The Pope....

jpeffer2007 · 01-16-2008, 11:21 AM

I found this statement on a website that I consider very reputable. Is this true? Can anyone elaborate on the details?

Quote:

The Pope, as a youngster in Germany, was forced to become a member of the Hitler Youth, and later was drafted into military service by the German Army during World War II.

Thanks,
Jamie

grandsecretary · 01-16-2008, 12:32 PM

An extract from a report in "The Sunday Times" - April 2005:

Quote:

The son of a rural Bavarian police officer, Ratzinger was six when Hitler came to power in 1933. His father, also called Joseph, was an anti-Nazi whose attempts to rein in Hitler’s Brown Shirts forced the family to move home several times.

In 1937 Ratzinger’s father retired and the family moved to Traunstein, a staunchly Catholic town in Bavaria close to the Führer’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. He joined the Hitler Youth aged 14, shortly after membership was made compulsory in 1941.

He quickly won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary. “Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and not an enthusiastic one,” concluded John Allen, his biographer.

Two years later Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp.

Ratzinger has insisted he never took part in combat or fired a shot — adding that his gun was not even loaded — because of a badly infected finger. He was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to death camps. He deserted in April 1944 and spent a few weeks in a prisoner of war camp.

He has since said that although he was opposed to the Nazi regime, any open resistance would have been futile — comments echoed this weekend by his elder brother Georg, a retired priest ordained along with the cardinal in 1951.

“Resistance was truly impossible,” Georg Ratzinger said. “Before we were conscripted, one of our teachers said we should fight and become heroic Nazis and another told us not to worry as only one soldier in a thousand was killed. But neither of us ever used a rifle against the enemy.”

Some locals in Traunstein, like Elizabeth Lohner, 84, whose brother-in-law was sent to Dachau as a conscientious objector, dismiss such suggestions. “It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others,” she said. “The Ratzingers were young and had made a different choice.”

In 1937 another family a few hundred yards away in Traunstein hid Hans Braxenthaler, a local resistance fighter. SS troops repeatedly searched homes in the area looking for the fugitive and his fellow conspirators.

“When he was betrayed and the Nazis came for him, Braxenthaler shot himself because he knew he couldn’t escape,” said Frieda Meyer, 82, Ratzinger’s neighbour and childhood friend. “Even though they had tortured him in Dachau concentration camp he refused to give up his resistance efforts.”

Despite question marks over Ratzinger’s wartime conduct, the main obstacle to his prospects in the conclave — the assembly of cardinals to elect the new pope — is the conservative stance he has adopted as guardian of Catholic orthodoxy since John Paul named him to head the congregation for the doctrine of the faith in 1981.

His condemnations are legion — of women priests, married priests, dissident theologians and homosexuals, whom he has declared to be suffering from an “objective disorder”.

He upset many Jews with a statement in 1987 that Jewish history and scripture reach fulfilment only in Christ — a position denounced by critics as “theological anti-semitism”. He made more enemies among other religions in 2000, when he signed a document, Dominus Jesus, in which he argued: “Only in the Catholic church is there eternal salvation”.

Some of his staunchest critics are in Germany. A recent poll in Der Spiegel, the news magazine, showed opponents of a Ratzinger papacy outnumbered supporters by 36% to 29%.

As one western cardinal who was in two minds about him put it: “He would probably be a great pope, but I have no idea how I would explain his election back home.”

One liberal theologian, when asked what he thought of a Ratzinger papacy, was more direct: “It fills me with horror.”

Catholic Masons are concerned about what might be expected from His Holiness the Pope and the signs are not good. Representations are being made - time will tell.

George the 3rd · 01-16-2008, 02:52 PM

Not to worry, according to Saint Malachy he is the next to last Pope anyway! The madness will end soon.

jpeffer2007 · 01-17-2008, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by George the 3rd

Not to worry, according to Saint Malachy he is the next to last Pope anyway! The madness will end soon.

Obviously I'm out of the loop here...what does Saint Malachy say?

Thanks,
Jamie

D. W. Brown · 01-17-2008, 12:14 PM

I was reading something yesterday about the new Pope (I'm not catholic) and it looked disturbing too me. It talked about how even Priest in the field are worried about his fundamentalism.

I know our counterparts in France (Grand Orient de France) are concerned about their President (Nicolas Sarkozy) meeting with the Pope at the Vatican. It is generating some press too that Sarkozy is being called on the carpet by the Grand Master of the Grand Orient de France wanting an explanation for his visit and to ensure he is going to maintain the separation of chruch and state.

George the 3rd · 01-18-2008, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpeffer2007

Obviously I'm out of the loop here...what does Saint Malachy say?

Thanks,
Jamie

Quote:

The Prophecy of the Popes, attributed to Saint Malachy, is a list of 112 short phrases in Latin. They purport to describe each of the Roman Catholic popes (along with a few anti-popes), beginning with Pope Celestine II (elected in 1143) and concluding with a later added pope described in the prophecy as "Peter the Roman", whose pontificate will end in the destruction of the city of Rome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_Popes#Pope_Benedict_XVI_.28De_Glor ia_Olivae.29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_Popes