's slightly difficult to believe, as he really didn't say a whole lot 'conservative' for a few years after that. In fact, he didn't say much at all for a few years more. He was no liberal--but then again, liberal power was dwindling. Of course, he wasn't an arch-conservative either--no decarations of the Hellbound status of Jews and liberals. It could have been that he required a decade to figure out how to say what he wanted to say. Or it could have been that the Church was going through political infighting over the validity of Vatican II, and he didn't want to be too strongly on anyone's side.

Of course, in 1978 John Paul II was elected. JP2 was young, energetic, healthy, and above all conservative. John Paul II was a hell of a conservative. And Cardinal Ratzinger quickly became a hell of a conservative. And the higher he climbed, and the closer he got to the top of the chain, the more conservative Ratzinger got. He became viciously conservative, calling the liberal ideas he held vanguard over when they were popular morally bankrupt and sinful.

And was rewarded for this, his final flip, with the papacy.

No, the man was not a Nazi. I don't even think he has the integrity to be an actual, honest-to-God Nazi.

He's just a man of no moral character; a man who believes strongly in whatever the people who hold the power believe. A Nazi soldier when the Nazis are in power, a Democratic German writer and priest when the United States set up shop, a liberal bulldog when the liberals held the Vatican, a conservative rottweiler when the conservatives held the Vatican. The perfect soldier-mentality; he would fight for whatever he's told to fight for. He's a man of no strength. He's a mental and intellectual coward. And he presumes to talk about moral clarity. The only moral clarity his life has displayed, the only rule he's unerringly followed is thus:

"Obey those with power."

This is not the type of man who should be Pope. There is a problem here.

And he is now a head of state, and we all know that heads of state influence popular culture and groupthink, if nothing else. He is bad news for the Catholic church and the world in general.

It's not as if he wields any power as head of Vatican City--that alone ought wield him even less geopolitical power than whoever the leaders of Andorra, Monaco, and San Marino are. The few priests, cardinals, bishops, and guards of the Vatican City he is head over are nowhere near as important as the 1.1B Catholics he is nominally leader of.

Free fallin'!

N/T