I would feel better if he had been a Swing Kid...

"And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church..."
-- Matthew 16:18
"Ah, Hope! what would life be, stripped of thy encouraging smiles, that teach us to look behind the dark clouds of to-day, for the golden beams that are to gild the morrow."
-- Susanna Moodie

In case you are just crawling from under a rock, we have a new Holy See. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was announced today as the new Pope and will be from here on in known as Benedict XVI... and so the pundits have begun giving their opinion.

*SIGH* Immediately, you hear he was part of the Hitler Youth and later drafted in the German Army. That he is an arch-conservative who is against all religions except Catholicism, against homosexuals, and helped cover-up the US sexual abuse problem.

My initial reaction is anger. I was so mad that Ratzinger was made Pope. I was thinking, this sucks. I took a breath and decided to research him. What was he really about?

I found out that he was forced to join the Hitler Youth as all young Germans were. Even though he had already joined the seminary, he was drafted into the German Army and toward the end of the war, deserted. Once the allies arrived, he was interred in a POW camp and was later released. During the war Ratzinger's father and the local pastor criticized the Reich and Ratzinger thought that the church was a buttress against Nazi evils.

Ratzinger showed himself to be a progressive and eloquent voice during the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council. He assisted in writing an attack on the church laws dealing with heresy, which dated to medieval times and which the draft said were a "source of scandal" to the world.

Through his experience in the war, he later, as a professor at Tuebingen University, opposed Marxist student demonstrations. He felt such political ideologies as "tyrannical, brutal and cruel. That experience made it clear to me that the abuse of the faith had to be resisted." The cold war basically pulled him back a bit from reform, and living through Nazism, seeing what a leftist philosophy did to his country, I can't really blame him.

It is easy to be outraged in hearing of his membership in the Hitler Youth and Army, but I can't imagine what it was like living there during WWII. I would think that people would do anything to survive. Nobody knows what they would do when the chips were down. I am just glad that it isn't an experience I knew.

Here are some of his quotes that I thought gave more of a view of Ratzinger rather than the negative things the media is happy to share. I did notice that the media has taken a number of things out of context in his writings. They should have read the whole document... Anyhoo...

On Faith -

"Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. ... Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."

On Islam -

"It is true that the Muslim world is not totally mistaken when it reproaches the West of Christian tradition of moral decadence and the manipulation of human life. ... Islam has also had moments of great splendor and decadence in the course of its history."

On Judaism -

"That the Jews are connected with God in a special way and that God does not allow that bond to fail is entirely obvious. We wait for the instant in which Israel will say yes to Christ, but we know that it has a special mission in history now ... which is significant for the world."

"Our Christian conviction is that Christ is also the messiah of Israel. Certainly it is in the hands of God how and when the unification of Jews and Christians into the people of God will take place."

On Homosexuality -

"It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs. ... The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in work, in action and in law."

On the Sex Abuse Scandals -

"In the Church, priests also are sinners. But I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower.

"In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1 percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information nor to the statistical objectivity of the facts."

People, we can be naive. The Church is not going to change overnight, if at all. Did anyone really think that the next Pope would come in and ordain women and let priest marry? C'mon. Get real.

Being Catholic is tough. You have to take the bad dogma with the good and realize that the only one you really answer is to God and JC. That is the bottom line. The big pull for me in Catholicism is transubstantiation. Mass is a way to become as intimate with Christ as we can. By partaking of the Eucharist, we are doing it so that our flesh will be filled with his flesh and our blood filled with his blood. Sounds creepy, but what better way than filling our selves with him, so we can be more like him. Isn't that the intent of all Christians is to be like Christ? Outreach like Christ did also is integral.

Also, this may be a harsh opinion, but.... any of the pundits out there... if you aren't Catholic then you have no right to give an opinion, criticize, or complain about Benedict XVI. He doesn't effect you and it's none of your business, so shut your pie hole... now.

BTW... I believe that there are many paths to God... this is just the one I chose.

*GETTING OFF SOAP BOX*

So... I am giving Benedict XVI a chance. Let's see what he does. Hopefully he will come out of his scholarly shell and show us the heart and grace of JC.

Stay cool and safe!