German paper outraged at
British coverage of 'Nazi' pope
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Thu Apr 21, 6:00 AM ETGermany's top-selling newspaper Bild was furious at the coverage of the new pope by British newspapers, which had accentuated Benedict XVI's past as a teenager in Nazi Germany.
"English insult the German pope," said the front-page headline, below the words "Hitler Youth".
The Sun, like Bild the highest-selling daily newspaper in its market, had headlined its coverage of the election of Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday with the words "From Hitler Youth to... Papa Ratzi."
"It is impertinent to reduce the German pope to a Hitler Youth on the day after his election," Bild fumed.
The new pope, known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger until his election, has made no secret of his past in wartime Germany, saying he was an unwilling participant in Adolf Hitler's youth movement which he joined at the age of 14.
Bild was also unhappy with the front-page headline on Wednesday's Daily Telegraph broadsheet which described the pope as "God's Rottweiler", a reference to his role as the moral guardian of the Catholic Church's conservative wing.
A Bild editorial written by senior journalist Franz Josef Wagner said: "If you read the British tabloids yesterday, you would have thought Hitler had become pope.
"Only the devil could come up with such a thing. Or you English, with your complexes.
"It is like in football matches, we are always the Nazis."
The editorial added: "I do not hate in return. The pope in his goodness will include you idiots in his prayers. Yes you, the editors of The Sun and the Daily Mirror. Even idiots go to heaven."
The Daily Mirror tabloid was sharply criticised at home and abroad for a front page during the Euro 96 football championships which played on the countries' rivalry in World War II ahead of a match between the two countries.
Jewish groups around the world have generally acknowledged the new pontiff's earlier efforts to build links between Jews and Catholics.
Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.Commentary: Benedict abused as 'nazi pope'
By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Religious Affairs EditorPublished April 21, 2005
"Nazi pope a clear and present danger to the civilized world," read the headline of a reader's letter in a forum of NYTimes.com, The New York Times' Web site.
It wasn't the worst abuse leveled at Pope Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, a German. Type the words "Nazi pope" into the Google search line, and you will get nearly 700 mentions.
"Seig Heil, hail Mary!" read one post, misspelling German word for victory, which is "Sieg."
"What can you expect from a filthy Nazi?" asked one blogger quoted, with horror, by National Review Online. The blogger went on: "...Nazi bas-- wearing a dress and no doubt with a past in child-molesting."
The Internet is of course the kooks' playground, where anti-German prejudices are safe to disseminate for a simple reason: unlike organizations representing blacks, Jews, Italians or the Irish, their German-American counterparts hardly ever raise a fuss.
"We are somewhat reticent," Ernst Ott, chairman of the German-American National Congress known as DANK, told United Press International Thursday.
"We mustn't react impulsively. The more we say the worse things become. It's much better to enlighten people."
There are some German-Americans who believe that this kind of quietism has only made matters worse in the six decades since the end of World War II, and particularly after Germany's reunification in 1990.
Before Ratzinger's elevation to the papacy, the worst outburst of Germanophobia in the United States occurred on July 25, 2000, when an Air France Concorde crashed in Paris, killing more than 100 passengers, mainly German tourists.
Jubilant messages celebrating the "German barbecue" filled America Online's chat rooms. When this correspondent protested to AOL he received no reply, and the abuse was not stopped.
Now, however, things have become even more egregious, complained Werner Baroni, former editor and publisher of Amerika-Woche, a German-language weekly.
"Ever since Ratzinger has become pope I have a hard time bringing down my blood sugar level," Baroni, a diabetic, went on.
A meticulous journalist of the old school, 77-year old Baroni fumes, "I don't know what upsets me more -- the insults or the historical sloppiness with which the American media treat Ratzinger's youth.
"They show an old photograph of a young man in uniform claiming that was Ratzinger in the Hitler Youth. In reality, the picture showed him in the fatigues of an anti-aircraft gunner."
