Pope Must Atone for the Sins of His Past

"There is no pope."
(Gertrude Stein)

Yo Shimmy,
You forget the Pope of Greenwich Village?
Mickey

The premise you base this entire article on is tenuous. Keep in mind that he was not the brilliant scholar he is today while serving, but rather a child. Young Ratzinger deserted the German army before the end of the war, which shows some level of gradual moral cognizance of the situation. No one knew the extent of the evil of the Nazis until the war was over.

Hi Wilson,

You claimed that "...no one knew the extent of the evil of the Nazis until the war was over."

That can hardly be true. Surely the Nazis knew. More accurately, at least some high-ranking Nazis and the relevant functionaries knew. The question whether Ratzinger was in a position to have caught wind of what -- or some of what -- was going on in his name remains open.

More importantly, Lance's chief point stands, namely that Ratzinger the adult, fully formed moral agent, and aspiring hot-shot was eventually, and remains, in the position of reflecting on what he was a part of -- however unwittingly he was a part of it. The suggestion being made here, it seems to me, is that once one has developed the capacity for hindsight and moral reflection, one owes some recognition of the gravity of that sort of involvement in wrongdoing, let alone in the radical evil with which Ratzinger was complicit. It's well to remember, too, that no one has denied yet that he was complicit with it. That by itself is a large part of the point, I think.

Wilson:
Actually, he was 18 while still in the army. Hardly a child, but rather a young man as I said. And he deserted after Hitler had killed himself, so hardly at a point when it made any difference. More importantly, it is not true that the holocaust was unknown. The Pope says himself that he knew, and indeed, the existence of the camps was fairly widely recognized at the time.

I'd urge you to look again at what I wrote. I didn't blame him for not realizing all this at the time. I blame him for now not accepting the extent of his collaboration, and for discounting the remarkable sacrifices of those who did resist, including some in his home town with the same information he had.

Mark Lance

Lance -

You have spent far too long in the insular, academic world to understand reality.

The Pope is a corageous man and a man of principles. You have principles, but I encourage you to step foot outside of your classroom and office and do something other than criticize someone who has and will do more for the world than you will ever do.

To "monday morning quarterback" history in such a manner is a disgrace to your profession. It is disgraceful to pin the powerful currents of history on a teenager who now happens to be the pope.

Also, I would like to see a quote where he degrades resistance or calls it impossible in a generalized sense.

The tone of the article suggests that your are manipulating the currents of history to score subjective and political points.

PS - this statement "I am no more than an ordinary, fallible human" reeks of anti-Catholicism and insincerity.

Also, the following argument reminds me of the neo-conservative case for invading and occupying Iraq:

"The idea that they can do nothing in the face of organized evil — that resistance is impossible, that it is acceptable to respond to threats with collaboration"

Does anyone else find this ironic - especially considering that the last two popes opposed the Iraq war as unjust...

John:
Since you have no idea what I do outside the academy, it is odd that you feel entitled to make these assumptions. I really see nothing else here that makes any contact with what I said.

Brett, aside from the baseless allegations -- that I'm scoring subjective points -- mis-readings -- that I pin anything on teenagers -- and weird interpretations -- noting that I claim less authority than the pope "reeks of anti-Catholicism" -- you ask for quotes. The Pope has said on several occasions that resistance at the time was impossible. Google the issue and articles will pop up from numerous newpapers. It is also in authorized biographies.

Mark Lance

Mark, I asked for quotes from Benedict that claim promote a *general* disapproval of the resistance to evil, not quotes from my scribblings.

And, since you admonish the pope in this regard, what is your plan to eliminate "organized evil" from the world??? Do you have any suggestions for the neo-conservatives?

Anarchism, perhaps?

Yes! Another off the wall Mark Lance opinion! Excellent! Yes! The Pope! That bastard! Capitalism! Devil product of the West! Democracy! Who Needs It! Traditional Morality! How Antiquated! Republicans! Demon Scum!

Yes! I love how every few weeks my school brings out such a representative and empowering voice! Shout it from the roof tops! Another unique and incisive attack upon the foundations of the World's Old Boy's Club in whatever form it takes!

Yes! Feed it to me! Let me lap it up! How right you are Lance! How wrong those fools in the Catholic Church! In Middle America! In the White House! Even in the classroom, if they dare go against the prevailing consensus of Modernity in all its beauteous forms!

Yes! Yes!

Lance -

I feel ashamed to have been graduated from a school that employs you. You are a joke and must feel ashamed that you focus your life on belittling those who are better than you.

Obviously the Pope made peace with God for his past sins - in confession (a private sacrament of the Holy Catholic church). God had a higher calling for this great man, and he accepted, despite his hesitations. I hope someday you learn to better yourself and not criticize those above you and do more in life than your meaningless job.

Paul:
So I gather you graduated. Did no one along the way ever suggest to you that the intellectually responsible way to deal with an argument is to respond to what is said? Instead you call me names. (Would my job be meaningless if I agreed with you? Is the same job done by Jesuits meaningful?) And you announce that the Pope is better than me.

Well, maybe he is. Maybe he made peace with God, confessed sins, and there is a good reason why he continues to say what he does to people. Would it be so hard to explain that to us joke mortals with the meaningless jobs? He hasn't. He never said "I sinned in the past and made peace with God." Rather he says that he did nothing wrong and that resistance was impossible. (If he does think he sinned, then is he lying when he makes these pronouncements?)

As I said, I claim no special moral powers. I'm just trying to understand. Apparantly my doing so threatens you in some way. Perhaps that too deserves to be examined.

As for the post above Paul's, well, really. If you don't want to deal with what I said, you could ignore it rather than simply make yourself look like a 2 year old having a tantrum. Oh, but of course you are hiding behind the cloak of the internet. So all is safe. Very sad.

Mark Lance

Hi Mark:

Its your old internet friend the former choir-boy, daily communican capitalist! Fresh my an Opus Dei convocation.

Despite my stripes, I agree with you. I respect the Pope as a major force of good in the world and a man of deep religious and moral convictions (and a believer in the existance of absolute truth with the caveat that such truth is generally unknowable).

Just the same, I dont think there is anything wrong with someone who found himself serving a murderous regime denouncing the regime and making a public penance. I think (without claiming to know) that it would be good for his soul and good for the soul of the Chruch he serves.

I also respect that when a man is the CEO of the world's oldest institution, worlds largest instution, and a moral authority for almost a billion, you can tend to be risk averse and public apologies are risky. But while that makes his silence understandable, it doesnt make it excusable.

Let not your heart be troubled. We'll fight next week.

Saxon Gillis

Professor,

I personally take offense to your opinion. The majority of Germans 60 years ago were not evil people (are all Muslims terrorists...should they all apologize for what the vocal minority is doing today? Obviously not).

Remember, most of Germany lived in small towns and villages with limited communications and press, and even less unfiltered press.

All Germans deeply regret and are ashamed of what happened in the past.

I do no expect an apology higher than what the Pope has already stated. He has lived with this guilt for over sixty years now.

Please step off of your moral soap box and get a life.

Sir Lance:
Wow, my job is meaningless because I teach a course on a particular political tradition. Right. If you ever get the idea that you should know what I teach, or what anarchism is, I invite you to take the class. You might find that the anarchist tradition requires a bit more than name-calling if you did.

Katie:
I find your response a bit odd. I didn't say a word about Germans in general and honestly can't imagine how you could be personally offended. I didn't ask the Pope to apologize for anything other than what he did, certainly not for all Germans, or for you. I said that there was guilt associated with being complicit with the holocaust which is something the Pope does not deny. And if he, as one of the Germans you presume to speak for, is ashamed of what happened and his role in it, he certainly has not indicated this with his protestations that there was nothing he could have done.

Beyond that misrepresentation of what I wrote, you don't really respond to anything I said. You just announce that you don't care and tell me to get a life. Obviously there is no more possibility for rational discourse in response to that than there is in response to the "sir lance" comments.

Folks: does anyone out there have any interest in actually engaging with the issue? I'm happy to just stipulate that a bunch of you think I'm a moron, don't deserve a job, am morally corrupt, etc. With that out of the way, any thoughts on the issue, or on what I said?

Mark Lance

Professor,

I’m rather embarrassed by some of these comments that are apparently coming from some of my fellow students. I personally only have a familiarity with the current Pope’s life during WWII, but as far as I can tell most sources attribute the “resistance was impossible” quote to his brother Georg. Minor point perhaps, but nevertheless. I don’t want to get into a who-said-what debate and then start trying to explain “what they actually meant” as you do (paragraph five), as I don’t consider myself adequately informed to make knowledgeable contributions to the debate. However, I do have a question regarding the content of your article; it’s purely curious and not intended to provoke, excuse, or condemn anyone. You write that the Holocaust was “the most evil project of the most evil regime ever to exist on this earth,” and later, imagining a statement from the Pope, write that it was “the greatest evil in the history of this world.” That the Holocaust was one of the greatest evils in the history of this world is unquestionable, but considering all the evils in human history, do you think it is legitimate to categorize some evils as being “worse” than others? (To stay in the twentieth century, other evils that we can consider that affected millions of people include what happened under Stalin [purges, deportations, Holodomor…], the Khmer Rouge period, and the Rwandan Civil War and genocide.) I haven’t studied much philosophy, but I find something distasteful about “ranking” such evils.

First, thanks for writing something that actually engaged with what I wrote. It is enormously refreshing. On the quote, the specific "resistance was impossible" quote that has been mentioned most often in this debate was from Georg, but I've seen three reputable papers say that the pope explicitly endorsed this comment. And in any event, he has said many things indicating the same idea, that there was no reasonable way to engage in resistance.

I completely agree with you about ranking evils. My statement was a bit of rhetorical excess. Certainly some evils are obviously more serious than others, but I frequently urge people not to get into debates about whether, say, slavery was more or less evil than the holocaust. Utterly unhelpful. And this was unhelpful rhetoric.

Let's leave it at "the most clearly evil project of one of the most clearly evil regimes in human history." I think that is uncontroversial.

Mark Lance

Thanks for the clarification, professor. I'm going to look more into the Pope's comments regarding his past, as your article does suggest that it hasn't been addressed sufficiently. (And if anyone is wondering, I speak as a Catholic who can recognize valid criticism of the Church.)

Also (just to speak to fellow Hoyas and other commenters), since Mark Lance is willing to engage everyone who responds to his articles in discussion, how about giving him the respect of posting something that actually contributes instead of resorting to personal attacks? If you'd like Prof. Lance to change his opinion I presume you'd have a better chance at achieving this result through logic rather than insults. I can't help but wonder what prospective students think of Hoyas' collective reasoning abilities when they read this paper online and see such ridiculous comments. It reflects pretty poorly on us, guys.

Professor Lance,

If the current pope truly believes that resistance would indeed have been futile, wouldn't any apology be empty and to some extent offensive? If he does not believe what he did was wrong, then what is the point in pressuring him for an apology? One might question whether he is truly capable of being a leader of a major world religion if he does not realize that assisting in the Holocaust was wrong. The issue that should be taken into consideration is whether every German soldier must be branded with the sins of the Holocaust. Personally, I think that it would be unfair to put a lifelong mark on the young men who fought for Germany in World War II. Blaming conscripts for fighting an unjust war and expecting them to stand up to the military giving them orders does not sit right with me. They were just pawns in a murderous game being played by the higher ups. I understand that this sounds like the reasons given at the Nuremberg trials (i.e., "I was just following orders."), but it is easy for an outside observer to say that a young man should have bucked the chain of command and put his life at risk. Ratzinger was not directly involved in the commission of war crimes, nor were thousands of other German soldiers. Asking cannon fodder to stand up and face execution may be asking too much. I can understand your desire for a world leader to atone for what you see as a sin that he committed, but if he believes that he did no wrong, then any apology would be meaningless and unnecessary unless he was to come to believe/realize what he did was wrong. The argument can be made that he rightfully believes that he did no wrong as a minor member of the German army. As a result, the need for an apology might not be as clear cut as you believe it to be. Of course, I could be wrong, but I hope that I have at least laid some groundwork for an argument that the apology you are calling for is not necessary. If, however, Ratzinger knew what he was doing was wrong and continues to claim the alternative, then there would be a serious problem. To quote Homer, "Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another."

