Reply #60: The question is not what the German kid chose to do [View All]

[kenny blankenship]

or was compelled to do 60 years ago. But why the Catholic Church CHOSE HIM, when there were many other possible candidates without this taint in their background.

And again, it would be different if Ratzinger was not known as an enemy of theological inquiry within the Church, and as a socially regressive force in politics both inside and outside of the Church. Then the link to a Nazi past would be irrelevant. Or indeed it might appear in an opposite light: see, this man who was caught by the accident of birth in the totalitarian mindset of Hitler's Germany is now the protector of intellectual seekers, and promotes (or at least does not persecute) those who seek social justice through Christian teachings, even though he grew up within a regime of crushing hierarchy, officially promoted murderously hateful social intolerance, and annihilating intellectual oppression. We would say, if he was a liberal minded person, that he somehow escaped the terrible shadow he was born under.
Instead he sounds like an old friend of the shadow.