As one who has been through similarly horrifying experiences, Baroni is outraged by the self-righteousness with which the American media treat this subject.
It was, he said, yet another Nazi crime to assign children to flak positions where they would be killed or maimed by the tens of thousands.
True, Ratzinger was in the Hitler Youth, the paramilitary organization in which membership was compulsory after 1941. Still, he managed to drop out by insisting that it was incompatible with his life in a pre-seminary.
The Jerusalem Post newspaper cleared him of any culpability and ridiculed those who suggest that pope Benedict was a closet Nazi. It mocked people accusing him of being a "theological anti-Semite for believing in Jesus so strongly that -- gasp! -- he thinks anyone, even Jews, should accept him as the Messiah."
Added the Post, "To all this we should say, 'This is news?'"
To the burgeoning species of Internet gasbags it clearly was news.
"I bet you this neo-Nazi pope will have the Swiss guards goose stepping on St. Peter's Square in no time," predicted one blogger.
Of course, it is questionable whether such attacks on the pontiff, a saintly and particularly mild scholar, are truly aimed against the German people.
"They knock the Germans but they are motivated by their anti-Catholicism," Catholic League president William Donohue proposed.
New York Times columnist Maureen Down seemed to prove Donohue right by stirring all the elements she considered disagreeable about Ratzinger and his church into one venomous brew:
"Joseph Ratzinger, (is) a 78-year-old hidebound archconservative who ran the office that used to be called the Inquisition and who once belonged to Hitler Youth.
"For American Catholics -- especially women and pro-choice Catholic pols -- the cafeteria is officially closed. After all, Cardinal Ratzinger, nicknamed God's Rottweiler' and 'the Enforcer,' helped deny Communion rights to John Kerry..."
Still, this bundle of clichés at least does not include the word "Nazi pope." This term was entered America's foremost paper via the Readers' Opinion section of NYTimes.com and caused dismay at the Anti-Defamation League.
"We reject that outright," ADL spokeswoman Mryna Shinebaum told UPI. Her national director, Abraham H. Foxman, had welcomed Ratzinger's election. " Cardinal Ratzinger has great sensitivity to Jewish history and the Holocaust. He has shown this sensitivity countless times," Foxman stated.
Was it ethical, then, for NYTimes.com to publish a text accusing pope Benedict XVI of being a Nazi?
Toby Usnik, the Times' director of public relations seems to think so. "We choose not to censor such posts unless they are abusive, defamatory or obscene. While we believe that this post stretches the truth of the pope's youth, we do not believe it violates our policies," he informed UPI.
"This calls for another insulin shot," fumed Baroni. "It would clearly be abusive if you labeled a black man with the 'N word,'" he said.
"But in the Times' mindset there's evidently nothing defamatory about calling a German pope a Nazi -- in other words a member of a species guilty of a genocide."Copyright © 2005 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
In German town, Benedict XVI known for love of cats, conversation
By Matthew Schofield, Knight Ridder Newspapers
Thu Apr 21, 6:20 PM ETREGENSBURG, Germany - When he was a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI often delivered sermons at the German-language church in Campasanto Teutonico near St. Peter's Basilica, but his most heartfelt talks may have been the ones he gave after celebrating Mass.
"I went with him once," said Konrad Baumgartner, the head of the theology department at Regensburg University. "Afterwards, he went into the old cemetery behind the church.
"It was full of cats, and when he went out, they all ran to him. They knew him and loved him. He stood there, petting some and talking to them, for quite a long time. He visited the cats whenever he visited the church. His love for cats is quite famous."
Although his public image is that of a stern enforcer of church doctrine, in Regensburg, where the 78-year-old pope came into his own as a theologian, those who know the man known as "God's Rottweiler" say his soft, human side has been ignored.
The pope loves cats, can't resist Christmas cookies and, three months ago, waxed on about how he dreamed of retiring from the hectic life at the Vatican to enjoy his last years reading, writing and talking with friends.