I am a GU grad from 1966 (SFS) and have become increasingly disenchanted with my alma mater over the past couple of decades after years of being an enthusiastic alumnus and interviewer for applicants overseas. Mark Lance's comments about the young Josef Ratzinger are off base from my perspective and serve to deepen my dislike for the school. I do not see that Josef R. committed any crimes or is guilty of anything needing an act of contrition or plea for forgiveness. Certainly nothing that is public knowledge to Prof. Lance or myself. He did not apply for the Hitler Jugend and resisted it but was eventually "volunteered" by a teacher, evidently to spare the boy grief from the Nazis. He was drafted into the army in the final months of the war and did not fire a weapon but was put to work in a non combattant role. It is so easy to make judgments 63 years later from the safety of Georgetown about the actions of an 18 year old living in a total dictatorship. Josef Ratzinger has never disparaged the heroism of those who performed heroic deeds during that horrible time. This criticism smacks to me of liberal backstabbing.

You have said that the holocaust in germany back then was the greatest evil in the history of the world? I disagree. The greatest evil is with us now in the form of abortion.

As for what happened to the boy Ratzinger. It is best you not judge him. He has not been accused of any crimes and you have no right to do so. If he has confessed any sins of his past, those are between him and God. You have no proof of any "nazi leanings" in his writings or words therefore you sin against justice when you make such accusations.

You wrote,
"....from one who claims to speak authoritatively about moral truths..."? He does have the authority. It was conferred upon him by God. If you don't like that truth, that man, and the Holy Mandate that he holds. tough. It is what it is and no amount of whining about his past is going to change that.

Your animus is against the Catholic Faith, pure and simple.

Prayers for your immortal soul, a "talk to the hand" to your above article.

James: You say "If he does not believe what he did was wrong, then what is the point in pressuring him for an apology?" The point is to convince him that he is wrong. That is why we reason with anyone we disagree with. And if he won't change -- or more likely never sees this -- then the point is to convince other people not to listen to or agree with him on this issue. If they do, they will themselves see no imperative to resist in the face of state evil and that is a very bad lesson indeed.

Should every German soldier "be branded with the sins of the holocaust?" perhaps not. (Though the level of knowledge about what was happening was much broader than people like to admit today. And at the least everyone knew that Germany was launching aggressive wars on its neighbors.) But one who laid tank traps as he watched Jews being shipped to camps knew about it and was complicit in it. He was not canon fodder, and by his own account he knew what was happening. He has frequently spoken of the whole war effort of Germany as wrong. Again, his public defense has not been to deny that he helped with an effort he knew to be wrong -- he also spotted Allied planes, sending information to anti-aircraft batteries -- but rather is proud of the fact that his family knew it to be wrong, while insisting that resistance was impossible.

Arnold: You are ashamed of your university because it has people who argue for views you disagree with. Perhaps you need to re-consider the meaning of 'university'.

On the rest of your letter, I wonder if you actually read my article. The Pope laid tank traps (and spotted against allied planes). These are combatant roles. He watched Jews being shipped to camps past his position. That is knowledge. As for it being easy to judge from a university what happened to a young man, again, did you read what I wrote? It is indeed and I explained exactly what I think that entails. What is at issue, and what I criticize, is the way a mature man dealt with the times when he was young.

Barb:
Fine. If you feel abortion is more evil, can we at least agree that the holocaust was a pretty seriously bad thing? It hardly changes the point of my article.

As for the "boy [18] Ratzinger," see above.

As for your announcement of what I believe, you must have some impressive powers yourself to be able to discern hidden motives and beliefs that have nothing to do with what I wrote. Of course it is much easier to insulate your own views from criticism if you simply attribute hostility and evil to anyone who dares challenge them. "Oh, he's an evil professor who hates Catholics so I can caricature his argument and dismiss him." Congratulations. You have found a way to forever hold onto exactly what you believe at the moment.

And your final sentence does not merit response.

Mark Lance

I don’t know anything about Professor Lance’s religious beliefs or affiliation, but I have the impression he is not Catholic. His discussion of how the current pope might deal with his youthful association with the Nazi regime thus comes from outside the Catholic tradition. (This is not to say it is foreign to or inconsistent with the traditional role of the members of a Catholic university community like Georgetown. See Patricia McGuire’s piece in today’s Post.)

Perhaps Lance’s status as an outsider raises the defensive hackles of some within the tradition and makes it difficult to engage his argument. I want to take a tentative stab at recasting the argument in traditional Catholic language and see where that takes us.

Early on the morning of the day Jesus would be executed, the first pope found himself in a position where resistance to evil was futile: Jesus was going to be publicly humiliated and gruesomely tortured to death, and nothing Peter might do or say had the slightest chance of preventing it. It would have served no apparent purpose for Peter, when queried about his accent while warming himself at the fire in the court of the high priest, to acknowledge his friendship with Jesus. Yet we are told that, on account of his failure to do so, Peter wept bitter tears of repentance; and neither he nor any of his successors nor any of their followers have had any difficulty admitting that Peter’s failure to acknowledge Jesus when it might have cost him his life and not prevented Jesus’ death was terribly wrong.

Why are we so hard on the first pope? Most of us in the same position would certainly have acted as he did. Nonetheless, our criticism is valid and proper because the standard to which Peter, like other Christians, must be held is not what most of us would do but rather what is required by the morality preached by Jesus.

Jesus, after all, is the teacher whose main quarrel with the Law of Moses was that it was too lenient. (E.g., he criticized the law’s permitting men to divorce their wives.) He insisted that to be his followers we must be prepared to take up the cross, that is, we are actually required to embrace the same fate Jesus was suffering when Peter denied him. That is an awfully strict morality.

That’s the morality Benedict, as Peter’s successor and Jesus’ vicar, is called to model and teach. And Benedict’s complicity with the Nazis’ crimes, slight though it may have been, seems to have been significantly greater than Peter’s complicity (if it can even be called that) in the torturing and killing of Jesus. It therefore makes sense to ask whether it might be appropriate for Benedict to engage in the same sort of public self-criticism Peter did.

The impossibly strict moral code Jesus preached is made livable only by the fact that he also preached the infinite mercy of God. He taught us readily to acknowledge our moral failings with complete confidence that God’s love is stronger than all the evil we can devise. In the Christian view we do not achieve salvation by justifying or excusing our youthful errors and other wrongdoing but by acknowledging them for what they are and leaving the job of justification to God.

Perhaps it would make sense for the pope to see his youthful brush with fundamental evil as an opportunity to teach the gospel by example.

Incidentally, I understand Hoya columnists do not compose the headlines for their articles. Professor Lance did not claim the right to demand atonement from Benedict, and I don't think the editor(s) who wrote the headline should make such a claim either.

Barb wrote:

"It is best you not judge him. He has not been accused of any crimes and you have no right to do so. If he has confessed any sins of his past, those are between him and God. You have no proof of any "nazi leanings" in his writings or words therefore you sin against justice when you make such accusations."

So are we not meant to criticize what we feel is wrong, simply because some higher power has not become visibly involved in the issue (or a government)? Life is very much about interpretations and researching into things to understand them better; and I think you've misread the professor's statement (which I do not entirely agree with but that's not what I am writing about). I don't see him accusing the Pope of Nazi leanings, only of having culpability for participating in the Nazi forces. There is a distinct difference, but you seem to miss that.

"Your animus is against the Catholic Faith, pure and simple."

This statement epitomizes several of my problems with Georgetown. I am a current student, by no means a Catholic nor a truly practicing Christian (I am baptized Eastern Orthodox but my family never really has gone to church). Why should all professors necessarily impart to us tenets of the Catholic faith? Why should they be required to conform to certain aspects of it? We are free thinkers, we are at a university which promotes freedom of thought and diversity. I assume you are an alumnus who is quite disillusioned with Georgetown nowadays, just as the poster before you is, because it has moved to liberalize its teachers (liberalize not POLITICALLY but in the breadth of what it teaches). To be honest, I don't find myself regretting the possibility of you not supporting Georgetown or its professors in the future, because close-mindedness seems to be one of your traits (which the Catholic faith, nor any Christian sect I believe, doesn't promote).

From "The Sinners Guide" by the Venerable Louis of Grenada

"Detraction is committed when we tell another's real faults; calumny, when the fault we mention is not real, but the invention of our malicious lies."

"Those who are addicted to detraction and raillery do not confine themselves to what they know, but indulge in suppositions and rash judgments. When they no longer find matter to censure THEY INVENT EVIL INTENTIONS, MISINTERPRET GOOD ACTIONS. forgetting that Our Saviour has said: "Judge not, that you may not be judged; for with what judgment you judge you shall be judged." (Matt, 7:1-2) Here also the offense may frequently be a mortal sin, particularly when we venture to judge in a matter of grave importance upon very slight evidence. If it be only a suspicioun, not a real judgment, it may only be a venial sin, because the act has not been completed. Even by suspicion however, a mortal sin can be comitted by SUSPECTING VIRTUOUS PERSONS OF ENORMOUS CRIMES."

The title of your article says it all really. We all have our sins to atone for. His atonement for past sins are no more your business than yours are to me. Your article is just rife with the sins mentioned by Venerable Louis of Grenada. You have published them. You call for "discussion" of what you have written, I give it.

Your motives are not hidden. You declared them.

John:
Thank you very much for this. That is precisely the sort of argument I was making. Indeed, I'm not Catholic, but I think this Christian lesson is just the right one. (Indeed, this approach to human weakness is one of the great moral lessons of the tradition. it is exemplified as well by the early Christians who were martyred by the Romans, or by latter-day heroes like the Berrigans and others who accept jail rather than participate in state crimes. Such people were among my early political mentors.) I take this lesson in a secular manner, holding that the goal of virtuous persons should be to always recognize our complicity with evil, to do our best to struggle against it, and to forgive our own and each others' failings. But the lesson is the same, I think, whether seen theologically or not. I very much appreciate your "translation".

GC. Yes, there is a serious dispute over the nature of a university here. Georgetown is a Catholic university in the sense that it goes to great lengths to ensure that the various -- yes there are many -- Catholic views and traditions are represented in all debates. And it requires of all of us that we respect those views, but not that we agree with them. This distinguishes GU from typical secular universities -- which don't care if the Catholic tradition is present at all - and exclusivist Catholic educational institutions which require doctrinal agreement. I can't imagine how Catholicism or the intellectual climate in general would be served by turning Georgetown into the latter. It would mean that Catholic positions were utterly ghettoized, and ignored in serious intellectual circles and it would mean that non-Catholic students and scholars would have no chance to learn from a rich tradition. But it is what is demanded by many of those critics who write in to snipe about my daring to disagree. Thankfully, the administration has never agreed with them, and I am proud to be a part of a Jesuit institution that would refuse - as it has for 17 years - to do anything to silence someone like me.

Barb:
As John notes, and I thought everyone knew, columnists don't write the headlines. I suggested a very different one, and do not endorse this one. As for "discussion," I'm afraid that is not what you are doing. You are simply accusing me of bad motives, and declaring that I'm wrong and evil. You have not addressed a single thing I said in a remotely fair or rational way. Frankly, your comments are just mean-spirited abuse at the very idea that someone could criticize the Pope. That's fine. You are welcome to type out abuse of anyone you like. But don't think it isn't clear what you are engaging in; don't think it is going to be taken seriously by anyone who doesn't already agree with you; and don't think I am going to engage further with it.

