Just in case you may have wondered about my attitude towards the Roman Catholic Church, I want to make it clear that I am deeply anti-Catholic. While I think Islam is perhaps the greater danger to the world, the Roman Catholic Church in my opinion runs a very close second. Both religions are reactionary religious sects, no matter how large they are. Their aim is to put a lid on the liberalisation of our laws and practices, to keep women in a secondary role in society, and to impose a frightened masculine heterosexuality on everyone without exception. Both religions are focused on achieving and holding onto power, and do not shrink from attempting to subvert democratic processes wherever such opportunities present themselves. In the United States, as I have pointed out recently, the Roman Catholic Church has challenged governments and is deliberately buying up or suborning medical real estate in order to make sure that their death-cult writ reaches more and more people, whether they are Roman Catholics or not.
This is why Simon Jenkins’ op-ed in the Guardian yesterday is perhaps the only comment so far on the election of Pope Bergoglio which has hit the nail directly on the head. The opening paragraph, in a sense, says all that needs to be said:
Papal elections are God’s Olympics. The splendour, the global publicity, the weeping crowds, the human drama, the race to the finish, all dazzle the senses and beg interpretive meaning. There is none. The conclave is showmanship. Those who believe the pope to be God’s minister on Earth must regard his choice as no more than an act of God. Those who believe otherwise see him as leader of a large but declining conservative sect, a genial figurehead but with a mostly baleful influence on the societies over which he claims authority. It is in the latter respect that his election matters.
Remember what I quoted from something that Jason Rosenhouse said yesterday about Bergoglio’s much touted humility:
Let us recall that with his new position comes the ability to speak infallibly, at least some of the time. It is part of the job description that he is closer to God than the rest of us, and has unique authority to hold forth on the will of God. It is the teaching of his Church that they, and they alone, are qualified to interpret scripture. You place your eternal soul in jeopardy by rejecting their moral teachings. I could go on.
Humble people do not accept such positions. Quite the contrary, in fact. It is only the most arrogant of men who speak with the Church’s level of certainty. The new Pope may be many things, but humble definitely is not one of them.
This is something, apparently, that needs to be repeated constantly. This is not a humble man! No matter how ordinary a man he is, he is a man of power. Not only because of the claims that the church makes about the exalted position of the pope, or about the arrogance of those who speak with the church’s level of certainty. No, this is something that those who knew him in Argentina knew, quite independently of his position in the church. According to Eduardo de la Serna, a coordinator of an left-wing Argentinian group of priests who focus on the plight of the poor,
Bergoglio is a man of power and he knows how to position himself among powerful people. I still have many doubts about his role regarding the Jesuits who went missing under the dictatorship.
This is in an article by Uki Goni and Jonathan Watts in the Guardian: “Pope Francis: questions remain over his role during Argentina’s dictatorship.” A man of power such as this would know exactly how he would have to position himself to come out of the regime of the generals in a strong position and with plausible deniability.
Let’s not beat about the bush, shall we? Bergoglio is a man who knows when humility pays off, when silence provides the best path to power, how to deny complicity in evil when it threatens to tarnish his reputation, and how to wait patiently, not making a pitch for power, when he must have known, given the account of his coming a close second to Ratizinger in the last papal election, that being silent and appearing holy might lead his fellow cardinals to see him as compromise candidate, who had no particular irons in the fire, nothing apparently to gain or to lose. The pretence that this man is somehow holier than the rest of us, more pious, closer to god, someone worthy of reverence is all part of the papal circus. This is not to deny some of Begoglio’s more humane aspects — his concern for unwed mothers and their children, his visit to the death-bed of an ostracised bishop who married, and celebrated mass with his wife, his concern for the poor, and his own modest life, shunning opulent bishops’ palaces and chauffeur-driven cars, all of which suggest a life modelled on Francis of Assisi. But that Francis would never have accepted high office in the church, and Bergoglio, the man who is “not only passionately committed to the gospel of poverty, but also highly intelligent and cultured,” can also be what some of his Jesuit confreres believe, despite showing evidence of compassion, “harsh and disciplinarian,” “conservative and severe.”
Margaret Hebblethwaite may think that Bergoglio
will not let us down, and will be a beacon of Franciscan poverty and simplicity in a Vatican that still operates like a medieval court.
