Popes, Hitlers, Nazis and combinations thereof

As most of you have probably heard, the new Pope joined the Hitler Youth. As you may not have heard, this is not a reason to panic and run around gossiping that the Catholics have not only elected a conservative Pope, but, in fact, elected a Pope who wants to kill all the Jews in the world.

Take a look at the details in New pope defied Nazis as teen during WWII (Seattle Post Intelligencer). After scanning through some charming paragraphs about wartime Bavaria, you’ll get to this part: “he … was compelled to join the Hitler Youth when the Nazis took over the Catholic youth group he was in and merged it into their organization.”

As it turns out, “[s]ome 80 to 90 percent of Germans joined the Hitler Youth and refusing to sign up could mean being sent to a youth “reeducation camp,” akin to a concentration camp”. In fact, the pope is quite open about his automatic enrollment in 1941 in his autobiography. Simply the enrollment year is proof enough that he was forced into it: any true Nazi believer would have joined up much earlier than that. The actual story of his life during those years is quite interesting and well-documented in the aforementioned article.

So, no, you can’t hate him (dislike him, be disappointed in his selection, etc.) because he’s a Nazi sympathizer. He wasn’t. He was a conscientious objecter, as far as that went in a country where “opportunities for outright defiance were limited − and dangerous.”

However, as eloquently pointed out by The new Pope is a Nazi (Something Awful), there are other − real − reasons for disliking him.

“Dislike him for his stance on homosexuality. Dislike him for his stance on abortion and contraceptive use. Dislike him for his views on the Catholic Church molestation scandal.”

He is still one of the most conservative Popes of modern times. Contraception is out of the question, as is any sort of reproductive freedom, or any freedoms at all, for women. His stance on gays is similar — insofar as he recognizes that they exist, he considers them aberrations of God’s will. An interesting stance when juxtaposed with his views on molestation — which, apparently, also doesn’t exist.

Woman- and gay-hater he may be. Jew-hater he is not. All clear?