Bells Are Ringing In Vatican. A New Pope Is Elected.

at the Vatican. Catholics now have a new Pope.

UPDATE: John Cardinal Ratzinger has been elected Pontiff and taken the name Benedict XVI. He is 78 years old.

There are thousands packed into St. Peter's Square.

He is seen as being very "traditionalist." Some will react quite negatively, no doubt. Much will be made that he was in the German army as a youth (but really, are there many German men of a certain age that wasn't?). I don't know much about Ratzinger, but I am willing to take this from the Jerusalem Post

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.

If he were truly a Nazi sympathizer, then it would undoubtedly have become evident during the past 60 years. Yet throughout his service in the church, Ratzinger has distinguished himself in the field of Jewish-Catholic relations.

As prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger played an instrumental role in the Vatican's revolutionary reconciliation with the Jews under John Paul II. He personally prepared Memory and Reconciliation, the 2000 document outlining the church's historical "errors" in its treatment of Jews. And as president of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Ratzinger oversaw the preparation of The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, a milestone theological explanation for the Jews' rejection of Jesus.

If that's theological anti-Semitism, then we should only be so lucky to "suffer" more of the same.

As for the Hitler Youth issue, not even Yad Vashem has considered it worthy of further investigation. Why should we?

So I guess the Guardian will try to hang a Nazi stamp on him, but just like everything else, we should get the whole picture before we make our minds up.

If Benedict XVI is anything like the last Pope, his church will be well served. But I suspect that after a few weeks of heightened interest, the non-Catholic world will go back to its own ways. For most of those who are not Catholic, this has been an interesting, exotic show. For faithful Catholics it is something that only they can understand. We should let them.

UPDATE II: Andrew Sullivan is not happy. The Corner is all Benedict, all the time. Jonah Goldberg is making paper airplanes.

 

Comments

[Peggy]

You are absolutely wrong to say (or think) that for non-Catholic Christian Americans this has all been merely an "interesting, exotic show". If you'll recall, when the Brooklyn Museum displayed that atrocious piece of "art" of a painting of the Catholic icon of Mary covered with elephant dung, it was America's Protestants, who do not worship Mary, who were loudest in denouncing the attack on a Christian church.

I, who am a Prostestant, welcome the election of Pope Benedict as a much-needed leader of the Christian faith. He will be in my prayers, and I will pray that he has an extraordinarily long and robust life.

[Steve]

The Catholic Church does not worship Mary.

[Daniel]

Absolutely right, Steve, and something that Protestants accuse Catholics of. Veneration is not worship.