Originally posted by Living-In-Clip
At least John Paul II looked like a nice old man, like someone\'s grandfather. This guy looks more like someone who boils a fetus and eats it for his brunch.
It strikes me odd that they elected someone with a Nazi youth background, but I guess people change and the catholic church want to show that? Could be worse, he could be a registered sex offender..oops.
Were you the author of one of these letters in the NYT LIC?
Commentary: Benedict abused as \'nazi pope\'
By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Religious Affairs Editor
Published April 21, 2005
WASHINGTON -- "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.
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?\'"
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."
http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050421-050120-7643r
Wasn\'t someone saying earlier that the NYT isn\'t a liberal mouthpiece?
