We have a new Pope!

[LilyRose]

I went to a Lutheran church for preschool. Does that count?

Actually, my dad is Catholic and my mom is Lutheran. I'm neither. I'm Susie.


Susie

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by chiliD

What gets me...why do the Cardinals get to vote for the Pope...the Red Sox beat 'em four straight in the Series?

Larry Walker sure did hit a nice homer in that last game though.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

He was like six years old I think at the beginning of it.

He served in the war and at one point was a guard at the BMW factory where Jewish slaves from Dachau were sent to work.
He deserted in April 1944 and ulitmately wound up as a POW in the hands of the Americans.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by xxxmx

as a historian and religious scholar, i am destroyed by his election. looking at it from a secular point of view as i am neither catholic nor religious in general, he has proven himself time and again as an anti-semite who holds extremely prejudiced opinions regarding all who do not fit neatly into his conservative catholic mould. i am quite sure that the only guidance he will be providing will lead the catholic church farther from loving its neighbor, though i am hoping for the opposite. mel gibson must be in ecstasy...

Word.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by seeker007nmss

Want to be really bugged? Look into who helped fund Hitler's War Build up in the 30's. The Vatican Bank.

And Bush's grandfather.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

And Bush's grandfather.

and most of America either by owning the company, working for it, collecting dividends from it, and so on

(couldn't resist )

Also, I was mistaken, he was six when Hitler came to power. Here, for those who want to read it, is the text of the article Deanna posted a link to - I think it is good article:

April 17, 2005

Papal hopeful is a former Hitler Youth
Justin Sparks, Munich, John Follain and Christopher Morgan, Rome

THE wartime past of a leading German contender to succeed John Paul II may return to haunt him as cardinals begin voting in the Sistine Chapel tomorrow to choose a new leader for 1 billion Catholics.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose strong defence of Catholic orthodoxy has earned him a variety of sobriquets — including “the enforcer”, “the panzer cardinal” and “God’s rottweiler” — is expected to poll around 40 votes in the first ballot as conservatives rally behind him.

Although far short of the requisite two-thirds majority of the 115 votes, this would almost certainly give Ratzinger, 78 yesterday, an early lead in the voting. Liberals have yet to settle on a rival candidate who could come close to his tally.

Unknown to many members of the church, however, Ratzinger’s past includes brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German army anti- aircraft unit.

Although there is no suggestion that he was involved in any atrocities, his service may be contrasted by opponents with the attitude of John Paul II, who took part in anti-Nazi theatre performances in his native Poland and in 1986 became the first pope to visit Rome’s synagogue.

“John Paul was hugely appreciated for what he did for and with the Jewish people,” said Lord Janner, head of the Holocaust Education Trust, who is due to attend ceremonies today to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

“If they were to appoint someone who was on the other side in the war, he would start at a disadvantage, although it wouldn’t mean in the long run he wouldn’t be equally understanding of the concerns of the Jewish world.”

The son of a rural Bavarian police officer, Ratzinger was six when Hitler came to power in 1933. His father, also called Joseph, was an anti-Nazi whose attempts to rein in Hitler’s Brown Shirts forced the family to move home several times.

In 1937 Ratzinger’s father retired and the family moved to Traunstein, a staunchly Catholic town in Bavaria close to the Führer’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. He joined the Hitler Youth aged 14, shortly after membership was made compulsory in 1941.

He quickly won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary. “Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and not an enthusiastic one,” concluded John Allen, his biographer.

Two years later Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp.

Ratzinger has insisted he never took part in combat or fired a shot — adding that his gun was not even loaded — because of a badly infected finger. He was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to death camps. He deserted in April 1944 and spent a few weeks in a prisoner of war camp.

He has since said that although he was opposed to the Nazi regime, any open resistance would have been futile — comments echoed this weekend by his elder brother Georg, a retired priest ordained along with the cardinal in 1951.