But the signs are not encouraging. In ”The Pope Francis I know” she says:
we can hope Francis may start not only with a new name but with a clean bill of moral health, and that the world can make its own judgment on what kind of man he is – not based on misunderstandings that come from painful and difficult moments in the past, but responding to his call from St Peter’s balcony for “fraternity, love and trust among us”.
That “among us” is the sticking point, for in his homily to the cardinals at the mass on the evening of his ascension, he spoke bluntly of those who disagree as in league with the devil. As reported in the National Post, “Francis in his own words,” (which, we are told, give the measure of the man — they sure do!) the “Holy Father”,
citing Leon Bloy, the 19th-century French writer who preached spiritual revival through suffering and poverty, … affirmed: “Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil [because] when we don’t witness to Jesus Christ, we witness to the worldliness of the devil.”
To Ratzinger, the former member of the Hitler Jugend, atheists were Nazis. To Pope Bergoglio, anyone who fails to witness to Jesus Christ is a “witness to the worldliness of the devil.” That is true hyperbole, Vatican fashion! That it is the simple truth to Bergoglio should set off our early warning systems.
Let us return, then, to the significance of Bergoglio’s election to the non-Catholic world, which, as Jenkins says, is the only matter of importance in this election for those who are not Catholic, at least those who are not taken in by the pageantry and pomp and the trappings of tradition, like the CNN reporter who gushed on about being filled with the Holy Spirit. As Jenkins says:
The fact that various candidates for the papacy were declared liberal or conservative mocked their status as mouthpieces for celestial authority. The reality is that these are modern, unelected politicians. Their views purport to regulate the ordinary lives of 1.2 billion adherents round the globe and should be subjected to democratic scrutiny. [my emphasis]
This needs to be stressed. These men have enormous power, power that is conferred on them by a few men wrapped in cardinal red, privileged, powerful men, who believe that their writ comes down from heaven, and what ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ mean in this context is completely misleading as to what these words are ordinarily taken to mean. As the Argentinian writer Martín Caparró says in a New York Times article, “God Is an Argentine“:
Catholicism has never excelled at letting nonbelievers live as they believe they should. The right to legal abortion, for one, will be a ruthless field of that battle: “our” pope will surely never allow his own country, where legal abortion remains severely limited, to set a bad example. Here, as everywhere, the Vatican is a main lobbying force for conservative, even reactionary, issues. An Argentine pope can bring this power to uncharted heights.
Or perhaps not. I hope I am wrong: it has often been my lot. For infallibility, please ask for el Papa Francisco. [my emphasis of the opening understatement]
Perhaps not, but almost certainly likely. The Vatican “is a main lobbying force for conservative, even reactionary issues.” This is why the election of a pope matters, because he’s the one that lends so much symbolic weight to that lobbying, exercised in practically every country by his diplomatic representatives, as well as by those who are appointed by him in every diocese throughout the world. That’s how far his reach extends, right down to every parish in the world. It is no wonder that the investiture of bishops was such a controversy in medieval Europe. Pope Bergoglio’s compassion may be genuine, but his certainty is absolute, and that, in itself, is the dangerous thing, because his office gives worldwide expression to that certainty. As Jenkins says, after mentioning the accolades received by the new pope by his fawning supporters:
But what of the misery his beliefs offer those over whom he claims unquestioning dominance? He asserts an undemocratic authority over civil societies round the world, including democratic ones. This church is fully entitled to the tolerance owed to all beliefs. But when it chooses such painfully reactionary leadership, it can hardly complain if democrats criticise it and its adherents shrug, and walk away.
As Hilary Mantel said, the Roman Catholic Church is not a place for respectable people, and with the election of another conservative pope — Surprise! Surprise! — it is still not. It is time that this was said continuously, until the poisonous influence of this reactionary institution, only slightly less reactionary than the ayatollahs and mullahs who are dragging the Islamic world into the pit of the past, is diminished, so that anyone who continues to support this ancient theocracy will feel they have to apologise for their beliefs. We may tolerate them, but we don’t have to respect them. I don’t!
As I,ve said before the Catholic church may commiserate with the suffering of the poor and helpless but they are still fiercely committed to the perpetuation of that misery
If a rational agent with a persistent policy gets a consistent result then you can’t argue that that result wasn’t what they intended.