Mark Lance

Prof. Lance-

While discussing this article with some friends, we ultimately came upon this thought experiment: What if the young Ratzinger were to find out all the good that would come out of his life of service if he kept silent and survived the Nazi regime. (Let us also assume that his life in the Church has had overwhelmingly positive effects). Would he still be obligated to act? I'm not sure how to answer the question and am curious to hear what you think.

I also take some issue with your use of the word "complicit." I'm sure you'll agree that the words we choose are important, and the choice of "complicit" seems to me particularly damning. When I hear "complicit," I think of its derivative "accomplice." Accomplices aid and abet crimes and are willing and deliberate participants. I'm not sure if I think this would accurately describe what Ratzinger did. It seems clear that he was not a contributor to the Holocaust, but instead erred in his inaction. Like all Germans of the period (and many non-Germans that allowed the evil of the Holocaust to go on unprotested) I believe Ratzinger is in some way responsible, in the same way that negligent parents are in some sense responsible for the actions of their wayward children, but I believe complicit may be another rhetorical excess.

You are still missing the point. His past sins are none of your business. They are no one's business. He does not need our forgiveness.

Your article contains the accusation clear as day: "But for all this,the crimes of the young Ratzinger should not be our focus. Crimes they were."

You assume to know what went on in his heart while he lived those days. You were not there, and you are not God to demand forgiveness or atonement.

The Holy Father will be addressing the problems of "higher education" which has lost it's moorings in truth and has embraced that tyranny of relativism that he is currently battling. This article of yours is just another example of a "preemptive strike" against him.

As for your charge of "abuse" against me. You seem to have a strange definition of the word. It's alright. I will stand by the writings of Venerable Louis of Grenada over your writings any day.

Oh my! What a reversal!

You state now: "I also take issue with your use of the word "complicit".....etc"

First you do indeed accuse him of crimes. Now you are backing off from that accusation. That is good.

Apologies for that, got you mixed up with someone else with that last post. This thing is getting quite long, but still interesting.

This argument is still being made within a historical vacuum which discounts many factors that influenced attitudes and fears of the time - including the very aggressive advance of communism (as close as Hungary and Bavaria in the 1930s).

Service in the German army could be sold to the people as necessary for survival and, in fact, combating the "true" and god-less evil that would consume millions of lives across Eastern Europe...

This is not related to Benedict; however, it is related to the one-sided picture that the professor presents i.e. “the most evil project of the most evil regime ever to exist on this earth.”

Evil, as you state above, is not so clear cut - neither is the actions of people caught between such forces.

Perhaps the professor is an acolyte of Leo Strauss?...

So Brett thinks the Nazis aren't so bad because they were fighting communism, though he notes this has nothing to do with the case in point, and then offers silly speculation about my motives.

David: You and your friends raise good questions. I think "complicit" is quite correct and not the same as "willing accomplice". Complicity comes when one participates actively, provides support for, and in some way profits from wrong actions. All of this applies. I made clear in the article that I didn't consider this willing. There was a context of coercion. But again, the main issue is the radical difference between the behavior of young Ratzinger and the behavior of those who resisted, who went underground, who deserted, who protested. Despite the coercion, the gap between those is profound, and failing to take the morally better step in this case constitutes complicity. As a person with such authority, he would do the world a great good if he would hold up those other ideals as ideals to humanity.

Interestingly I think this judgment would survive even your thought experiment. Let us stipulate that the Pope's life was a major force for good, a far greater one than any harm he did in the war. If so, and if he could have known that, a consequentialist morality would say that it was right of him to do what he did. That is quite contrary to traditional Catholic morality, but I don't reject that form of moral reasoning. But I still think there is what moral philosophers call a "moral residue". Here's an analogy. SUppose you promise to come to a birthday party for a friend who's been going through tough times. You know it is important to him. But on the way, your child comes down with acute appendicitis. Of course you rush your child to the hospital and miss the appointment. But something remains. You did the right thing, but still broke a promise, and left a friend hanging. this calls for apology, for explanation, for genuine regret. Well, I think the same here. Even if one knew that joining the resistance would not help, that one could do far more for good by supporting the Nazi war effort and the holocaust, and that in the long run this was the right way to go -- mind you, I don't know that any of this is true, but let's suppose -- it would still remain that one had collaborated with Nazis. that calls for genuine moral regret, even if it was the right thing to do. (And of course as I said, all this is irrelevant to a Catholic point of view that would never condone as morally acceptable laying tank traps for Nazis so as to preserve a life that would later be morally useful. That sort of consequentialism is contrary to Catholic thinking on the matter which is much more deontological.)

Anyway, thanks for this question. If, just to plug serious work on this, anyone would like advise on what courses to take to think about this sort of thing more seriously, I'm happy to advise. We have really good faculty who work on these issues, from both Catholic and non-Catholic perspectives.

Mark Lance

" Far more importantly, so do the masses of ordinary people today who look to Pope Benedict XVI for moral leadership. The idea that they can do nothing in the face of organized evil — that resistance is impossible, that it is acceptable to respond to threats with collaboration — is a lesson that flies in the face of all that is noblest and best in human history. It teaches a lesson of despair."

This comment shows ,I think , that Mark Lance is woefully ignorant of the writings of Pope Benedict XVI eg.Spe Salvi

Laying tank traps for your army during a war isn't a crime. It never has been. We have no idea what Ratzinger knew back then, nor can we declare from this "wonderful hindsight" what he "should have known". None of us can read hearts and hence it is best we steer clear of making such judgments. We can however judge what we are witness to ourselves.

This article clearly accuses the Holy Father of crimes. The word "crime" appears many times. The professor who wrote it admits that he has no proof of such crimes and yet he still makes the accusation. He goes even further and insists that the Pontiff should seek pardon for said crimes.

Who does he say he should seek pardon from? "people of the world"? The "people of the world" back then did not demand an apology from those in his position for a reason.
Now here come "the people of the world" of today who make silly demands that their grandsires would blush to even consider making.

As for the title of the article, my statement still stands. The title encapsulates perfectly what the entire content of the article says. You should have lauded the one who made the title for expressing the content perfectly. The professor does indeed seem a bit shy and defensive when it comes to my criticism of his work and yet he is all gung ho about criticizing the pope. Go figure.

Barb:
One last try since you are so determined. The Pope has said himself that he knew what was going on, that he saw Jews being taken to the camps past the positions at which he was laying mines. No reading hearts, just reading words. He acknowledges all this and says that it was ok because there was no effective means of resistance. Even if you won't take what I write seriously, I'd think you'd take the Pope's writing seriously.

And yes, I think defending death camps from allied liberation is a moral crime, and probably a legal one as well. Even prior to Nuremburg there were international agreements with the binding force of law concerning things like the holocaust and the launching of wars on one's neighbors.

As for no one demanding apologies at the time, you are simply ignorant Barb. Try reading Arendt, or Buber, or Wiesel, or any of hundreds of accounts written by those who resisted. Recall the Nuremburg trials? Have you heard of the concept of a "Good German" and the idea that "just following orders" is not an excuse?

The fundamental dispute here is simple. You claim that I have no right in principle to criticize the Pope. His issues are for him and God. But at the same time you aren't a consistent moral relativist, one who thinks no one should criticize anyone. It is fine to criticize non-Catholics, to condemn them in fact (along with mocking, caricaturing, name-calling, etc.) All that is great fun. But the very idea that the Pope could have done something that calls for reassessment -- respectful, careful argument criticizing his stance - is beyond the bounds.

As I said before: a very convenient attitude, one that insulates you forever from any possibility of intellectual change. At least it is a step up from showing me the instruments of torture because I dare challenge scientific dogma. But the principle is the same. Attack, denounce, bluster, but by all means don't take what anyone else says seriously. Protect our team at all cost.

Barb, you know what would really be interesting, since you clearly have me pegged as a heathen unworthy of respect? Why don't you respond to John Quinn above? He is clearly a Catholic and puts an argument to you from within the tradition? Maybe you can bring yourself to take that seriously.

As for myself, I assure you that I do have things to do other than respond to people who have no interest in taking me seriously. I think the fact that I wrote this article in the first place shows I'm not so shy, and I think I've been far from defensive with you. Indeed I have been far more patient and polite than you merit given the tone of your comments. This really is all the time I intend to devote to your comments.

I am glad that you at least said something in reply. If my replies were considered abusive as you claim, why are they still posted? I read the rules of this forum, and I have been adhering to them faithfully. Nowhere in the rules does it mention that a poster's "tone" meet any requirements.

The quote I used from Venerable Louis of Grenada begins with the word "detraction". Please read that catholic definition very carefully. The pope is not required to meet any creatures approval after he has taken the office. The mandate is Divine and therefore above human judgments. I realize that as a non-catholic you cannot and will not accept that fact. No suprise there. His past was surely taken into account BEFORE his ascent to the throne of peter. God wants Ratzinger as pope, therefore he is. If my belief regarding the Divine Mandate of the Papacy is considered by the echelons of academia as a form of "close-mindedness" I am happy to be so accused.

The pope does not need to beg the forgiveness from "the people of the world". His sins, both past and present are no one else's business. He does not owe "the people of the world" anything beyond what he has already given of his own free will on the subject. We catholics have a wonderful sacrament called confession. Sadly it is neglected and even abused by many catholics today. That is where we catholics go to for forgiveness. The priest acting "in persona Christi" has the Divine Mandate of forgiving and retaining the sins of those who so confess. We do not apologize to "the people of the world". We apologize to God through his duly appointed representative.

Now I am certain that the pope has availed himself of this wonderful sacrament over all these years, after all, he speaks continously and highly of it.

You say that I do not take you seriously? I wouldn't be discussing this with you if I didn't take it seriously. You have accused the Holy Father of crimes and you say he should apologize to this apparently strange "god" you call "the people of the world". You further admit that there is no proof of nazi ideology in the Ratzinger household. If there is no nazi ideology apparent even to this day, There is no reason to suspect him of such today. His moral leadership stands intact and I for one will not question it. That in itself seems to bother you.

The fundamental dispute, as you put it, is that you have no right to call upon him to seek forgiveness from the world for any sins real or imagined that he may or may not have committed. That isn't your place anymore than it is mine.

You have a strange notion of patience as well it seems. You say I have you pegged as "a heathen unworthy of respect". Those aren't exactly patient words there. I never wrote such a thing and I never claimed such a thing. I cannot control how you judge my "tone" and I will not apologize for defending the honor of the supreme pontiff. You took on a subject involving the Catholic Church and then get impatient when a catholic disputes with you?

One can always count on Professor Mark Lance to offer an anti-Catholic argument. He is certainly not a Catholic--although he would make a good Pharisee. He usually uses his ivory tower position to advocate for acceptance of the gay agenda and attacks traditional Catholic teachings. Nobody was shocked to see this attack on Pope Benedict right before his visit. Any wonder Pope Benedict is NOT visiting Georgetown and instead the Catholic University of America? The Vatican is no fan of America's oldest Catholic University...for good reason.

As for Mark Lance's false claims on the Pope, where, pray tell are his sources? I am sure he missed it, but last night Fox News did a one hour special on Pope Benedict and completely debunked the claims Mark Lance made. He should do us all a favor and watch it. Of course, Fox News is probably a little too pro-American and pro-religious for Mr. Lance.

Veritas:
Every specific claim about what the Pope has done or said comes ultimately from his authorized biography or public statements he has made. (I read them first in the Washington Post, Times of London and other media sources.) Fox news did not even dispute any of my historical claims, and none of them are controversial. Neither did I "attack" the Pope. It is truly distressing when so many people are so insecure in their beliefs that they have to treat any suggestion that they or theirs might be wrong about anything as an "attack". I was polite, respectful, made arguments, did not caricature or mock.

All in direct contrast to you, veritas, and other posts of the same sort. You engage in all the tediously common name-calling -- "Gay agenda" "anti-Catholic" "ivory tower," "pharisee"(!) -- which serves marvelously if your goal is never actually to have to think about opposing views. Well done.

