[safisoft]

That's a lie.

Sorry. I must be thinking of another Freeper then. I thought you were the user that came on threads and screamed about anti-Catholic bias.

To the article however, what say you regarding Joseph Ratzinger's membership in the Hitler Youth? Do you feel that youthful membership in the KKK should disqualify you from political office in the US?

[ichabod1]

False argument. Not the same at all.

[Petronski]

I thought you were the user that came on threads and screamed about anti-Catholic bias.

Nope. Not me.

Do you feel that youthful membership in the KKK should disqualify you from political office in the US?

When did the KKK start inducting every boy who reached a certain age?

[reefdiver]

Sure didn’t hurt Robert Byrds Career did it. The KKK was the terrorist arm of the Democratic party. Didn’t hurt them much either.

[Campion]

To the article however, what say you regarding Joseph Ratzinger's membership in the Hitler Youth? Do you feel that youthful membership in the KKK should disqualify you from political office in the US?

It obviously didn't disqualify the senior Senator from West Virginia.

But comparing the HJ to the KKK is not very sensible, unless you want to talk about a (mythical) nation in which KKK membership is mandatory for all school-age children, and in which the government can intervene to pull a child out of Catholic school for failing to join the KKK.

[AnAmericanMother]

I've done a lot of reading in this area - history major and fluent in German.

Membership in the HJ was compulsory once the Nazis consolidated their power. The problem was that if the kids didn't join they were expelled from school. Joseph Ratzinger's headmaster filled out the paperwork for him and sent it in, telling him that he would cover for him and he wouldn't have to attend meetings.

The headmaster did this largely because Ratzinger's father was rather too publicly opposed to the Nazis and suffered a good deal of persecution on account of it (the family had to move to a different town because of threats against the father).

And he also had a cousin who was mentally disabled and was taken away for "medical treatment" by the Nazi regime - shortly thereafter his parents were told he had died of some disease, actually he was one of the victims of a systematic program of murdering the mentally and physically "defective".

It's absurd for these newspapers to bang the drum about supposed Nazi sympathies on the part of the Pope.

It has its roots in the traditional British anti-Catholicism, which in turn has its roots in politics, not religion. Read almost anything by Charles Kingsley & you'll see what I mean.

[presidio9]

To the article however, what say you regarding Joseph Ratzinger's membership in the Hitler Youth? Do you feel that youthful membership in the KKK should disqualify you from political office in the US?

That's stupid for so many reasons that I hardly know where to begin. I'll give you the first two:

First, because it's pretty obvious that you have no idea what the Hitler Youth was if you're comparing it to the KKK.

Second, because only someone who knew nothing about Christianity, would ever make that statement. The most important Christian who ever lived was a Jewish persecuter of Christians until he converted.

[Cronos]

To the article however, what say you regarding Joseph Ratzinger's membership in the Hitler Youth? Do you feel that youthful membership in the KKK should disqualify you from political office in the US?

If you were 13/14 at the time and it was compulsory IN YOUR NATION, then no, it would have no bearing. The KKK members join of their own volition. Any white-supremacist group that indocrtinates kids does so at the parents behest.

Ratzinger's parents didn't force him to join the Hitler youth, however, the nation made it compulsory, just as they later made conscripts of everyone -- you can't condemn every German soldier from WWII as a NAzi because the vast majority weren't, they were just conscripts. If those conscripts did terrible things to civilians, THEN they would be Nazis and would be condemned, but not an ordinary soldier who fights enemy combatants.