His brother Georg still lives in Regensburg and is Benedict's strongest connection to the town he left for Munich when he became archbishop. Georg Ratzinger, also ordained in the church, spent decades as the musical director of the famous Regensburger Domspatzen boys' choir. He lives down a twisting cobbled street from the towering Gothic Regensburg Cathedral.
"The totally wrong picture is painted of my brother," he said Thursday in a dining room decorated with iconic art and photos and letters from Pope John Paul II. "He's a cheerful man, friendly. But he does have principles that he will stand for."
In fact, Ratzinger believes that instead of being divisive, Benedict will build bridges - "though there are limits."
He bridled at how some members of the English press have treated his brother. One paper ran a headline saying "From Hitler Youth to Papa Ratzi," but Ratzinger said all boys were forced to join the Hitler Youth and that his brother was never a Nazi.
"In our family, we were taught they were evil," he said.
His brother's interests included music, Ratzinger said. "He played the organ quite well, but he hasn't played for years now."
When he was younger, Benedict XVI hiked in the Tyrol mountains to relax. As he grew older and had less time and energy, he tended the magnolia tree outside his house, cleaned the fountain under the statue of Mary and thinned out the ivy.
Agnes Heindl has been Georg Ratzinger's housekeeper for 10 years, and she's come to know the new pope well.
She said she often drove then-Cardinal Ratzinger to his house after the brothers had shared Sunday dinner. His favorite foods were Weisswurst - the traditional white Bavarian sausage - and anything sweet. She said he's known for trying every type of Christmas cookie at a party.
"Oh, he could just talk about anything, really," she said. "He liked to talk about friends and how people he knew were doing. He's a very pleasant man to have a conversation with."
She clutched 16 Benedict roses, white, as she talked.
"Maybe if I can't get the flowers to him, someone will take a picture of them, and he'll see that we're thinking of him," she said.
She spoke with him again this week. He called on Wednesday morning, after getting busy signals at his brother's house Tuesday night. When she answered, a well-known voice said: "Can I please speak to my brother."
"The Holy Father called, and all I could do was stammer, `So how do I address you now?' He laughed," she said.
She said she's glad she heard him laugh. His new job isn't easy, and he'll need to laugh. She said that when he was relaxing, there was never a mystery about what would make him laugh.
"Oh, cats," she said. " He loves them."
She pointed up a staircase to a wall full of painted plates, each depicting a different cat. The brothers collected the plates together, she said.
"When we were on vacation, a cat, a little kitten, would come by, and he'd be giddy, almost giggling with joy," she said." Cats love him; they always go to him straight away. And he loves them back."
He doesn't have a cat, however. Heindl doesn't think he can have one living in the Vatican.
"He was always content to play with the street cats," she said. "I don't know much about Rome, but I know there's no shortage of cats there."
Benedict still owns the house he bought on the edge of Regensburg in 1970, but he visits only a couple times a year. The city adjusted his deed this week: It now lists the owner as "Holy Father."
On Thursday afternoon, Chico the cat - perhaps the closest thing there is to The Pope's Cat, strolled from the shaded arch between the pope's front door and his garage. Chico belongs to Rupert Hofbauer, who looks after Benedict's garden and home.
"Chico is his friend, though he scratched him over Christmas because he didn't want to go outside, all day or night, and the cardinal tried to put him out," Hofbauer said. "They usually get along well, though."
Hofbauer and many others in Regensburg, where the new pope remains on the faculty rolls, shared mixed emotions, pride and sorrow, when they heard the news. Georg Ratzinger said he almost feels as if he's lost his brother, knowing that it won't be easy to see him now.
"I thought he'd retire soon, and we would finally have a lot of time to finish all the talks we've started through the years. We talked about that, just this Christmas when he was home," Hofbauer said.
"He thought it sounded nice, to retire, to take it easy. That's not how it worked out though, is it?"
