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Wednesday, 11:55 pm in Archive

Guh. I’m sick of people pointing out that the new Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth, snickering behind their hands as if this is some kind of sneaky insult to Catholiscism. Seriously, guys, get some history. The Nazis were not nice fuzzy wuzzy believers in free choice. If you were a kid of a certain age in Nazi Germany (and weren’t a Jew, homosexual, Rom, etc. etc.) you had to join the Hitler Youth. It wasn’t even like you ‘joined’; you were just in it. If you weren’t, you were in jail. In fact, when he got older and was recruited into the SS Ratzinger actually defected; risking imprisonment. The fact that Ratzinger was in the Hitler Youth means absolutley jack shit other than that he was a kid in Nazi Germany. That’s it, so stop toting it out like it means something.

Ratzinger is actually kind of interesting, since until the 60s he was considered a liberal/progressive. The story is he changed his mind after being interrupted by some student protestors in a lecture he was giving. Funny stuff.

While I’m on the subject of Nazis and Catholics, though, Hitler wasn’t a devout Catholic. Hitler may have been bought up in a Catholic family – that’s true – but how many of you avidly practice the religion you were ‘bought up in’? Hitler liking Christianity makes about as much sense as, erm, something that doesn’t make a lot of sense; since he was into the Nietzschean ideology of the ubermensch (the ‘overman’; for Hitler these were the Aryans). Nietzsche is considered one of the harshest modern critics of Christianity, which he describes as ‘weak’ and as the historic ‘religion of a slave-class’ (Nietzsche 101: He didn’t like Christianity’s focus on sitting around cowering in the face of life whilst waiting for some passive-aggressive afterlife that would allegedly come along and justify all the believer’s suffering). Hitler is also generally quoted as rejecting Christianity, which he saw as not only weak but an invention of Jews (what with Jesus being one and all). Additionally, Hitler used religion as part of German/Aryan nationalism, and instituted a kind of Asatru (worship of the Nordic gods; Odin and Thor and all that lot). It makes infinitley more sense for someone obsessed with Aryan supremacy to try and use the actual ancient beliefs of the Aryan race as nationalistic glue as opposed to those made up by Middle Eastern Jews and appropriated by Romans. (Incidentally, this is probably where that theme in pop culture of Hitler being some uber-occultist and searching for the Spear of Longinus/Destiny – depending on if you’re watching Hellboy or Constantine – and all that comes from. It is true that the jagged ‘SS’ logo is deliberaltye based on a rune that the Nazi’s took to be associated with strength and victory, however.)

At any rate, anything that links Nazis and Catholics has to be remembered in a kind of historical context. You know, the one where certain non-Catholic Christian faiths (especially the evangelical fundamentalist ones) have activley gone out spreading all kinds of lies, slander and general malcontent about Catholiscism. Like about how they’re dirty Papists who worship multiple dieties (the saints) or worse, a mother Goddess (Mary), and in fact aren’t actually Christians at all. Catholics get all kinds of shit; associating them with Nazis is just one on a long list of easy jabs people use to try and discredit the Church. Take it with a grain of salt, people.

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