As has been well-known to anyone who has studied Ratzinger (as I did in the 80s at Yale Divinity School — the man is a brilliant theologian, an intellectual giant), he joined Hitler Youth at age 14 as part of a mandatory enrollment, as did most German youth, including many famous nonreligious intellectuals. Ratzinger got out as soon as he could, though it meant losing a desperately needed discount on seminary tuition (the Nazis required Hitler Youth membership for these). First drafted at 16 to do the kind of work suitable for underage soldiers, he deserted before firing a shot. He came from a staunchly anti-Nazi family; his father, a policeman, was demoted for his stance.

 As we know from history, the Nazi party was virulently anti-Catholic, at one time arresting almost the entire faculty of John Paul II’s seminary, shipping them off to the camps, and murdering many priests and other people in the religious life. The most cursory reading of Ratzinger’s many publications clearly shows that his entire life has been opposed to everything in the Nazi philosophy. It goes without saying that Ratzinger never joined the Nazi party.

 On April 21, The New York Times — a newspaper that, to put it mildly, has not always been sympathetic to the Catholic Church — said that as Cardinal Ratzinger, Benedict XVI was deeply involved in John Paul II’s overtures toward reconciliation with the Jews, including helping to draft “We Remember,” the Church’s apology, and planning such trips as the first one of any Pope to a synagogue.

 More importantly, Jewish leaders of the left and right have defended him. Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, said, “His whole life is an open book of sensitivity against bigotry and anti-Semitism.” The Jerusalem Post said, referring to the Holocaust Memorial and research center in Jerusalem, said, “As for the Hitler Youth issue, not even Yad Vashem has considered it worthy of further investigation. Why should we?”

The 60s comedy group the Firesign Theater once made an album called “Everything You Know Is Wrong,” and it’s too bad that even with the Internet, and the world at our fingertips, so much of what we thoughtlessly think and say is, in fact, mistaken. Regarding religion, the list is almost endless, from crude misunderstandings of the Galileo case (the Polish Catholic priest Copernicus had no trouble!) to a revisionist history of the Middle Ages (with Catholic writer Dante writing of the separation of church and state centuries before Jefferson) to almost complete silence on the Protestant Inquisition while the Catholic Inquisition is covered ad nauseum, to the dozens of howlingly funny errors in The Da Vinci Code. At the very least, though, I would hope that our town’s students could avoid calling someone a Nazi based on tabloid headlines.

Mary Taylor

31 Jeremiah Road, Sandy Hook                                                                                                   April 25, 2005