Mark Lance

There is no need to assault Prof. Lance personally here. The biographical evidence, compared against the legal and philosophical standards relevant to culpability or assistance in intrinsically evil acts such as the persecution of others, is enough to shame his arguments.

It is difficult from Prof. Lance's post to determine if he is "examining" this question from his own professional discipline, philosophy, or from the standpoint of theology or law. He glides, it seems, from one vantage point to the next, never pausing long enough to give a considered, scholarly reflection as to what any of disciplines might actually SAY about the core concepts of "complicity," "participation," and "crime" that buttress his claim of the Pope's alleged complicity and participation in the crime of the Holocaust.

I will, for the most part, aim to be the good cobbler who sticks to his last, in this case, the law.

A scholar engaged in genuine intellectual pursuit of these questions in the life of young Ratzinger would start from this premise: surely there must be international or even domestic legal standards for determining when one is complicit with or has participated in the persecution of others.

As, of course, there are. Indeed, a copious literature of statutes, case law, legal commentary and other materials, plus the decades-long work product of the Office of Special Investigations in the Department of Justice, are easily accessible to those seeking to explore such questions. This is not to say that the questions themselves are easy, nor the decisions in individual cases, but the standards do exist.

In the case of young Ratzinger, they point clearly to one conclusion: he did not "participate in," nor was he "complicit with," the persecutions of the Nazi regime.

The issue arises in international and domestic law relating to the concept of "persecution." Briefly put, both international and domestic law offer protection to the victims of persecution, and to those who establish a likelihood, or even a "well-founded fear" that they would be subject to persecution in their home countries on account of specified grounds such as religion, nationality, or political opinion.

These protections, however, are not available to those who, in the U.S. version of the exclusion, have "ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated" in the persecution of others on such grounds. To take the easy question first, the Nazi regime's depradations clearly constituted "persecution" with a "nexus" to a defined ground. So the question then becomes, did young Ratzinger "participate" in such persecution.

As it happens, the U.S. Supreme Court will soon re-visit this issue, in the case of an Eritrean who was impressed against his will into service as a guard at a prison camp where prisoners were kept standing for hours unprotected from the elements, and deprived basic hygiene. Negusie v. Mukasey, No. 07-499 (cert. granted, Mar. 17, 2008). Twenty-seven years ago, in the Fedorenko decision, the Supreme Court rejected the claim of a Ukranian man captured as a POW by the Nazis, and compelled to serve as a camp guard at Treblinka, that he had not "participated" in the persecution of others because he had not done so voluntarily, but under pain of death. The applicant's motivation and intent, the Court held, were not relevant under the governing legal standards.
It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court in deciding Negusie will do an abrupt turn-about on the issue of voluntariness, i.e., find that "participation" can be excused if the alleged persecutor acted under compulsion. It may, however, find distinctions from Fedorenko on the facts -- Negusie actively resisted participation in more heinous acts of persecution, and was himself harmed for that resistance.

But, on the question of "voluntariness," score another round for Prof. Lance. A young Ratzinger (had he assisted in persecution of others) would not be able to defend against the charge on grounds that he acted under compulsion.

A third point also may be conceded: Ratzinger knew the evils of the Nazi regime. But this is not, as Prof. Lance implies, a question of "he must have known." No, the irrefutable evidence is that he DID know, knew early on, and engaged consistently in acts of passive resistance precisely to distance himself from the depradations of the regime. It is here -- and on the critical question of what constitutes "participation" in persecution, that Prof. Lance's case unravels.

In Fedorenko, the Supreme Court addressed the difficulty of assessing whether one has "participated" in persecution in the following passage:

"[A]n individual who did no more than cut the hair of female inmates before they were executed cannot be found to have assisted in the persecution of civilians. On the other hand, there can be no question that a guard who was issued a uniform and armed with a rifle and a pistol, who was paid a stipend and was regularly allowed to leave the concentration camp to visit a nearby village, and who admitted to shooting at escaping inmates on orders from the commandant of the camp, fits within the statutory language about persons who assisted in the persecution of civilians. Other cases may present more difficult line-drawing problems but we need decide only this case." Fedorenko v. United States, 449 U.S. 490, 514 (1981).

Note the supposition here: both the hypothetical hair-dresser and uniformed guard are present in the concentration camp, in close contact with prisoners slated for death. A brief review of young Ratzinger's wartime service puts him nowhere near a concentration camp, and nowhere near any activity on his part remotely connected with the persecution of anyone.

It's helpful to recall the precise facts of that service, which occurred in three stages, most of which was not in the German army.

Prequel: "Hitler Jugend". Contrary to Prof. Lance's insinuation, young Ratzinger "accepted" his position in Hitler Youth essentially as a condition of being able to complete his ongoing seminary studies. (The alternative was to be shipped off to a jevenile concentration camp.) He chose not to attend meetings, finding a sympathetic teacher (himself a member of the Party) who essentially marked his student "present" at Hitler Jugend meetings that he did not, in fact, attend. There is absolutely no evidence, anywhere, that young Ratzinger was anything but an utterly passive member of Hitler Jugend, indeed, one who would huddle in the nighttime darkness to listen, with his father and brother, to banned Allied radio broadcasts.

Step One: Ratzinger was part of the "Flakhilfer generation," so-called because entire classes of male students born from 1926 to 1929 were impressed into service into the "Luftwaffenhelfer." This was a civilian group that served in part as military auxiliaries --Ratzinger's specific duties included guarding two industrial plants and to support, in a telecommunications post, the defenses against allied air strikes on Munich. His "Flakhilfer" tenure -- over a year, ending in mid-September 1944 -- was by far his longest stint of service top the German military effort. It clearly involved no participation in the persecution of others.

Step Two: Reicharbeitsdienst ("Reich Work Service"): From late September until late November 1944 -- two months -- Ratzinger served (under orders) in this civilian auxiliary formation that provided support for the Wehrmacht. It was in this capacity -- not as a soldier in the Wehrmacht -- that Ratzinger briefly served on the Hungarian border, laying mines and, according to Prof. Lance, "watch[ing] as Jews were herded to death camps."

Well. The choice of words does matter. My own brief research yielded a 2005 Times of London article -- probably the most negative mainstream media article on the issue -- that reports that Ratzinger "saw Jews being herded to death camps." A nice linguistic move by Prof. Lance -- we all know the difference between something we merely "saw," and something we (more culpably) "watched as" it happened. But there is no foundation for this cleverly insinuated higher degree of culpability. Indeed, there is precious little detail regarding what, exactly, he "saw" or "watched." Prof. Lance provides none, and a review of dozens of articles, websites (including of the hysterically anti-Catholic variety), and commentary reveals none. Suffice to say that upon his election as Pope, no less an authority than Yad Vashem found absolutely no basis to ever investigate further any activities of Ratzinger during this period. This conclusion was backed, with unanimity, by every major Jewish organization that spoke at the time of his election.

Another critical event from this period is omitted entirely by Prof. Lance: Ratzinger and his work group were awakened one night and pressured to join the Nazi SS. While others in the group joined, he resisted, and was sent away,

Step Three: Wehrmacht. Drafted in December 1944, Ratzinger's service in the Wehrmacht -- which ended with his desertion in late April or early May 1945 -- was his only actual military service. He entered in Munich and was immediately posted to an infantry barracks in Traunstein -- his home village. Neither he nor his unit saw combat.

There is no case, therefore, to conclude that Ratzinger "assisted" -- the lowest and broadest standard of culpability -- in the persecution of Jews or anyone else. It is on this point that Prof. Lance's argument collapases, when judged through the prism of well-established, accessible, and frequently adjudicated legal standards.

But, Prof. Lance may object, I was not making a legal argument at all. Well, the only other arguments he could possibly be making are philosophical or theological. On these grounds, his thesis is even more susceptible.

Prof. Lance concludes, I take it from a philosophical perspective, that Ratzinger was guilty of "material collaboration" with the Holocaust. But this assertion cannot possibly hold under the facts as discussed here. As Prof. Lance surely knows, Ratzinger's was not a case of "immediate" material cooperation; Lance can point to no action of Ratzinger's that was essential to the commission of an intrinsically evil act, such that the act could not have occurred without his participation. (If Prof. Lance wants to make the case that service in, or in support of, the Luftwaffe or Wehrmacht was itself "intrinsically evil," he needs to make that case far more clearly, and against the weight of weight of authority on the licitude of compulsory military service.) In the Catholic tradition, such "immediate" material cooperation is not excused by duress; the cooperation of itself remains intrinsically evil, even if the duress may affect the level of culpability.

There is another, "mediate," form of material cooperation which arises when the cooperator participates in activities that are not essential to the completion of the intrinsically evil act. Because the culpability, if any, for an act of "mediate" material cooperation depends heavily on the cirumstances -- think of the hairdresser in the Supreme Court's hypothetical from Fedorenko -- factual precision is essential. This, Prof. Lance does not provide. The sinister-sounding "watched as" phrase implies a great deal but, as discussed, tells us nothing.

There is a final appeal made by Prof. Lance, which might be characterized as either philosophical or theological: Ratzinger's alleged failure to act heroically, in the manner of the White Rose movement headed by Sophie and Hans Scholl. Simple chronology unravels this attempted parallel. Sophie School was 21, and a university student, when she joined the White Rose in the summer of 1942. At the time, Joseph Ratzinger was 15, in junior seminary. By February 1943, when Ratzinger was still 15, Sophie Scholl and her brave colleagues had been executed. In other words, Joseph Ratzinger did not reach the ages of the White Rose pamphleteers until -- April 1948. To suggest that, at 15, or even 16 or 17, he could have summoned the maturity and skill to become a leader in the underground resistance, is to assume much. And that such actions would be considered reasonable in light of the well-publicized extermination of the White Rose movement is to assume even more.

In April 2005, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel said there are two ways of dealing with the issues raised by a biography such as Ratzinger's. "One way is delving into the subject and emphasizing it. The other is by doing positive things to improve Jewish-Catholic relations and German-Jewish relations without necessarily emphasizing his own personal experiences or his past. My impression is that he's chosen the latter path."

Perhaps a case can be made for Pope Benedict XVI, at a time of his choosing, to reflect more on his "personal" experience. But Prof. Lance has done nothing to persuade us that the "latter path" chosen by Benedict over the decades has been in any way deficient. Nor, by his flawed accusations of material cooperation with evil, has he impressed us that Benedict is under any present obligation to do otherwise than he has done throughout his adult life to promote greater, and genuine, understanding between Christians and Jews.

Edward R. Grant
College, 1979
Affiliated Scholar, Center for Clinical Bioethics
Georgetown University Medical Center

Professor:
You employ the word "crime" with remarkable abandon. Consider the case of Franz Jagerstitter who was beheaded for reusing induction into the German Army in 1943. Is every German who accepted induction therefore a criminal, as you posit Benedict is.

In 1945, Benedict was under militay discipline. Please consult Gunther Grass for a description of the summary executions uniformly meted out by drum head courts martial for soldiers and officers defying militay orders. There is a distinction between a lawful military order such as operating an anti aircraft gun and a clearly unlawful one such as participating in the murder of civilians. Should every German soldier, sailor or airman been prosecuted as a war criminal? If not how can you responsibly term Benedict a criminal.

Finally, you contend Benedict was "defending the death camps from liberation". I disagree. The war aim of the allies was the total defeat of Nazi Germany. Rightly or wrongly, strategies were pursued, resources allocated and tactical decisions made that postponed - for a significant period of time - the disruption and eventual liberation of the death camps. Millions of German soldiers were engaged in the climactic battles, none of whom (most assuredly including Benedict) believed the were defending death camps. In 1946 and 1947 millions of captured Russians and Russian collaborators were forcibly repatriated by American and British forces to the Soviet Union. Almost all of whom were enslaved or executed. Their fate was well known at the time of their repatriation. Were the American officers and soldiers who conducted this forcible repatriation as guilty in the subsequent crimes of Stalin as you say Benedict was in the crimes of Hitler.