Copyright © 2005 KnightRidder.com
Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reservedThe New Pope and Anti-Semitism
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Edward I. Koch
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
The New Pope
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany has been elected as the next pope of the Roman Catholic Church and will take the name Benedict XVI. There are some who may criticize the election of Cardinal Ratzinger, since he joined the Hitler Youth at age 14 as a child growing up in Germany. I think any such criticism is unfounded.How can the decision to join the Hitler Youth corps be the responsibility of a child? The Nazis brilliantly exploited German children with the games and military outfits that most youngsters enjoy. Former New York Times Executive Editor Max Frankel, in the opening paragraph of his book "The Times of My Life and My Life With The Times," summed up a child's feelings at the time:
"I was not yet three years old when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, and I could have become a good little Nazi in his army. I loved the parades: I wept when other kids marched beneath our window without me. But I was ineligible for the Aryan race, the Master Race that Hitler wanted to purify of Jewish blood and other pollutants so that it could rule the world for ‘a thousand years.'"
The leader of the Hitler Jugend, Balder von Shirach, was convicted at Nuremberg after the war and sentenced to 20 years in prison. However, the Allies did not find that the Hitler Jugend organization itself was a criminal organization.
If Cardinal Ratzinger had not joined the Hitler Youth, it would have been because his parents kept him out, which some – but very few – parents did. While Germans were not automatically jailed or shot for such conduct, you can be sure that refusing to cooperate with the Nazi authorities would have subjected them to adversity. Very few people had the courage to stand up to the Nazi murderers, especially when their children's lives were involved.
One of the highest priorities of the new pope hopefully will be to maintain a close relationship between Jews and Catholics, an effort begun by Pope John XXIII and vastly expanded by Pope John Paul II. I hope it is seen as a priority by the new pope. Of course, the new pope will continue to seek a reconciliation with other Christian faiths and a continuing dialogue with the representatives of Islam.
Cardinal Ratzinger in his homily delivered immediately before the conclave said he does not believe in syncretism, the attempt to reconcile different faiths. He probably would not attend on any occasion the service of another faith.
He is not alone in this position. Orthodox rabbis (but not Conservative or Reform rabbis) take the same position, as do some Protestant clergy. Indeed, some would go so far as to seek to punish a member of their sect if he were to participate in or even attend a joint service commemorating a public event, including memorializing a tragedy such as 9/11.
Pope John Paul II visited a Roman synagogue – the first pope to do so – and placed a written prayer in a crevice of the Western Wall. That, for me, set the standard. It is my hope that Cardinal Ratzinger as pope will follow in John Paul's footsteps, and that others, Jewish and Protestant, will embrace, as John Paul II did, members of other faiths, remembering that we will all ultimately answer to the same God.
Lenora Fulani's Anti-Semitism
Lenora Fulani is once again in the news. Last year, Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote a letter published in The New York Times. Mr. Foxman wrote, "Ms. Fulani has stated that Jews ‘had to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism – to function as mass murderers of people of color – in order to keep it.'"
I was shocked at Ms. Fulani's clearly anti-Semitic statement and wrote to the chair of the Independence Party, stating in part:
"A Daily News article of December 7 written by Lisa Colangelo states, ‘Party representatives have said the quotes were taken out of context.' I would appreciate knowing the proper context of Dr. Fulani's remarks referred to by ‘party representatives.' I cannot conceive of any context in which Ms. Fulani's comments could be perceived as other than anti-Semitic, but perhaps there was a unique context which gave the remarks a benign rather than a malignant meaning."