Read Thomas Malthus and realize that Catholic rules are intended to bring about the demographic catastrophe that is the bottomless well of the Argentine crocodile’s tears.
Yes.
I also am anti-Catholic.
And anti-Protestant.
And anti-Mormon.
And anti-$cientology.
And anti-Islam.
And anti-Hindu.
And anti…well, you get the picture.
Anti woo. Anti special pleading. Anti lies and liars.
“To Ratzinger, the former member of the Hitler Jugend, atheists were Nazis.”
While I generally agree with what you write, the sentence above, although not literally wrong, is morally wrong in that it creates a wrong impression. You probably intend that impression to be created. You might not realize that it is a wrong impression.
Background: Ratzinger was born in 1927. This means that he was 6 when Hitler came to power and 18 when WWII ended. He became a member of the Hitler Jugend at 14 because this happened automatically for all people in Germany at that time. He had no choice in the matter. His family had no sympathy for the Nazis and his father had suffered as a result. Like many able-bodied young men during the war, he was pressed into service, but actually deserted (which, had he been caught, would have meant death).
I am not here to defend Ratzinger, and share many of your criticisms of him. But this is a cheap shot not worthy of your blog. In other words, the fact that he was (formally) a member of the Hitler Jugend is completely irrelevant to his person, so why mention it?
I had no idea Ratzinger had been automatically indoctrinated into the Hitler Jugend.
An added helpful bit which contributes to the painting of the overall picture.
@Phillip Helbig
Was the reinstatement of bishop Richard Williamson, a British-born cleric who in an interview said he did not believe that six million Jews died in the Nazi gas chambers irrelevant to his membership in the Hitler Youth ?
Well, of course, Phillip, I recognise that joining the Hitler Youth was not a choice, but when he went the the UK, Ratzinger had the unmitigated gall to refer to the Nazis in relation to atheism. His membership in the HJ may have been compulsory, but that does not mean that it had no effect on him, far more than Nazism has on contemporary atheists. I do not think, therefore, that it is a cheap shot at all. It is deserved, and reflects quite accurately claims that have been made.
Thank you, Kevin, I had forgotten about Richard Williamson, who is (or was — is he still alive?) virulently anti-Jewish, and a Holocaust denier to boot, and yet Ratzinger felt it appropriate to welcome him back to the church. I have no idea whether the HJ had anything to do with that, but in the context the reference to his membership in that organisation is not irrelevant at all. Had I thought it a cheap shot — and I still do not — I would not have made it.
By the way, I had a philosophy professor who also deserted in similar circustances. It wasn’t such an unusual thing to do when Germany was falling to pieces. They were far more likely to be killed by the enemy at that stage, had they not.
The Catholic Church likes to claim that it “speaks truth to power”. The only “truth” that the Catholic Church has ever spoken to power is “You must deal with us as fellow-power”. They are Saruman, not Gandalf.
Richard Williamson still walks among us, as least as recently as October of 2012.
For those into conspiracy theories, Williamson was the rector of the Seminary of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix in La Reja, Argentina from 2003 to 2009, when he was booted out of the country for visa irregularities. Which is interesting as Williamson’s excommunication was lifted in 2009 by Ratzinger, so Williamson was the head of a seminary while being excommunicated. This excommunication gig doesn’t sound like such a big deal, does it ?
So a holocaust denying bishop is reinstated by an ex Nazi ex Pope, but while excommunicated he takes refuge in the home country of the new Argentinian war criminal pope.
You really just can’t make this stuff up.
Has someone leveled the tediously common “anti-Catholic” accusation at you Eric? I do not read many Catholic rebuttals to critics, but the old “anti-Catholic” label invariably seems to come up whenever I do. I suppose the implication is that the only reason someone would criticize the RCC is because they simply made up their minds to do so, which is of course nonsense. It is almost comically circular to try and be dismissive of someone as anti-Catholic based mostly upon their willingness to criticize the church.
I am pro-liberty, pro-reason, pro equal human rights that include even homosexuals and women as humans, and pro personal autonomy. Given these things I have no rational alternative to being anti-Catholic.
