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Ratzinger Leaves the Ship

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ February 14, 2013Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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COMMENT: The star­tling res­ig­na­tion of Pope Bene­dict XVI (nee Joseph Ratzinger) brings to mind a num­ber of con­sid­er­a­tions.

For open­ers, this pope is from the very heart of the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist machin­ery of the Vat­i­can. His cur­ricu­lum vitae is set forth in FTR #508.

An account of the Vat­i­can’s long-stand­ing rela­tion­ship with the Third Reich and the Axis pow­ers of World War II can be found in AFA #‘s 17–21.

The view here is that Ratzinger (we call him “Rat­lin­er” after the Vat­i­can Rat­line escape routes) was some­thing of a caretaker–a Ger­ald Ford-like fig­ure if you will. He took office with the Holy See engulfed in scan­dal and inquiry, includ­ing the bur­geon­ing priest molesta­tion inves­ti­ga­tions, renewed inquiries into mon­ey laun­der­ing by the Vat­i­can Bank and inquiries con­cern­ing the Vat­i­can’s behav­ior dur­ing and after World War II.

Him­self a vet­er­an of the Third Reich, “Rat­lin­er” was , in essence, a gate­keep­er in our opin­ion, charged with sus­tain­ing the Opus-Dei style reac­tion grip­ping the Vat­i­can and keep­ing the lid on poten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing inquiries.

One of Ratzinger’s pre­de­ces­sors, Pope Pius XII, has been beatified–something of a prob­lem in light of his long-stand­ing record of col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Third Reich. Alleged­ly a secret bene­fac­tor of Jew­ish refugees from Nazi ter­ror, the Pope had worked with the Nazis from 1919 (when, as Arch­bish­op Euge­nio Pacel­li he chan­neled Vat­i­can funds to Hitler) through the post­war peri­od, when he per­mit­ted Ustachi head Ante Pavel­ic to shel­ter in Castel­gan­dol­fo–the Pope’s sum­mer res­i­dence.

Inter­est­ing­ly, just pri­or to Ratzinger’s res­ig­na­tion, the press car­ried accounts of a new book exon­er­at­ing Pius XII of his col­lab­o­ra­tionist charges. One won­ders to what extent Ratzinger over­saw the fab­ri­ca­tion of doc­u­ments and con­tin­ued cos­met­ic mask­ing of Pius’ and the Vat­i­can’s Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tion.

As some­thing of an aside, one won­ders what mir­a­cle Pius XII per­formed to qual­i­fy him for beat­i­fi­ca­tion? Per­haps his mir­a­cle was mak­ing mil­lions of Jews dis­ap­pear.

“A Tur­bu­lent Tenure for a Qui­et Schol­ar” by Lau­rie Good­stein; The New York Times; 2/11/2013.

EXCERPT: When Bene­dict XVI became pope eight years ago at the age of 78, many Roman Catholic schol­ars pre­dict­ed that he would be a care­tak­er. He would keep the ship sail­ing in the same direc­tion as his beloved pre­de­ces­sor, John Paul II. And as the rare the­olo­gian who knew how to write for a broad audi­ence, Bene­dict would keep the crew inspired and the sails bil­low­ing.

If writ­ten words alone could keep the church on course, Bene­dict would like­ly be viewed as a sol­id suc­cess. His encycli­cals on love and char­i­ty and his three books on the life of Jesus were wide­ly praised for their clar­i­ty and con­tri­bu­tion to Catholic teach­ing.

But when it came to the major chal­lenges fac­ing the church in the real world, Bene­dict often appeared to car­om from one cri­sis to the next.

He inad­ver­tent­ly insult­ed Mus­lims on an ear­ly trip to Ger­many, which result­ed in riots across the Islam­ic world and the mur­der of an Ital­ian nun in Soma­lia. He wel­comed back a break­away bish­op who had just record­ed an inter­view deny­ing the facts of the Holo­caust. He told reporters on the papal plane wing­ing toward Africa that con­doms had helped spread AIDS.

