An American Lion

Chancellor Angela Merkel, Pope Benedict XVI

Nothing frustrates me more than this smear:

In 2005, two unlikely Germans were elected to office, and a defining cultural rift was thrown wide open. First, Germany’s ranking Roman Catholic cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger, the former Hitler Youth recruit from Bavaria turned archconservative theologian, became Pope Benedict XVI. Six months later, Germany elected as its chancellor Angela Merkel, a childless and twice-married Protestant from East Germany bent on updating her country and her hidebound Christian Democratic party. Over the ensuing years, the pope and the chancellor have worked in almost constant opposition to one another, though the struggle, at least until recently, remained behind the scenes. Their battle may well decide whether conservatives have a future at all in the new Europe-and if so, what kind. 

Merkel and Benedict share, if awkwardly, a political base: the big-tented Christian Democratic Union born after World War II. The philosophy of West Germany’s premier postwar conservative, Konrad Adenauer, was not to dwell on the Nazi past, but rather to plow forward with economic recovery and integration into the Western alliance — all the while respecting the staunch conservatism of Chancellor Adenauer’s own Catholic Rhineland.

In Catholic-dominated West Germany, the church had enormous influence on state policies regarding abortion, sex education, and gender roles, as summed up by the Christian Democrat dictum for women: Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church). Legal equality between men and women didn’t make it into the law books until 1958. As late as 1967, only a handful of the Christian Democrats’ MPs were women. Even after the Berlin Wall came down and Helmut Kohl took over reunited Germany, the Christian Democrats remained a male-dominated, socially traditional party that envisioned the nuclear family as the basis for a God-fearing nation-state. In short, it was the very definition of European Christian democracy.

That’s an interesting way to look at things, but first, the smear. The Hitler Youth became compulsory for all German youth, beginning at age ten. It would be impossible to think of young Ratzinger being exempt. The situation became so dire in Germany, he was conscripted to man an anti-aircraft gun. It’s not as if he purchased his own Hitler Youth knife and fudged his age to get in early.

How central Germany is to the economy of the new Europe is important to note. It’s central to it, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. The man running the EU is a Belgian. The Germans still have economic catastrophe to contend with, in the form of the post-unification East.

Has the Catholic Church waned in importance? Absolutely. A charismatic, liberal, youthful Pope from Latin America would all but guarantee a resurgence in the importance of the Church in Latin America. That the current Pope is a conservative, aged European white male means that the whole idea of the Catholic Church returning to former glories has to be put on hold. Imagine a Pope who hails from Mexico City, Sao Paolo, or even Cuba. What would that mean for the future?

Until then, let’s quit knocking this Pope for his Hitler Youth membership. His generation are all but passed anyway, and there’s no need to perpetuate the guilt. Will we move on to the grandsons and condemn them as well for things that happened before they were born?