My mind is unable to imagine an incarnation of the RCC that I could find acceptable and not be so radically changed as to make the old label misleading. No amount of dusting or leadership is going to salvage or significantly alter the garbage that institution builds itself upon. I often suspect that to be pope one has to have some strings or scandal that can be applied to the rest of the conclave or applicable by the conclave unto him. Any “clean” candidate would not have the clout or be controllable enough to actually win the nomination.
“Was the reinstatement of bishop Richard Williamson, a British-born cleric who in an interview said he did not believe that six million Jews died in the Nazi gas chambers irrelevant to his membership in the Hitler Youth ?”
Probably. Look at it this way: Everyone was automatically made a member by law. If you criticize Ratzinger for that, then you have to criticize all people of German nationality, which is ironically the type of racial hatred the Nazis themselves were guilty of. These people have a range of opinions, from complete sympathy with the Nazis through apathy to active opposition—just like people in other countries. Arguing that it was membership in the Hitler Jugend (via indoctrination or whatever) which led to his later sympathy for Williamson etc is simply not supported by the facts. If there were such a cause-and-effect relationship, why doesn’t it apply to all Germans of his age? If you argue that it applies in some but not others, then logically it makes sense to drop the Hitler Jugend angle altogether and just say that some people are good and some are bad, which is nothing new.
In Ratzinger’s particular case, it doesn’t even look remotely plausible. His family—from which he has never distanced himself—was rather critical of the Nazis and suffered as a result. Ratzinger himself was a “liberal theologian” until the late 1960s, his conservative views surfacing only later.
At best, you could construct some sort of connection if he voluntarily joined, but he didn’t, and apparently he wasn’t a very enthusiastic member.
And if you really, really think that this somehow caused his sympathy for Williamson (even though similar effects in millions of other people are absent), then you also have to admit that you can’t blame him in any meaningful sense.
Again, I am not here to defend Ratzinger. I am sure that we all agree in our opinions of his positions on various topics. I just fail to see any evidence that his compulsory membership in the Hitler Jugend had anything at all to do with the positions he held decades later. This seems to me to be a case where similarity doesn’t hint at anything deeper.
@Phillip Helbig
I’m assuming you either didn’t read or ignored Eric MacDonald’s response.
If Ratzinger was some minor Bavarian civil servant with no influence over 1 billion deluded sheep and hadn’t been in control of the massive wealth and power of the organized crime syndicate known as the catholic church then I wouldn’t give a damn what happened or did not happen to him as a child.
But as the self proclaimed mouthpiece of a nasty, brutish, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic sky daddy who wielded enormous secular power I hold him to a higher standard.
Just as a child forced to undergo that socially sanctioned form of child abuse known as religious eduction can not come out of the process unscathed, so it goes with Ratzinger and his association, voluntary or not, with Nazi ideology.
And based on his actions and the actions of the catholic church who have consorted with every fascist dictatorship known and aided and abetted in the escape of war criminals from post 2nd world war Europe, the null hypothesis is to assume that Ratzinger has been tainted by Nazi ideology and catholic anti semitism.
The onus is on Ratzinger to prove that he is not a Nazi anti semite and so far he has done nothing to dispel that notion and much to lend credence to it.
I completely agree with your last paragraph. I just don’t agree that we should link this to his a) involuntary membership in the Hitler Jugend where b) there is no evidence that he was enthusiastic about it at all.
Yes, due to his influence we should hold him to a higher standard. However, that does not mean that we should be less sceptical about evidence for cause and effect than in other cases.
Again, suppose that this Hitler Jugend phase were somehow the cause of his anti-semitism. If that is the case, it is difficult to blame him in any meaningful way. If you think the problem is that he could have come to think otherwise, but didn’t, later in life, then what is so difficult to believe about the idea that the positions for which he is now known were formulated later in life, especially since this seems to be the case?
By linking his positions later in life to this involuntary early phase, you actually seem to be trying to justify his position. Imagine instead a WASP politician from Dixie in the early 20th century who was known for his racist positions. Imagine someone saying “Well, when he was young, them young people didn’t have no choice; all of us young-uns were KKK members back then.” While not arguing against the wrongness of the position, it seems to be trying to find some sort of guiltless explanation. In other words, apart from my main argument that I don’t see any evidence for it, the claim that his later views were influenced bv the Hitler-Jugend phase seems like an attempt to make him less guilty personally. In contrast, I think that someone of his obvious intellectual powers (i.e. he is neither mentally deficient nor did he suffer from a lack of educational opportunity) should be held personally responsible for his positions and not have them linked to some involuntary phase early in life.