When the cler­i­cal sex­u­al abuse scan­dal spread across Europe and explod­ed at Benedict’s door in 2010, Bene­dict met with abuse sur­vivors and over­saw the devel­op­ment of new church poli­cies to pre­vent abuse. But he was denounced by sur­vivors and their advo­cates for nev­er mov­ing to dis­ci­pline bish­ops who were caught in the cov­er-up. . . .

Unholy Trin­i­ty by John Lof­tus and  Mark Aarons;  pp. 294–295.

EXCERPT:  . . . Sul­li­van & Cromwell’s clients were not the only for­eign investors in Ger­many, nor were they the only ones to hedge their bets by mak­ing small dona­tions to the infant Nazi par­ty. Fol­low­ing the $26 mil­lion cash set­tle­ment with Mus­solini over dis­puted lands in 1929, the Vat­i­can invest­ed near­ly all the pro­ceeds in Ger­man indus­try, but at least one small invest­ment was made in the Nazis as well.

The fol­low­ing inci­dent was report­ed by an eye­wit­ness, Sis­ter Pas­calina, a nun who was the per­sonal aide (and devot­ed admir­er) of the Papal Nun­cio in Munich and the man who would become Pope Pius XII on the eve of World War II: ‘Hitler came one night to the holy res­i­dence of Arch­bishop Euge­nio Pacel­li (lat­er Pius XII). All oth­ers in the house­hold were asleep by then, except [Sis­ter] Pas­calina . . . . Hitler told Pacel­li that he was out to check the spread of athe­is­tic com­mu­nism. . . . It did not come as a sur­prise to her, there­fore, in light of Pacelli’s hatred of the Reds, to see the prelate present Hitler with a large cache of Church mon­ey to aid the ris­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary and his small strug­gling band of anti-com­mu­nists.’ . . .

Unholy Trin­i­ty by John Lof­tus and  Mark Aarons;  p. 78.

EXCERPT: . . . From a very con­fi­den­tial source, Amer­i­can intel­li­gence had dis­cov­ered in May 1946 that the Poglavnik [Pavel­ic] was liv­ing ‘close to Rome in a build­ing which is under the juris­dic­tion of the Vat­i­can.’ This was soon after Pavel­ic had first arrived in Rome from Aus­tria, and it is now known that the Poglavnik, like Fer­enc Vaj­ta, actu­ally took refuge at Castel­gan­dolfo, where the Pope’s sum­mer res­i­dence is locat­ed. It seems that many Nazis grav­i­tated to Castel­gan­dolfo, for Pavel­ic was housed with a for­mer Min­is­ter in the Nazi Roman­ian gov­ern­ment. . . .

 

Discussion

4 comments for “Ratzinger Leaves the Ship”

  1. A dev­as­tat­ing take­down of Ratzinger by Richard Dawkins, From “The Guardian”, Sep­tem­ber 2010:

    “Ratzinger is an ene­my of human­i­ty”

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/22/ratzinger-enemy-humanity

    Posted by Swamp | February 15, 2013, 10:28 am

  2. Here’s one more advan­tage to hav­ing a retire­ment con­do at the Vat­i­can: legal immu­ni­ty:

    Pope will have secu­ri­ty, immu­ni­ty by remain­ing in the Vat­i­can

    By Philip Pul­lel­la

    VATICAN CITY | Fri Feb 15, 2013 1:59pm EST

    (Reuters) — Pope Bene­dic­t’s deci­sion to live in the Vat­i­can after he resigns will pro­vide him with secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy. It will also offer legal pro­tec­tion from any attempt to pros­e­cute him in con­nec­tion with sex­u­al abuse cas­es around the world, Church sources and legal experts say.

    “His con­tin­ued pres­ence in the Vat­i­can is nec­es­sary, oth­er­wise he might be defense­less. He would­n’t have his immu­ni­ty, his pre­rog­a­tives, his secu­ri­ty, if he is any­where else,” said one Vat­i­can offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

    ...

    POTENTIAL EXPOSURE

    This could be com­pli­cat­ed for the Church, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the unlike­ly event that the next pope makes deci­sions that may dis­please con­ser­v­a­tives, who could then go to Bene­dic­t’s place of res­i­dence to pay trib­ute to him.