Incidentally, I criticize your article. I do so vehemently and unapologetically. I do so because I know your article is wrong. I have the duty to defend the victims of detraction and calumny whenever possible, especially in regards to the pope. It would be craven of me not to.

Now who wrote that article? You did. You placed it here to be "discussed". Are you familiar with that old saying "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen"? You are the one who opened this can of worms. Don't make a mess in this kitchen and then skip out when your precious assumptions are put under the flaming heat of proper criticism.

Prof Lance,
You are obviously a very troubled and frustrated human being.
Your ongoing role here as the victim is both transparent and sad.
Get some help and then teach or do whatever it is do someplace else.
You are an intellectual embarrassment to the institution.
Parent

Edward R. Grant

I am in total awe of your post there, and I am quite humbled by your knowledge and grace therein.

I still stand by my defense of the Holy Father and I urge the professor to consider carefully what he places at the feet (and mouths) of others in the future.

Mark Lance, for a professor, you think you would be able to take criticism - valid or otherwise - in a more professional manner.

You sarcastically state to one poster: "if your goal is never actually to have to think about opposing views. Well done."

It just so happens that your complete refusal to look at the historical factors involved at the time - including the rise of Bolshevism in several European (even German) capital - really discounts your argument and makes you a bit hypocritical considering the quote above.

You obviously have a bias to the left and consider National Socialism "worse" than Bolshevik-inspired communism.

In reality, the are equally abhorrent.

Professor Lance,

Congratulations! I have just thrown away my annual letter to the Georgetown Fund. I am no longer sending any money to an alma mater that appeals to its Catholic tradition in fundraising letters and uses that money to fund anti-Catholic bigots such as yourself.

Facts? How about these:

1. Ratzinger's father was a police officer who opposed the Nazis! This made his situation extremely difficult. A cousin of the future Pontiff had downs syndrome and was exterminated by the Nazis. Their family abhorred the Nazi regime. Never mentioned in your article.

2. Ratzinger was in early seminary when forced to join the youth movement. He may very well have been killed if he had not. Evidence shows he tried hard to avoid this--but could not, or face deportation. Never mentioned in your biased approach.

3. Ratzinger never fired a shot and did what he could to avoid participating in Nazi activities. He left as soon as possible and did all he could possibly have done. Never mentioned in your rant on the Holy Father.

An earlier post brought up the Fox News Special on the Pope. Watch it! It clears the Pope of all your falsehoods.

I am tired of Georgetown supporting such trash--in the classroom and the student newspapers. The week Benedict comes to DC--and this is what the Hoya gives us?

Shame on Georgetown, the Jesuits who no longer run it and Mark Lance. My money is no longer going to the Hilltop.

Barb wrote:
"We catholics have a wonderful sacrament called confession. Sadly it is neglected and even abused by many catholics today. That is where we catholics go to for forgiveness. The priest acting "in persona Christi" has the Divine Mandate of forgiving and retaining the sins of those who so confess. We do not apologize to "the people of the world". We apologize to God through his duly appointed representative."

You're going to have to pardon my ignorance about aspects of the Catholic faith here to explain some of this to me. I'm approaching it from a purely secular perspective, mind you, at least in this case.
I accept that Confession is a private, personal act between a person and God. You receive, there, forgiveness from God for your sins, no? However, how do you, Barb (or any Catholic who is clearly practicing and believes in his/her religion and its importance; I don't mean to single you out it is simply that you brought this up), apply these ideas in our mortal life? Should we be held legally accountable, or do you believe that by going to Confession your sin is fully pardoned by all? I guess I'm trying to draw the line in the sand regarding our mortal culpability here (which, no matter our stance on the issue at hand, is what Prof. Lance's article is perhaps trying to figure out).

Any clarification would be appreciated.

And I agree with you regarding that post above yours; I may not agree with all of it, but it was probably the best written response we've seen here...

Brett and Barb have been responded to as much as I'm going to here.

Parent is obviously not interested in serious discussion.

Robert O'Brien:
Millions of Russian collaborators were repatriated by Americans? Well, leave that to one side. If an American soldier repatriates someone to the USSR, knowing that they will be executed, then I take it to be quite clear that they are guilty of moral complicity with evil, just as are those who knowingly deport refugees to countries today where they will be tortured or killed.

Edward Grant:
You start with the claim that I don't pause to give considered scholarly reflection on the standards of any discipline. Well, I wonder if you might be able to guess about why that is. Here's a hint: Your post here was 2158 words -- or a bit over double the 900 word limit the Hoya imposes on my column. No, it was not a scholarly article.

I'll respond to just a few of your points. I won't go through the many very serious misrepresentations of what I said. (For example, you start a paragraph on the Hitler youth claiming "contrary to Prof. Lance's insinuation". But there was no such insinuation and nothing you say in this paragraph is relevant to anything I said.)

No I was quite obviously not making a legal, but rather a moral point. (I don't think there was any drifting or ambiguity about this.) The fundamental point that so many posters here miss is that the Pope himself says that he knew all along and maintained as much, that the Nazi regime, the Nazi war effort, and the holocaust were evil. All of them. The war was, in his view according to what he now tells us, unjust. So all this about the extent to which his actions contributed to the holocaust versus merely the German war on Europe are quite irrelevant. The Pope by his own completely explicit description of the events was participating in something that he saw to be massively immoral.

As it happens I think the standards of complicity you state here -- that your actions must have been essential to the success of the evil -- are quite absurdly strong. We routinely take people to be morally and legally complicit in actions that would have gone on without their support. And to suggest that laying tank mines and spotting for anti-aircraft is akin to being a hair-dresser is really a bit silly. One can participate in and support an evil in many ways. (I'd be curious to see your reaction to John Quinn's post also.)

But none of that matters. The Pope's own interpretation is that he knew the entire Nazi war and Nazi program to be evil. He says that he did not support it in a big way, and that there was no meaningful way to resist. that is his defense. That is what I'm addressing and critiquing. I claim that by ignoring the fact that he chose not to join the underground, chose not to openly protest, chose not to take the route of conscientious objection, he made a choice that accommodated with what he knew to be evil. When he suggests that this was the only possible route, he is failing in a chance to teach about the noblest people of the time.

You mention the analogy with the White Rose. Somehow the fact that he was a couple years younger means that the analogy is irrelevant. Of course it is progressively harder to do risky things as one gets younger. (Well, not really, sometimes youth feel invulnerable, but never mind.) But I did not deny this. I said utterly clearly that his youth, the threats of others, the social pressure, made the failure to do the best thing completely understandable and excusable. Was that not clear? The point of the WR and many many other examples is that there were options, options that were better things to do from the point of view of any recognizable Catholic ethic than what Ratzinger did. And if one chooses to work with a regime one thinks to be evil, in mediated, inessential support of evil actions, then one's choices -- excusable though they are -- leave a moral residue in the need for acknowledgment of that complicity.

Honestly folks, this is all I have the energy for, so I'm going to end my participation on the issue here. Got grading, writing, teaching, etc. and I fear that a very few people are reading this thread any longer. (GU students, such as David above are welcome to email me or come by to talk. Anyone who wants to tell me I'm stupid, mentally ill, or an embarrassment to GU, can post away, but I really have nothing to say to that.)

But Edward: since you seem interested in serious and detailed multi-disciplinary discussion of the notions of complicity and responsibility in the face of evil, let's organize a small symposium at GU in the Fall with folks from law, theology, and philosophy and discuss these issues in a serious venue. The idea would not be to focus specifically on this case -- though I suppose we could if you prefer -- but on the general issues you discuss in your post. I think there are quite a few folks at the law school who would be interested. Email me directly if you would like to do that.

Mark Lance

Actually, Mark, you didn't respond once to the charge that your argument is made in a historical vacuum.

You dismissed it out of hand because you do not like the idea that the choices made by average Europeans were not simply "comply with or resist" a national evil. There were many more considerations - including both internal and external threats (some perceived and some very real).

You deal with symptoms not causes of evil and, through young Benedict, look to associate the Church with with complicity in such events. This argument, however, is not new - it is a typical leftist tactic (quite similar to Cornwell's "Hitler's pope").

Your accusations are simplistic and ignorant of historical complexity - especially considering the fact that the very survival of individuals and traditions were at stake.

You consider the targeting of specific groups by National Socialism, but do you consider the specific targeting of hundreds of thousands religious in Spain, Mexico, Russia and even Germany?

Here in lies your bias...the preference for one form of totalitarianism over the next. Whether perpetrated by the state or by the "people," terror and mass murder are the same.

Professor:

You use the word crime in connection with Benedict but in response to my question concerning what crime you indict him for you only address the American and British officers and soldiers participating in the forcible repatriation of cossacks and other Russian collaborators to certain execution as morally complicit in their deaths despite the fact they were following the lawful orders of their democratically elected governments (Since you seem to doubt that Stalin could commit such murders consult Nicholas Tolstoy, The Last Secret). You don't use the word crime for these soldiers because you know it is incorrect. But you libel Benedict as a criminal several times even though he was in no shape, manner or form directly involved or even remotely implicated in the deportation of Jews to the death camps. This is grotesque.

You ignore the question of how Benedict could be a criminal when his only actions were to follow clearly lawful military orders while in uniform and at war under penalty of death by beheading and hanging.

Your recklessness is astounding.

Robert O'Brien

I appreciate Prof. Lance's comments, and would gladly participate in the kind of symposium to which he refers. I can be contacted through the Center for Clinical Bioethics at the Medical Center.

900 words is actually a generous allotment for a newspaper column. I don't suggest that Prof. Lance needed to "show his math" in presenting his argument. But I think it quite fair to expect that he would "do" his math before writing this piece. And it is quite clear, in laying the charge that Joseph Ratzinger was guilty of "material cooperation" with the Holocaust, that he failed to do so.

I did not "make up" my standard of "material cooperation." There was nothing personal or subjective about it. I typed the two words into Google, and came up with ample scholarly references reflecting the standard I set forth. In other words, there is an entire body of scholarship defining this term, and that is the definition I used. If Prof. Lance wants to quibble that the definition is too narrow, then he needs to "do his math" and tell us why that is so.

Ditto the legal standard, except that my research and work in the subject is more deep and ongoing. It's out there, and it is accessible. If Prof. Lance wants to make the argument, against the weight of authority, that any German who accepted conscription into the Wehrmacht was materially complicit in the full range of evils of the Nazi regime, then he is free to do so. But he must, as a scholar, begin by recognizing that the weight of authority is against, and try to move the rest of us off that position.

Finally, I never analogized Ratzinger to the hypotethetical hairdresser in the Fedrorenko case -- I merely stated that unlike both the hairdresser and the camp guard, Ratzinger's military service never brought him into contact with the death camps.

Finally, if you are going to write about history, learn it and report it fully and accurately. I pointed out key instances where Prof. Lance failed to do this, and his response is to chance the subject into the moral culpability of a 16-year-old seminarian failing to join the underground -- a far cry from the assertion, made way up high in his original Hoya column, that Joseph Ratzinger was guilty of material cooperation with the Holocaust. Plus, he seems surprised to hear, based on the first paragraph of his last posting, that there was such a thing as "Operation Keelhaul," carried out in May and June 1945 in explicit compliance with the Yalta Accords. I note this not because it is relevant to the case of Joseph Ratzinger, but because it is relevant in assessing a scholar's knowledge of the period of history, and its participants, about which he makes portentous moral judgments.

As for your denial of what you "insinuated" -- I was being charitable toward you. Here's your original column, word for word:

"And collaborate [with Nazi ideology] the young Ratzinger did. He not only accepted membership in the Hitler Youth, but far more seriously, a post in the army."

No, you did not "insinuate" that Joseph Ratzinger, by joining the Hitler Youth, was a Nazi collaborator. You "stated" it. Satisfied? As for the "irrelevance" of what I then proceeded to point out, how is it NOT relevant that he resisted joining, that he did so only because it would permit him to pursue his studies for the priesthood, and that he opted not to attend any meetings? If you are going to make the case that such activity constitutes "collaboration" with the Nazi regime, then be prepared to be asked for a bit more justification.