“Resistance was truly impossible,” Georg Ratzinger said. “Before we were conscripted, one of our teachers said we should fight and become heroic Nazis and another told us not to worry as only one soldier in a thousand was killed. But neither of us ever used a rifle against the enemy.”

Some locals in Traunstein, like Elizabeth Lohner, 84, whose brother-in-law was sent to Dachau as a conscientious objector, dismiss such suggestions. “It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others,” she said. “The Ratzingers were young and had made a different choice.”

In 1937 another family a few hundred yards away in Traunstein hid Hans Braxenthaler, a local resistance fighter. SS troops repeatedly searched homes in the area looking for the fugitive and his fellow conspirators.

“When he was betrayed and the Nazis came for him, Braxenthaler shot himself because he knew he couldn’t escape,” said Frieda Meyer, 82, Ratzinger’s neighbour and childhood friend. “Even though they had tortured him in Dachau concentration camp he refused to give up his resistance efforts.”

Despite question marks over Ratzinger’s wartime conduct, the main obstacle to his prospects in the conclave — the assembly of cardinals to elect the new pope — is the conservative stance he has adopted as guardian of Catholic orthodoxy since John Paul named him to head the congregation for the doctrine of the faith in 1981.

His condemnations are legion — of women priests, married priests, dissident theologians and homosexuals, whom he has declared to be suffering from an “objective disorder”.

He upset many Jews with a statement in 1987 that Jewish history and scripture reach fulfilment only in Christ — a position denounced by critics as “theological anti-semitism”. He made more enemies among other religions in 2000, when he signed a document, Dominus Jesus, in which he argued: “Only in the Catholic church is there eternal salvation”.

Some of his staunchest critics are in Germany. A recent poll in Der Spiegel, the news magazine, showed opponents of a Ratzinger papacy outnumbered supporters by 36% to 29%.

As one western cardinal who was in two minds about him put it: “He would probably be a great pope, but I have no idea how I would explain his election back home.”

One liberal theologian,when asked what he thought of a Ratzinger papacy, was more direct: “It fills me with horror.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...2667_2,00.html

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

and most of America either by owning the company, working for it, collecting dividends from it, and so on

(couldn't resist )

Bull****. Prove it. I submit you cannot.

[amber]

Well, we know for sure that IBM was doing business with Nazi germany. And - Ford? I'm pretty sure a lot of American companies were. But, probably Strand can find/remember more evidence.

[markolas]

He'll always be Rat-zinger to me. So glad I converted to Buddhism. I wonder if I can get them to tear up my baptism records.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Bull****. Prove it. I submit you cannot.

Okay - no American companies were in business with the Nazi's. Just Bush's grandfather

But since you asked and I am a gentleman:

Ford & the Nazi War Efforts

Henry Ford was no Oskar Schindler
by Joshua Karliner, CorpWatch
November 1st, 1998


The Ford Motor Company's commercial-free sponsorship of NBC's airing of Schindler's List, the epic movie about the Holocaust, was a class act. Nevertheless, it would be remiss of us here at CorpWatch, not to point out Ford's contribution to Nazi war efforts.

The following is excerpted from a report printed by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1974:

The activities of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler prior to and during World War II...are instructive. At that time, these three firms dominated motor vehicle production in both the United States and Germany. Due to its mass production capabilities, automobile manufacturing is one of the most crucial industries with respect to national defense. As a result, these firms retained the economic and political power to affect the shape of governmental relations both within and between these nations in a manner which maximized corporate global profits. In short, they were private governments unaccountable to the citizens of any country yet possessing tremendous influence over the course of war and peace in the world. The substantial contribution of these firms to the American war effort in terms of tanks, aircraft components, and other military equipment is widely acknowledged. Less well known are the simultaneous contributions of their foreign subsidiaries to the Axis Powers. In sum, they maximized profits by supplying both sides with the materiel needed to conduct the war.