    “That would be very prob­lem­at­ic,” anoth­er Vat­i­can offi­cial said.

    The final key con­sid­er­a­tion is the pope’s poten­tial expo­sure to legal claims over the Catholic Church’s sex­u­al abuse scan­dals.

    In 2010, for exam­ple, Bene­dict was named as a defen­dant in a law suit alleg­ing that he failed to take action as a car­di­nal in 1995 when he was alleged­ly told about a priest who had abused boys at a U.S. school for the deaf decades ear­li­er. The lawyers with­drew the case last year and the Vat­i­can said it was a major vic­to­ry that proved the pope could not be held liable for the actions of abu­sive priests.

    Bene­dict is cur­rent­ly not named specif­i­cal­ly in any oth­er case. The Vat­i­can does not expect any more but is not rul­ing out the pos­si­bil­i­ty.

    “(If he lived any­where else) then we might have those cra­zies who are fil­ing law­suits, or some mag­is­trate might arrest him like oth­er (for­mer) heads of state have been for alleged acts while he was head of state,” one source said.

    Anoth­er offi­cial said: “While this was not the main con­sid­er­a­tion, it cer­tain­ly is a corol­lary, a nat­ur­al result.”

    After he resigns, Bene­dict will no longer be the sov­er­eign monarch of the State of Vat­i­can City, which is sur­round­ed by Rome, but will retain Vat­i­can cit­i­zen­ship and res­i­den­cy.

    LATERAN PACTS

    That would con­tin­ue to pro­vide him immu­ni­ty under the pro­vi­sions of the Lat­er­an Pacts while he is in the Vat­i­can and even if he makes jaunts into Italy as a Vat­i­can cit­i­zen.

    The 1929 Lat­er­an Pacts between Italy and the Holy See, which estab­lished Vat­i­can City as a sov­er­eign state, said Vat­i­can City would be “invari­ably and in every event con­sid­ered as neu­tral and invi­o­lable ter­ri­to­ry”.

    ...

    NOT LIKE A CEO

    The Vat­i­can has con­sis­tent­ly said that a pope can­not be held account­able for cas­es of abuse com­mit­ted by oth­ers because priests are employ­ees of indi­vid­ual dio­ce­ses around the world and not direct employ­ees of the Vat­i­can. It says the head of the church can­not be com­pared to the CEO of a com­pa­ny.

    Vic­tims groups have said Bene­dict, par­tic­u­lar­ly in his pre­vi­ous job at the head of the Vat­i­can’s doc­tri­nal depart­ment, turned a blind eye to the over­all poli­cies of local Church­es, which moved abusers from parish to parish instead of defrock­ing them and hand­ing them over to author­i­ties.

    The Vat­i­can has denied this. The pope has apol­o­gized for abuse in the Church, has met with abuse vic­tims on many of his trips, and ordered a major inves­ti­ga­tion into abuse in Ire­land.

    But groups rep­re­sent­ing some of the vic­tims say the Pope will leave office with a stain on his lega­cy because he was in posi­tions of pow­er in the Vat­i­can for more than three decades, first as a car­di­nal and then as pope, and should have done more.

    The scan­dals began years before the then-Car­di­nal Joseph Ratzinger was elect­ed pope in 2005 but the issue has over­shad­owed his papa­cy from the begin­ning, as more and more cas­es came to light in dio­ce­ses across the world.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 18, 2013, 1:29 pm

  3. From the always clever Cather­ine Austin Fitts:

    http://solari.com/blog/the-perfect-pope/

    ..The Per­fect Pope
    Cather­ine, Dai­ly Mus­ings on Feb­ru­ary 15, 2013

    By Cather­ine Austin Fitts

    The oth­er day, I imag­ined mem­bers of the Knights of Mal­ta and Opus Dei (the mon­ey guys) gath­er­ing in a qui­et sanc­tu­ary to dis­cuss the cur­rent finan­cial melt­down in the Catholic Church and the per­fect Pope to help evolve their busi­ness mod­el and lead them into a new and wealth build­ing peri­od.

