The Jerusalem Post had an editorial on Monday defending the new pope’s reputation against slanderers: “Ratzinger a Nazi? Don’t believe it”:
London’s Sunday Times would have us believe that one of the leading contenders for the papacy is a closet Nazi. In if-only-they-knew tones, the newspaper informs readers that German-born Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler Youth during World War II and suggests that, because of this, the “panzer cardinal” would be quite a contrast to his predecessor, John Paul II.
The article also classifies Ratzinger as a “theological anti-Semite” for believing in Jesus so strongly that – gasp! – he thinks that everyone, even Jews, should accept him as the messiah.
To all this we should say, “This is news?!”…
As the Sunday Times article admits, Ratzinger’s membership in the Hitler Youth was not voluntary but compulsory; also admitted are the facts that the cardinal – only a teenager during the period in question – was the son of an anti-Nazi policeman, that he was given a dispensation from Hitler Youth activities because of his religious studies, and that he deserted the German army….
The only significant complaint that the Times makes against Ratzinger’s wartime conduct is that he resisted quietly and passively, rather than having done something drastic enough to earn him a trip to a concentration camp. Of course, whenever it is said that a German failed the exceptional-resistance-to-the-Nazis test, it would behoove us all to recognize that too many Jews failed it, as well.
Read the article here (registration required.)