Finally, I realize that this is a moral discussion, not a legal one. But a close study of the legal authorities on this subject reveals that they are deeply imbued with moral reflection and concern, precisely on the question of not assignng guilt unjustly. So, too, of course, is the moral and philosophical literature on the sujbect. The failure of Prof. Lance's article is that it displayed no evident familiarity with these authorities, and thus could not and did not engage them in a scholarly manner.

Professor:

One last thought before you return to your duties on behalf of Georgetown University. I intended to leave the moralizing to others but must ask since you wish to leave the record as it stands, exactly what places you in position to publically charge another human being with "sins" and call for his atonement of them. For Georgetown's sake, I hope the title of the piece is the result of the exuberance of an undergraduate editor and not the infantile hubris of a professor of philosophy.

Robert O'Brien

The forgiveness obtained in confession doesn't depend in any way upon anyone outside of the confessional.

This is the whole bone of contention I have with the professor. Ratzinger was never accused, arrested, tried or convicted for any war time atrocities committed against anyone. Professor Lance has seen fit to bring him to trial in the kangaroo court of "public opinion" upon what should be now (due to that awesome post by Grant)quite obviously trumped up charges of "complicity" in the murder of innocents. By his continuous use of the word "crimes", it is also obvious that in the professor's eyes, the pope already stands condemned by him. But what the hey! If the pope makes nice by mea-culping to "the people of the world".....well, the good professor will look more "forgivingly" upon him. How magnanimous!

The professor is also under the false impression that the pope needs air his past sins and apologize to the world. This is utter nonsense. He does not need the worlds forgiveness. He does not need the professor's forgiveness.

As for an individual's responsibilities toward others in the commission of any offense. The person offended is to be apologized to(not the world), and restitution is to be made to the fullest extent possible. All individuals who are arrested, tried, and convicted of heinous crimes must indeed face the mortal punishments meted out by lawful authorities.

Furthermore, professor Lance has exhibited the inability to "take the heat" from my criticism of his article. As was noted above, tis a bit funny that he claims a right to kid-glove treatment here that doesn't exist for anyone. He doesn't like my tone? That is laughable.

Barb

All units! All units!! suspect has been seen running from the "discussion" with all arguments on fire. Approach with extreme laughter! I repeat, Approach with extreme laughter!

Unbelievable.

And he is called a professor?

Barb

Eward:
There is no mention of you that I can find on the CCB web so it is hard to contact you through them. It is easy to contact me abuemma@gmail.com

As for not suggesting that I needed to "do the math" no, you said it. "It is difficult from Prof. Lance's post to determine if he is "examining" this question from his own professional discipline, philosophy, or from the standpoint of theology or law. He glides, it seems, from one vantage point to the next, never pausing long enough to give a considered, scholarly reflection as to what any of disciplines might actually SAY about the core concepts of "complicity," "participation," and "crime" that buttress his claim of the Pope's alleged complicity and participation in the crime of the Holocaust" Satisfied.

As for the hitler youth, you know as well as I do that my argument was based on his participation in the military, not the hitler youth, though I noted that he did accept such membership. So nothing you say about this is relevant to the argument. (But I am amazed by the idea that joining an organization such as this so as to complete clerical studies is a morally acceptable choice.)

So, you would like a criticism of this notion of moral material complicity that you got from googling the word? Consider a bank robbery in which three men hold guns on those in the crowd. Since arguably the actions of the other two would have sufficed to scare the tellers and customers and rob the bank, A's holding a gun is not essential to the crime. So by your criterion he is not complicit in the robbery. As I said, an absurd criterion and one no one in the extensive philosophical literature on the subject defends.

I of course made no general claims about all Germans. I made a specific claim about one German on the basis of what he now says he knew.

My question about repatriating Russians was to the numerical claim that millions of russian soldiers were sent back, the majority to execution. If you want to document that I'll happily admit to not knowing a historical fact that was irrelevant to the argument I was making. Again, every claim that was relevant to my argument was either utterly uncontroversial history or something that Ratzinger himself said. So no, I don't need to be so expert as to know that the Americans sent over a million Russians back to their deaths as collaborators -- assuming that I'll get that citation.

I fail utterly to understand how the fact that law is "imbued" with morality means that in making a moral argument I should have addressed the legal literature. On the moral literature, what I wrote did indeed engage with it.
Mark Lance

"Consider a bank robbery in which three men hold guns on those in the crowd. Since arguably the actions of the other two would have sufficed to scare the tellers and customers and rob the bank, A's holding a gun is not essential to the crime. So by your criterion he is not complicit in the robbery."

Complicity in German national mobilization (i.e. conscription) for the war effort = complicity in the specific events of the holocaust?

Seems a bit of a stretch -- guilt by association, if you will.

I have now been informed that tomorrow is the Holy Father's birthday. I wish to extend to him a hearty and happy birthday!

I am grateful to God that he didn't get his head cut off by the nazis. It must have taken immense courage and prudence to live in the time and place he did, under the evil regime he lived under.

God Bless you Papa!

The question posed by Mark Lance is an old one. One of his students probably asked Josef Ratzinger this question in about 1968:"How do you explain your participation in the Nazi war effort? Do you realize that you supported a murderous regime?"

I myself asked my father this question more than once. He served (as a draftee) for 4 1/2 years in Hitler's army, about two years of which were spent in combat units. No waffling about unloaded guns here. His answer was that he fought for the buddy next to him, and for his own survival. When I suggested that his effort propped up a gang of genocidal criminals, he did not argue with me. He did however recall that more than once, especially near the end of the war, he had opportunities for small, no, tiny acts of resistance (not turning a weapon over to an officer fast enough, e.g.) for which he could have been shot on the spot. His buddies would urge him to cooperate and not throw his life away. He also recalled having opportunities for acts of kindness throughout the war, and doing these acts. He was barely promoted to the rank of corporal. He said that he was not murderous enough to have a successful career in that army. In the end, he survived and led a good and productive life, free of the hatred that the Nazis had tried to instill in him. I think he made the right choice.

Now to the article. I am obviously very sympathetic to the hard question that is posed here and find the Pope's answers less than satisfactory. I was nevertheless alarmed and dismayed by some of the other arguments that were used in its support. This includes the careless conflation of terms like "sin", "crime", "responsibility". It also includes the ludicrous suggestion that an eighteen year old draftee (think Georgetown freshman, minus the SAT prep course and the ethics class) should choose death over survival, even as a small cog in a war machine that was to be destroyed in a few months, as any clear thinking person could see in early 1945.

Hans Engler
Department of Mathematics

One last thought that might help those who are trying to understand my point of view here.

Suppose that Jones is in a just army in a just war. Say the army is defending it's country against attack and fighting a clearly unjust enemy. Make it the US in WWII if you like. Suppose Jones is 18. he is given a lawful order to charge an enemy stronghold, so that others can successfully attack from another side. Jones knows that he will likely die in the attempt.

Most people think it is nonetheless Jones's duty to follow orders, to give his life for the cause. Some among us -- though sadly few, I find -- would be willing to forgive him if, out of fear for his life, out of a sense that he would do greater good in the future, or whatever, refused the order and deserted. But most would have no trouble labeling his actions as morally wrong and as calling for repentence.

Well, the Pope says that he knew the German army to be supporting an evil regime. He says that the German invasion of Europe was an unjust war. The Pope knew that the death camps were operating. He was laying lethal traps for any who might be on their way to stop them.

But yet so many posters here seem to find the idea that he did wrong by cooperating, even in the face of possible death for refusing, absurd, evil, ludicrous, a sign of mental illness, etc. Because he was young.

I don't see the difference. If it can be morally required to obey a just order in the face of death, then it can be morally required to disobey an unjust one in the face of death.

In both cases we should be forgiving. In both cases we should understand human weakness. But we should never forget that those who resisted, those who refused, were the ones on the side of right here.

Mark Lance

Secure in your 21st century ivory tower, you have never had to make the difficult choices young Ratzinger made. You undercut your own argument by saying others who did resist gave their lives while Ratzinger said effective resistance was impossible. I only wish Catholic colleges would purge themselves of such weak and heretical teachers as yourself and instead populate their faculties with genuine seekers of the truth and faith.

You seem to want to blame the young Ratzinger for not more forceabely refusing to serve in the military. What is not known is if the brothers did not cooperate would their parents lives have been threaten.
It is a common tactic of forced service to hold family members hostage. Hitler ordered the German Army never to retreat or they were to be shot. The SS were well known for following Hitler's orders. They did not hesitate to shoot.

Since you seem determined to hold people accountable how about FDR? He did not allow the S.S. St Louis to land in the U.S. and disembark the Jews who had sailed from Hamburg. It was known in 1939 there were concentration camps. Several of the St Louis passenger's had just been released from the camps.

How about holding FDR, President Bru of Cuba and Batista knew that if the "Ship of the Damned" returned to Hamburg; all of the Jews would die. There was enough known evidence, they were men of power and position. What excuses do you have for them?

Steve:
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what your gripe is, so I can't respond.

Barbara:
I absolutely hold FDR and Batista responsible for such actions. I do so with far less sympathy than I have for the young Ratzinger. These were vile and callous actions of men in power who stood to lose nothing but perhaps political points. They deserve unequivocal condemnation.

My question for you: why do you assume the opposite? Why do you think that if I dare to criticize the Pope, however carefully and respectfully, with forgiveness, that I must give everyone else a free pass? Perhaps by casting me as some bigoted demon you find it easier not to engage with what I said? In any event, I can assure you that I spend a great deal of my time demanding accountability from government leaders and others of my own community.

Mark Lance

Prof. Lance:

Facts are stubborn things. Yet, whenever I or someone else in this string raises some "inconvenient" fact that threatens your thesis, you either call it irrelevant, or change the subject.

As my absolutely last words on the subject, a summary of the critical points:

1. You brought up Hitler Youth. Our replies establishing that Ratzinger's mere (compulsory) enrollment, and nothing more, could not possibly be interpreted as support of the Nazi regime, are therefore relevant.

2. You then assert that it is the Army service that matters most. Ratzinger did not put on the German uniform until December 1944, and served, essentially unarmed, in a barracks near his home town. He was 17 at the time. It is hard to imagine a lower level of military involvement. You say that you are not indicting all those who served in the German Army. But you indict the Pope for this minimal level of military service.

3. Ratzinger's prior service, which seems to be the thrust of your argument, was in a civilian auxiliary role, not as a combatant, and not, apparently, in support of any offensive military action. He was 16 and 17 at the time.

4. Your bank robbery example, as others have pointed out, is a transparently weak analogy. First, each and every one of the guys holding the guns is equally culpable, both in morals (they are guilty of FORMAL cooperation with evil, not merely "material" cooperation), and in law. Second, these guys are comparable, in reference to the Holocaust, to the camp guards, to those who held guns as Jews were rounded up in the ghettoes and Jewish quarters, and to those who herded victims onto trains and trucks. Ratzinger, of course, had no such culpability.

5. Your final post -- which is quite removed from the flagrant assertions of culpability in your original article -- raises the fair and interesting point regarding the moral obligation to refuse to follow unjust orders. This is interesting, but somewhat irrelevant to our discussion because you have not identified a single unjust order that Ratzinger complied with. If his work as a civilian auxiliary, including the laying of mines to defend against the advancing Russian army, was an unjust act, then, again, the culpability of all German soldiers is in question.