Phillip, I don’t read Eric to be saying that “this Hitler Jugend phase were somehow the cause of his anti-semitism”. It is pretty clear that he is simply including this fact as part of a broader picture. As it happens, the picture is fairly consistent from early on. The fact that his experiences as a teen were, well… while he was a teen, doesn’t remove them from being relevant to the picture of the complete Ratzinger.
You provide the analog of a young KKK member growing up to be a right wing racist. Why would it be wrong to look at the old version and say “his racism goes back to his youth”? We all are formed by our childhood years. Some of us overcome the bad influences of our youth. Others don’t. It is absurd to ignore history.
It’s hard to comment on everything above, but I do want to make a couple of points as plainly as I can. First, I never suggested that Pope Ratzinger was anti-Semitic. He may be, but that is not what I said. I tried to make a rough and limited parallel between Ratzinger and Bergoglio in the way that they refer to atheists. I pointed out that Ratzinger had been a member of the Hitler Youth — it doesn’t really matter whether he was a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi or just someone doing some compulsory that repulsed him — who brought up Nazis and atheists in his speech at Holyrood House. I should have thought, under the circumstances, that he might have avoided language that could be so neatly turned back on himself, but, since he didn’t, it seemed to apply nicely, for while he was a member of the Hitler Youth, there is no obvious parallel between atheists and Nazis. A large measure of Waffen SS Members, after all, were communicating members of the Catholic Church. And then, of course, there is the “if you don’t pray to god you pray to the devil” of the new “modest”, “humble” Bergoglio. Straightforward Christian fare, no doubt, but, given the state of his church, a bit like the pot calling the wedding dress black, but also with more serious implications, that they are going to hell in a handbasket, no matter what they do. So Vatican rhetoric keeps up with its demeaning hyperbole, making Begoglio and Ratzinger two peas in the same stinking pod. However, to be quite frank, if I had been in the Hitler Youth, no matter on what grounds, I should not be too quick to paint my opponents with the Nazi brush, and if I had had a sketchy record with the military junta in Argentina, I would cool it with the devil talk.
R. Dawkins in a 2012 interview (with R. Gervais IIRC): “The Roman Catholic Church is the second most evil organisation in this world.”
I do not know if I agree. That would depend on which organisation is at the top spot…
And as to Ratzinger’s comparison: (Atheism) “that is the only world- or religious view that is not tolerated within the SS.”
(http://books.google.nl/books?id=GBQchepZ-7EC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA220#v=onepage&q&f=false)
Correct me if I am mistaken, but I took the Hitler Youth reference more along the lines that Ratzinger really ought to know the reality of the relationship of the Nazis with the church better than his claim that they were in fact linked to atheism implies. Even if he was an unwilling participant, it is strange to think he misunderstood that organization so grossly given his close ties with it. I have little trouble ruling out that he could be so obtuse without some effort, and in the Nazi/atheism claim is very likely being extremely dishonest.
It would indeed be a poorly supported “cheap shot” to brand Ratzinger as a Nazi based upon his compulsory membership as a boy, but I do not get the impression that Eric was really attempting to do that. There are several more powerful cases that can be leveled at that man, and we would be doing ourselves a disservice to focus on such a poor one.
Amazingly enough, this is the first time I’ve come across a comparison of popes and ayatollahs, brilliant. Of course they are only less reactionary because of political expedience.
“Correct me if I am mistaken, but I took the Hitler Youth reference more along the lines that Ratzinger really ought to know the reality of the relationship of the Nazis with the church better than his claim that they were in fact linked to atheism implies. Even if he was an unwilling participant, it is strange to think he misunderstood that organization so grossly given his close ties with it. I have little trouble ruling out that he could be so obtuse without some effort, and in the Nazi/atheism claim is very likely being extremely dishonest.”
That’s what I thought at first, but subsequent comments seem to indicate that this is not how it was intended.