During the 1920's and 1930's, the Big Three automakers undertook an extensive program of multinational expansion...By the mid-1930's, these three American companies owned automotive subsidiaries throughout Europe and the Far East; many of their largest facilities were located in the politically sensitive nations of Germany, Poland, Rumania, Austria, Hungary, Latvia, and Japan...Due to their concentrated economic power over motor vehicle production in both Allied and Axis territories, the Big Three inevitably became major factors in the preparations and progress of the war. In Germany, for example, General Motors and Ford became an integral part of the Nazi war efforts. GM's plants in Germany built thousands of bomber and jet fighter propulsion systems for the Luftwaffe at the same time that its American plants produced aircraft engines for the U.S. Army Air Corps....

Ford was also active in Nazi Germany's prewar preparations. In 1938, for instance, it opened a truck assembly plant in Berlin whose "real purpose," according to U.S. Army Intelligence, was producing "troop transport-type" vehicles for the Wehrmacht. That year Ford's chief executive received the Nazi German Eagle (first class)....

The outbreak of war in September 1939 resulted inevitably in the full conversion by GM and Ford of their Axis plants to the production of military aircraft and trucks.... On the ground, GM and Ford subsidiaries built nearly 90 percent of the armored "mule" 3-ton half-trucks and more than 70 percent of the Reich's medium and heavy-duty trucks. These vehicles, according to American intelligence reports, served as "the backbone of the German Army transportation system."....

After the cessation of hostilities, GM and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. Government for wartime damages sustained by their Axis facilities as a result of Allied bombing... Ford received a little less than $1 million, primarily as a result of damages sustained by its military truck complex at Cologne...

Due to their multinational dominance of motor vehicle production, GM and Ford became principal suppliers for the forces of fascism as well as for the forces of democracy. It may, of course, be argued that participating in both sides of an international conflict, like the common corporate practice of investing in both political parties before an election, is an appropriate corporate activity. Had the Nazis won, General Motors and Ford would have appeared impeccably Nazi; as Hitler lost, these companies were able to re-emerge impeccably American. In either case, the viability of these corporations and the interests of their respective stockholders would have been preserved.
Extracted from Bradford C. Snell, American Ground Transport: A Proposal for Restructuring the Automobile, Truck, Bus and Rail Industries. Report presented to the Committee of the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, United States Senate, February 26, 1974, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1974, pp. 16-24.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=4368

and then these

http://news.com.com/2009-1082-269157.html

http://www.marxist.com/usa/partners_in_crime.html

http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_nastybiz.html

http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/link...ckefeller.html

_____________________________________________

Thus, many Americans profited from these companies profits. Where do we draw the line. Was the person who supplied steel to the man who sold it to the Nazi's less culpable? How about the laborer who made the rivets here to he sold to the Nazi's? How about the donations to the Catholic Church? America, and most of it, profitted one way of the other off of the Nazi's. So, to place Bush's grandfather in that league alone is patently unfair. This does not in any way make what Bush's grandfather did any better. It just shows that much of America was in bed with the Nazis.

[markolas]

You know, you don't have to go back 65 years to dig up dirt on this man. He's done things that are much more blatantly disgusting in the last six months.

[amber]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

So, to place Bush's grandfather in that league alone is patently unfair. This does not in any way make what Bush's grandfather did any better. It just shows that much of America was in bed with the Nazis.

I'm not sure if I'd call 3-4 corporations "much of America", though.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Okay - no American companies were in business with the Nazi's. Just Bush's grandfather

I never said that. But twist away if it makes you feel better.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by amber

I'm not sure if I'd call 3-4 corporations "much of America", though.

Brown Brothers Harriman laundered money for the Nazis. That's a pretty direct connection. If that doesn't define the term blood money, I don't know what does.

[amber]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Brown Brothers Harriman laundered money for the Nazis. That's a pretty direct connection. If that doesn't define the term blood money, I don't know what does.

Um, okay, but I'm not sure what that has to do with what I said.
Strand was saying that "much of America" was involved with the Nazis, then I said "I'm not sure 3-4 Corporations constitutes 'much of America'" so...uh....