6. What seems to be your point -- at its best -- is that despite his youth, his passive resistance to any act endorsing the Nazi regime, and the minimal level of his military service, Joseph Ratzinger, now having assumed the mantle of the Papacy, bears a special obligation to reflect on his actions, and those of the German people, in failing to more actively resist the Third Reich. Had you not inflamed the discussion with insupportable allegations of "collaboration" and "material cooperation" with the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, this might have been an interesting discussion. But this is not what you did. Instead, you waded into an area of morals and law with which you apparently are not familiar (your reckless use of the term "material cooperation" being but one example) and proceeded to use a forum directed at students (i.e., those whom we both have an obligation to teach in search of the truth) to engage in calumny. In so doing, you have ignored the vast literature devoted to this subject that has emerged over the last six decades, as well as the judgments of those with great expertise in these matters, none of which support the moral culpability you have assigned to Pope Benedict XVI. You are free to discagree with these judgments (including those of all major Jewish organizations, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Yad Vashem, etc. etc.), but a proper intellectual and teaching stance would first acknowledge that these judgments have been made, and then attempt to demonstrate why they are wrong. And be a little more humble when the shortcomings of your argument are noted.

Edward Grant
Affiliated Scholar
Center for Clinical Bioethics, GUMC

The idea that Pope Benedict needs to provide a philosophy professor writing from the safety of Washington with an explanation for why, as a fifteen-year-old conscript, he didn't do more to stop a Nazi war machine that had spent almost six years laying waste to Europe is absurd.

Enjoy what's left of your fifteen minutes of fame, Professor Lance.

You can not forgive another person's faults. They are not your's to forgive.
You can only forgive a person's trespasses committed against you.

If you murder someone, I cannot forgive you - only the person you murdered can forgive you for killing him. The murdered person's family can not forgive you. You cannot forgive for someone else.

This politically correct bilge about forgiving someone is meaningless. If you hurt me, no one else can do the forgiving, only I have that right.

Well Edward, you certainly have the bluster down. If you were willing to listen or think before launching into condescending bluster, we might have had a reasonable conversation.

Facts are stubborn things. Yet, whenever I or someone else in this string raises some "inconvenient" fact that threatens your thesis, you either call it irrelevant, or change the subject.

-- I call things irrelevant when they are, have not changed the subject, and you have not refuted a single historical fact that I mentioned. (Still waiting for that evidence that millions of Russians were repatriated to their death. If you provide that, I'll have been wrong on something.)

As my absolutely last words on the subject, a summary of the critical points:

1. You brought up Hitler Youth. Our replies establishing that Ratzinger's mere (compulsory) enrollment, and nothing more, could not possibly be interpreted as support of the Nazi regime, are therefore relevant.

-- So the principle is that the mention of something makes any argument about it relevant to any other argument.

2. You then assert that it is the Army service that matters most. Ratzinger did not put on the German uniform until December 1944, and served, essentially unarmed, in a barracks near his home town. He was 17 at the time. It is hard to imagine a lower level of military involvement. You say that you are not indicting all those who served in the German Army. But you indict the Pope for this minimal level of military service.

-- I "indicted" no one. As I've said over and over he laid tank mines and spotted to anti-aircraft batteries. Both are combatant roles.

3. Ratzinger's prior service, which seems to be the thrust of your argument, was in a civilian auxiliary role, not as a combatant, and not, apparently, in support of any offensive military action. He was 16 and 17 at the time.

-- ANd the distinction between uniform service and "civilian auxilliary" service is relevant how?

4. Your bank robbery example, as others have pointed out, is a transparently weak analogy. First, each and every one of the guys holding the guns is equally culpable, both in morals (they are guilty of FORMAL cooperation with evil, not merely "material" cooperation), and in law. Second, these guys are comparable, in reference to the Holocaust, to the camp guards, to those who held guns as Jews were rounded up in the ghettoes and Jewish quarters, and to those who herded victims onto trains and trucks. Ratzinger, of course, had no such culpability.

The bank robbery example was not an "analogy". It was a refutation of a silly principle of complicity, one that was absolutely correct.

5. Your final post -- which is quite removed from the flagrant assertions of culpability in your original article -- raises the fair and interesting point regarding the moral obligation to refuse to follow unjust orders.

-- So your claim is that I did not say this in the article?

This is interesting, but somewhat irrelevant to our discussion because you have not identified a single unjust order that Ratzinger complied with.

-- The order to serve in the Nazi military in the course of an unjust war, and every order in service of that war. Of course both were identified.

If his work as a civilian auxiliary, including the laying of mines to defend against the advancing Russian army, was an unjust act, then, again, the culpability of all German soldiers is in question.

-- In question indeed. But one relevant fact is that the Pope says that he knew the war to be unjust, he knew that the holocaust was going on, and he knew the Nazi regime to be evil. Again, as I've said probably a dozen times in this thread.

6. What seems to be your point -- at its best -- is that despite his youth, his passive resistance to any act endorsing the Nazi regime, and the minimal level of his military service, Joseph Ratzinger, now having assumed the mantle of the Papacy, bears a special obligation to reflect on his actions, and those of the German people, in failing to more actively resist the Third Reich.

-- Congratulations, you have at last at least noted that you appreciated one of the points of the article.

Had you not inflamed the discussion with insupportable allegations of "collaboration" and "material cooperation" with the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, this might have been an interesting discussion.

-- Again, you have done nothing to show them insupportable, much less "inflamed".

But this is not what you did. Instead, you waded into an area of morals and law

-- you admitted in an earlier post that you knew I was not discussing law, and so almost everything you wrote was irrelevant. But why not bring up a misrepresentation again. It worked well the first time.
with which you apparently are not familiar (your reckless use of the term "material cooperation" being but one example)

-- OH do get off that horse. It is not moving.

and proceeded to use a forum directed at students (i.e., those whom we both have an obligation to teach in search of the truth) to engage in calumny.

-- Calumny!!!

In so doing, you have ignored the vast literature devoted to this subject that has emerged over the last six decades, as well as the judgments of those with great expertise in these matters, none of which support the moral culpability you have assigned to Pope Benedict XVI.

-- I'm quite sure I know more about the moral literature on culpability than you do. But argument is not important to denunciation, right? Just call me irresponsible enough times and maybe it will become true.

You are free to discagree with these judgments (including those of all major Jewish organizations, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Yad Vashem, etc. etc.), but a proper intellectual and teaching stance would first acknowledge that these judgments have been made, and then attempt to demonstrate why they are wrong.

-- I did argue that they are wrong. I feel not the slightest obligation in a newspaper article to begin with a list of all the organizations that disagree with me.

And be a little more humble when the shortcomings of your argument are noted.

-- I believe I have been humble and responsive to everyone who has taken the argument seriously. You have not. You have gone on and on with irrelevant legal argument -- argument you essentially admitted to be irrelevant, but claimed to connect via the principle that law is "imbued with morality" -- constantly claimed I was misrepresenting fact without showing this in any single historical case while making an absurd historical claim yourself, have proposed an absurdly weak account of moral culpability while blustering to avoid acknowledging this, etc. None of that amounts to pointing out a shortcoming. It amounts to intellectual bullying. No doubt you are used to debating with people who are vulnerable to that sort of thing.

Edward Grant
Affiliated Scholar
Center for Clinical Bioethics, GUMC

-- And that, Edward, is my last word to you. If any serious comments appear, especially from students, I'll try to respond.

I apologize to those trying to engage seriously on the issue, but after 50 name calling posts and this string of uncollegial bluster, it is difficult to remain completely friendly.

Mark Lance

Mr. Grant! Welcome to our growing group of people he won't respond to anymore. Not once did you insult him. I guess you weren't supposed to actually bring up inconvenient facts that didn't jibe with his novel account of history.

Seeing as I am no history buff, I had to stick to the immorality of his article. I am grateful for the history lesson though. It will help in any future "debates" on this issue. Your arguments were thoughtful and a bit more precise than he was willing to engage with.

As a catholic who loves and tries to live her faith, I was deeply offended by this work of his and his continuation of it in this forum.

Professor Lance's article is one huge calumny against the pope. According to the catholic faith, one who has commited such a sin is obliged (ironically in this case)to make a public apology and retraction of the calumny. I won't hold my breath for that one though.

If my tone in any of this has been a bit impatient and sarcastic toward him, I must offer a sincere "oh well".

Barb

After reading ALL of the Comments I declare Lance the Loser!! Better luck next time Lance !!You picked the wrong subject at the wrong time !!

Lance -

A bit of a history lesson on the Pope's youth...I would hope you would fact-check before writing this article:

-His father was a bitter enemy of Nazism, believing it conflicted with the Catholic faith.
-In 1941, one of Ratzinger's cousins, a 14-year-old boy with Down syndrome, was killed by the Nazi regime in its campaign of eugenics.
-In 1943 while still in seminary, he was drafted at age 16 into the German anti-aircraft corps.

Why should he apologize for this?

Professor Lance, I understand you may be a pseudo-philosopher, so please read up on some history before writing on historical issues.
Also, if you take issue with the Holy Father's social or religious positions, criticize those. Don't cowardly spread libel while not going after the crux of the matter.

I would like to know what you have done in today's holocaust to prevent the slaying of millions of the unborn, your brothers and sisters? Or are you standing idly by and criticize others for their possible wrongdoings ages ago?

I suspect that it is precisely because he can't refute the pope's social and religious positions that he has turned to personal attacks.

Professor: "Little pope, little pope, let me in!"

Pope: "Not for an advocate of sinny sin sin!"

Professor: "Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll BLOW your rep in!"

And so he huffed, and he puffed.....and he huffed and he puffed.....and he huffed and he puffed (looks at watch)...and he huffed and he puffed......oh well. When you try to blow down anyone firmly planted on the Rock of Peter, you are gonna end up blue in the face.

Barb

I just have to say -
it's tremendously refreshing to see Lance confronted (and, in many of his points, bested) by intelligent adults armed with the background and intellectual tools to address the good professor.

I often think that he writes here mostly in the fashion of a bully pulpit. As students of the University, we do our best to confront him, but it can be hard when you are 18, 19, 20, going up against a confrontational adult with a Ph.D. and so much more time on his hands to have developed his particular brand of vitrol.

So ... internet commentators: from a georgetown student, thank you for effectively engaging in this debate. Please keep it up on future Lance pieces.

"GU Student"

I'm sorry to have argued for views that make you uncomfortable, and I'm sorry that you haven't felt able to "confront me". I guess that means that I respond to what you, or others say. But you see that is the point of a university, to make you think about new ideas, even uncomfortable ones.

As for bullying or vitriol, this is really absurd. My initial article was polite, careful, and reasoned, despite the fact that some people take any criticism of the Pope to be an affront. I have never bullied a student, or anyone else here, and I would challenge you to find a single remark in this entire thread from me that is remotely vitriolic. I've been called every name in the book, told I'm incompetent, should be fired, been labeled a heretic, mocked, recited nursery rhymes, and on and on. I've responded to each person reasonably or, in some cases, simply stopped responding when it was clear that they either weren't reading what I wrote, or just wanted to call me names.. But the closest to vitriol was a harsh response to a repeatedly condescending, argumentative, and intellectually dishonest attack from another professor. Mark Lance

"6. What seems to be your point -- at its best -- is that despite his youth, his passive resistance to any act endorsing the Nazi regime, and the minimal level of his military service, Joseph Ratzinger, now having assumed the mantle of the Papacy, bears a special obligation to reflect on his actions, and those of the German people, in failing to more actively resist the Third Reich."

Now I am just a simple housewife so bare with me if I lack the writing skills to match all the brain power in this discussion.
How can any of us assume that Holy Father has not reflected on his past and what he may have done differently. As Pope I think it is very likely that he has "reflected" and prayed a lot about his past. Is he failing in his obligations as Pope by not "reflecting" in a public forum? It sounds to me (and I realize my 12th grade education will probably make anything I say worthless) that if he had done any more resisting he and his loved ones would have been in grave danger. It sounds like you are saying that he should have done just that. If Papa did everything he reasonably could at the time these things were happening(and it seems he did) then he owes nothing to anyone but God. God alone knows the human heart, even better than we know our own. Perhaps martyrdom would have been the most noble thing he could have done, but perhaps he did not feel it was his place to put others in that position. Who knows? Only him and God.

