Over at Body and Soul, Jeanne offers a brilliant meditation on Cardinal Ratzinger and Bishop Oscar Romero. Jeanne’s judgment of Ratzinger’s wartime service in the Hitler Youth and the German Army is sad, measured, generous, and courageous. It is, she allows, unfair and unproductive to call Ratzinger a “Nazi” or to accuse him of holding opinions in accord with Nazi positions on the Jews or on totalitarian rule. But when she holds the new pope to the same standards of moral courage demonstrate by Romero, she finds him tragically lacking.
Clearly, when Ratzinger and his brother (who is also a priest) say that anti-Nazi resistance was “impossible,” they’re lying. And it’s not an insignificant or harmless lie. Denying the option of resistance insults, indeed, denies the existence of, a lot of people who made far braver and more difficult decisions than the Ratzingers. Failing to exhibit extraordinary courage is human and understandable. Denying the extraordinarily courageous their due is shameful. Denying moral agency is surely unworthy of a man who would be pope.
This is an extraordinary post, worth reading in its entirety. I recommend that you follow the link and do so.
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