On December 16, 2004, Dr. Fulani wrote, "The context of the remark quoted by Mr. Foxman in his April 20, 2004 letter to the New York Times is a theatre review I wrote in 1989. The play, No Room for Zion, was written by Fred Newman and was produced that year at the Castillo Theatre. The play was part memoir, part political critique of the Jewish experience in the post-war period. My review dealt specifically with the issue of nationalism and its dangers. In this case I was remarking on how black America should learn from the tragedies experienced by Jewish people. I wrote:
‘As I sat and listened I saw more deeply in Fred's teaching the historical pitfalls of nationalism. After all, according to nationalistic ideology, the Jewish people have gotten the ultimate – land, in the form of a nation state. The fact is, however, that they had to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism – to function as mass murderers of people of color – in order to keep it.'
"Because my comment was about the play and, more importantly, because the production was an expression of Newman's views which have significantly shaped my own, I asked him to write to you to provide the larger historical and intellectual ‘context' in which both the play and my review were written. I have enclosed his letter, which I hope will shed further light on the issue at hand."
Newman's letter stated: "‘The dirtiest work of capitalism – to which Dr. Fulani referred in her article – ‘to function as mass murders of people of color' is to act as its garrison state in an increasingly hostile and unstable Arab and Muslim world. The language is harsh. The reality, as we now see, is even more harsh."
Mr. Newman closed with "Perhaps this brings us to a bottom line. It may be that my views – the views of a leftist – are distasteful to you and that you would choose to criticize me for them. That, of course, is your prerogative."
This year, Dr. Fulani defended her earlier remarks and stated recently that she still believes her statement on Jews and Israel to be correct. Independence Party members should join together and do their utmost to wrench control of the party away from Dr. Fulani. That contest should begin right after the November general election if not before.
In the meanwhile, all who are now interested in an Independence Party designation as a second line on the ballot should join together in an effort to oust Dr. Fulani. They should also consider applying to the Liberal Party, which is in the process of being reconstituted and has a name which should be even more comfortable for independents, especially those appalled by Dr. Fulani and her radical supporters.
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Edward I. Koch, author, lawyer and talk radio host, was a member of the U.S. Congress and, for 12 years, the 105th mayor of New York City.
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Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Fr. Michael Reilly
Saturday, April 23, 2005Once again, the media have failed miserably in their attempt to bully the Catholic Church into accepting their agenda.
In American politics, the media are able to frame the debate on key issues by negatively portraying elected officials who disagree with their agenda or by commissioning and touting push polls. Throughout the Terri Schiavo controversy, the media informed the public that the entire American public objected to Republican efforts in Congress to protect her life. After she was dead, it was revealed that there were serious flaws in the polls and that in reality nearly 80 percent of the American public actually believe that it was wrong to starve her to death.Likewise, the media are able to damage the credibility of key people, and by extension their ideas, by labeling them. While the label "right wing" or "conservative" is regularly applied to some commentators, the media never apply the "liberal" label to other commentators. Barbra Streisand is simply Barbra Streisand, as compared to the "very conservative" Charlton Heston. Rush Limbaugh is the "conservative" radio host, but Al Franken is just a radio host.
In a similar way, the media shamelessly attempted to bully the cardinals in their selection of the 265th pope.
Frustrated by their inability to influence the 2004 presidential election at home, the media regularly floated polls indicating that American Catholics disagree with key Church teachings on human life and sexuality. They also described nearly each of the leading papabile as either "promising prospects" or "hard-line traditionalists."
The press went out of its way to find prominent Catholics to say that the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger would be "divisive." They have called him everything from the papal enforcer to the enemy of academic freedom in Catholic universities.
Much to their dismay, in one of the shortest conclaves in history, Cardinal Ratzinger was recognized by more than two-thirds of the world's cardinals as a man who could lead more than 1 billion Catholics throughout the world.
How did the cardinals opt for a man who came to symbolize conservative Catholicism throughout the reign of John Paul II? Maybe it's because their view of Cardinal Ratzinger is based on personal experience and knowledge of the Church, rather than through the lens of the American media.
Now the media are dismissing the cardinals as "out of touch" with their followers. Maybe the cardinals of the Catholic Church simply dismiss the American media as irrelevant.
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