The Pope has many obligations, but the biggest one is to tend the sheep of the flock, not apologize or explain himself or his past to the sheep. He has to guide us to the safety of Heaven. He is the Vicor of Christ...what exactly is it you think he should do? Who are we (the sheep) to question the private decisions of a man chosen by the Holy Spirit? Is he to have nothing for himself? Not even his past? Ratzinger did martyr himself when he went into the "room of sorrows" and donned the mantle of Pope. He gave up his life.

"But you see that is the point of a university, to make you think about new ideas, even uncomfortable ones."

I thought it was for teaching facts! Good heavens! Why pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to listen to opinion? I can get that for 33.00 on cable. :P

Mintavia1:
Your comments and writing skills are a great deal better than those of most of the folks who have written in to denounce me, and your questions are perfectly reasonable.

As I said in the article, there were many avenues of resistance to the great evil of hte Nazis that were pursued by many people at the time. So other forms of resistance were available. It could be that young Ratzinger did not follow that course because of concern for others -- his family -- but that is not what he said.

Yes, I do think he should reflect in a public forum. In fact he has. He has said that his service didn't matter, and that resistance was impossible -- or endorsed his brother saying that last. I think he should recognize the way his service was moral complicity with evil and hold up the true heroes of the time as examples to those who face institutionalized evil now.

On one thing, I fear we simply have to disagree. You say, and in so doing you reiterate the main thought of many here, "who are we (the sheep) to question the private decisions of a man chosen by the Holy Spirit?" Of course I'm not Catholic, and I take myself to be entitled to question decisions of anyone. (Calling a decision to support the Nazi army "private" strikes me as a bit misleading. If I engaged in such support for, say, Hizbullah -- laying tank traps on the Israeli border would that be a private decision?) I take it anyone has a right to question anyone else. Of course there are standards. If the issues don't affect others, then good taste suggests ignoring them. But your point, I assume, is that one should not question him because he is the Pope. Please note that this is not Catholic doctrine. There is no such immunity from challenge in any aspect of Catholic thought and within the Church there is an active tradition of dissent. But from my point of view -- not being Catholic-- this is irrelevant. I will continue to raise issues where I see them, and to challenge where I see that challenges are needed.

As for the point of a university, the teaching of facts is not inconsistent with the raising of new ideas. What you don't get on cable are reasoned opinions. Thing is, there are quite a lot of "facts" that are in dispute among the most rational, smartest, most knowledgeable people. Not so long ago, the Church said it was a fact that the Earth was at the center of the universe. They went to some lengths to make that factuality clear to dissenters who taught "opinions". I, for one, am glad that the dissenters persisted.

Yours,
Mark Lance

One should not put another person's reputation into doubt without sufficent proof or sufficient reason.

Being a non-catholic does not immunize you against the condemnations of calumny. Even non-catholics as a rule acknowledge that it is unjust to make unfounded accusations of others, especially accusations of heinous crimes.

Mr. Grant has pointed out the unfounded nature of your accusations historically. The proof is not there. Show us your proof! We don't want just your word on it. Show us the post-war court documents against one Joseph Ratzinger. Show us documents where he was formally and legally indicted. You accused him of CRIMES. Prove it.

Now for the "sufficent reason" part, you have none. Academic debate is NOT a good or valid reason for doing such a thing.

The only thing you make clear is that YOU disagree with the judgments he made about his own involvement. You want him to define "complicity" in the way you define it. The courts in those sad times agreed with his interpretation and so do the courts in our own day. You apparently wish to change that, but since you can't, you bring your case here, The court of public opinion.

Truth cannot bow to public opinion without there being unjust consequences.

Barb

Having gotten a link to this page from interested parties, I have carefully gone over the article and the lengthy "discussion" here. I "confess", I am delighted beyond words at the defense of our Holy Father by so many here.

Shockingly spiteful calumny by yet another Catholic hating professor....and he is called on it! Not just called on it, but more appropriately, publicly spanked as it were, and in full retreat!

I read years ago of Ratzinger's forced induction into the Nazi Youth and knew full well it would be joyfully seized upon by those whose avocation is Catholic bashing; and of course time has proven me correct.

To the GU student who posted here, my sympathies on your having to learn in such a hostile environment. It has long been said that universities now are bastions of liberalism, unabashadly contemptuous of those with conservative viewpoints, much less traditional Catholicism. But hang tough; the reward goes to those who persevere.

Kudos to Barb for pointing out how perfectly Lance's piece adds up to the sin of calumny and detraction. It was dead on.

Prayers for everyone in this discussion, particularly Lance. I ask all of you to pray for me.

Housewife, radiologic technologist, loyal Papist! Rebecca

Mark Lance said: "(Calling a decision to support the Nazi army "private" strikes me as a bit misleading. If I engaged in such support for, say, Hizbullah -- laying tank traps on the Israeli border would that be a private decision?)"

Again, Lance, you are being disingenuous.....Ratzinger never "made a decision to support the Nazi army"; he was forced into service. And as for the comparison to Hezbollah? Indeed there are and have been numerous youths in Islamic countries that HAVE been forced into serving terrorists, many have been told their families would be killed if they do not participate.
Beheadings and torture awaited and indeed befell many who refused to "help" terrorists.

This is not, in my view, active, willing participation, but rather youth being victimized by tyrants. There have been numerous instances of men being forced to blow themselves up, as suicide bombers, in exchange for their families being released unharmed. To say that these men "made a decision to support terrorism" is malicious and false.

Your disdain for Catholicism, and your hatred of Pope Benedict may have been masked in what you thought was a genteel robe of a thoughful acedemic. It has been ezposed for what it is, and for what you are: a bigot.

Rebecca:
The fact that one faces threats does not mean it is not a decision. I never claimed that the choice was willing participation. In fact, in the article and at least a dozen times since, I have been utterly explicit and clear that it wasn't. The point here was whether it was a private matter. Patently it was not.

Your misrepresentation of what I wrote, not to mention the obscene motives you attribute to me on the basis of nothing but the fact that I dare to question a decision and statements of the Pope, are defense mechanisms. As I pointed out to previous posters, if you just attribute vicious motives to anyone who disagrees with you, assume they are bigots, then you never have to consider a view that is different from your own.

Personally, I find that a sad way to live a life.

Mark Lance

You state that the Pope should say something like this....

“In my youth, I collaborated with the greatest evil in the history of this world. I participated in defense of the Holocaust. I did so out of fear, out of moral confusion, out of the fragility and fallibility of my youth and human weakness. This sin is one that I will live with my entire life, that will haunt me. It is one for which I humbly ask forgiveness of the people of the world, and one that will forever incline me toward forgiveness of weakness in others.”

This statement would satisfy what you perceive as Justice? I think a statement like this would open up wounds and cause enormous damage to not only his reputation but put the rest of Germany on trial once again for its disgrace of the past. Personally I can see that he committed no crime and therefor does not owe me an apology. The statement makes him sound like a monster begging to be forgiven. Disgraced. Is it justice you would like... or humiliation? It sounds like you want him to grovel. It sounds like you want him to shame himself publicly. He was not a willing participant in the offences you accuse him of, but still you want him to apologize? What drives this need for an apology? Justice or Envy? Now let's just PRETEND for a bit that he actually was guilty of crimes during the war. And that in the time that past he made a heartfelt confession,did his penance and went on to do good works for the church to such a degree that he became Pope. If he were to make such a public statement then he would put to question the validity of the Confessional. He would be telling the world that the Sacrament of confession was not enough to "atone" for the sins of youth. As a non-Catholic I don't expect you to understand how shocking and horrible that would be. Catholics are big on forgiveness,atonement and sacrifice. I know that any sins Holy Father committed in the past or present, that have been confessed with true contrition and acceptance of whatever punishment God decides to give him. Atonement is required for all sins as well as remorse. God alone decides the penalty. How do we know that Papa has not already atoned for past sins. How do we know that his Papacy itself is not that very thing? (Community Service).

Anyway, my point is that such a statement by the Pope,whether guilty or innocent(INNOCENT!), would only serve to cause more harm than good. Since there is no proof he is guilty then such a public statement would only be him incriminating himself for something he did not do and publicly humiliating him. How is Justice served by public humiliation?

Mintavia said: "Since there is no proof he is guilty then such a public statement would only be him incriminating himself for something he did not do and publicly humiliating him. How is Justice served by public humiliation?"

I think this is the crux of Lance's post.....humiliation. Calumny and detraction, aimed at embarassing Catholics over something our Pope is not even guilty of, and of publicly bringing shame on the Holy Father.

No matter how Lance tries to couch his replies, the underlying venom he feels towards Catholicism shines through.

"if you just attribute vicious motives to anyone who disagrees with you, assume they are bigots, then you never have to consider a view that is different from your own."

Sir,
Are you not attributing vicious motives the the Pontiff for not publicly apologizing? Have you considered the possibility that Josef Ratzinger did not view his forced,unwilling participation during wartime as a grave sin? Many muslim cultures punish a raped woman for the rape and publicly humiliate or execute her. The nazis in a similar fashion "raped" its own people and you seem to agree that these people are in some way guilty for not choosing death or worse by resisting or protesting. Have you considered a view different than your own? Others here have quite eloquently told you their views and you seem to have rejected all of them in favor of your own view. What exactly are your motives? Is it to have people consider your view? If so why is it so important for others to view this subject as you do? IF someone rejects your view,do you feel they have not considered it? When you say "consider" do mean to reflect on or to agree with? You say Rebecca assumed you were a bigot. Your statements have obviously led many here to think that you are a bigot. A very polite and well spoken one. Have you ever considered apologizing for offending so many people? Or do you feel you have nothing to apologize for? You are a professor, are you not held to a higher standard?

On an off note...as far as I know the Earth IS the center of the universe. Its physical location is irrelivent. The Earth is where God put us...his creatures, his adopted children. He let his Son live and die on it. Come to think of it...wasn't the Universe created for Earth to exist in?

Mintavia:
No, I've not attributed any vicious motives to the Pontiff. In fact, I went out of my way to sympathize with the situation he was in, and to say that he must have had the right motives.

As for considering views, I ask that responders pay attention to what I say. That means not denouncing me for not noticing that I am in a position of safety when I said this explicitly and talked about what follows from it. it means not claiming that I don't know about historical facts that I mentioned. It means not giving me condescending lectures on the law when I'm talking about moral responsibility. It means things like noting the very Catholic translation of my argument put up by mr Quinn, that I endorsed, but which no one has made a single mention of.

In short, so many people act as if I just wrote "the pope is a nazi, boo him". And they disagree with that. But this is not listening to me, and thinking this bigoted is not responding to me. It is that utter refusal to grapple with what I actually said, and the arguments that I made that makes people assume I'm a bigot.

As for the Earth being the center of the universe. Well, either that is a change of subject or very frightening.

And with that folks, I really have to move on. I've been trying to respond to those of you who seemed to have an interest in real discourse, but now, this thread threatens to utterly take over my life.

Mark Lance

Mark Lance, this thread, 4/17/08:

"As I pointed out to previous posters, if you just attribute vicious motives to anyone who disagrees with you, assume they are bigots, then you never have to consider a view that is different from your own.

Personally, I find that a sad way to live a life."

Mark Lance, "Only Love Can Overcome Pathology of Hatred", 2/17/08

"Anon:
Again, anyone who wants to read the article which is absolutely explicit in saying who I support, can do so. (I am utterly clear that progressives must find ways to support people that don't involve alliance either with the sorts of imperialists anon endorses, or relgious fundamentalists.)

btw, why continue hiding behind "anon". Worried about being sued for libel? Don't worry. I couldn't be bothered. You aren't worth the effort.

You, anon, are a racist and a liar and this conversation is finished.

Btw,
Mark"

Full link: http://www.thehoya.com/node/15369>

_________________________________
...
isn't this the definition of hypocrisy?