    Who would be the ide­al can­di­date? What would the pro­file be?

    After 2000 years of finan­cial and invest­ment oper­a­tions com­bin­ing the mag­ic of com­pound inter­est and the largest land and real estate hold­ings in the world with tax exemp­tion and diplo­mat­ic immu­ni­ty, and the accu­mu­lat­ed cap­i­tal there­on, the mon­ey men behind the church need the right man for the job.

    •He sells in the emerg­ing mar­kets. He is younger, more mul­ti­cul­tur­al. He can bring in donors in the economies that are grow­ing;
    •He attracts priests and nuns (read low cost labor) so he will agree to let them have sex;
    •He will pro­vide a clean break with the pedophil­ia scan­dals so lit­i­ga­tion costs and set­tle­ments will stop bleed­ing resources and bank­rupt­ing local enti­ties;
    •He will attract back the mem­bers and tithes that have left because of the pedophil­ia scan­dals;

    •He knows how to work the media, so the likes of Time Warner/HBO can not break the bank with doc­u­men­taries that explain how the pedophil­ia oper­a­tions and set­tle­ments are man­aged direct­ly by the Vat­i­can;
    •He will pre­serve the brand so that sov­er­eign gov­ern­ments don’t threat­en the Church (and invest­ment syn­di­cates) diplo­mat­ic immu­ni­ty and tax free sta­tus;
    •He will under­stand that in the day of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, the con­fes­sion­al and pedophil­ia net­works are no longer the most cost effec­tive ways of build­ing a pow­er­ful con­trol file sys­tem glob­al­ly – indeed he is tech­no­log­i­cal­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed enough to know how to pro­tect Church net­works from the inva­sive tech­nol­o­gy of com­pet­ing net­works look­ing to build alter­na­tive con­trol file net­works and relat­ed mon­ey laun­der­ing. (Major loss of intel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal val­ue to the com­pe­ti­tion going on here thanks to new tech­nol­o­gy com­bined with falling cash flows of the local parish­es and church­es);
    •He can find ways to out­com­pete Islam with­out requir­ing that the US mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty bank­rupt the US gov­ern­ment;
    •He will look more open and inclu­sive to women, minori­ties, gay peo­ple, all races and creeds, even be tol­er­ant to birth con­trol, euthana­sia, (on a wink) abor­tion, stem cells;
    •He will look open, but the Vat­i­can library (and all it tells about who and what real­ly runs this world, sup­pressed tech­nol­o­gy and the true nature of the Vat­i­can real estate and invest­ment hold­ings) will be as secret as it ever was- and more. (That is, Jesus need not apply)
    •He will be pho­to­genic and give a good speech;
    •He will appre­ci­ate the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges of com­pet­ing with net­works that can print cur­ren­cy. He will be on board to use the Vat­i­cans sig­nif­i­cant real estate inter­ests in Europe and Amer­i­ca to rein­flate the real estate mar­kets as next tech­nol­o­gy is inte­grat­ed;
    • As new robot­ics and ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy is rolled out glob­al­ly and mil­lions of peo­ple are unem­ployed, he will attract lots of new mem­bers from the dis­en­fran­chised;
    •He will con­tin­ue to sup­port cen­tral­ized con­trol of water, seed and food sup­ply and the result­ing urban­iza­tion of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion and con­vert these new urban dwellers to the faith;
    •He will under­stand who is boss (not him).
    A younger, mul­ti­cul­tur­al US Pres­i­dent (Oba­ma) engi­neered $27 tril­lion of gifts to the banks and the break­away civ­i­liza­tion, right? He gives a young, pret­ty face to to the con­quest and depop­u­la­tion of Africa, right? He has got the Patri­ot Act, assas­si­nat­ing Amer­i­cans, and tor­ture on a sus­tain­able path? Why can’t we get some­one just like him?

    The mon­ey men need a Pope who tweets.

    —————–

    Time for “The Black For­est Ado­nis” to step in?
    ‑Or not

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/aug/23/catholicism.religion

    “It is not sur­pris­ing, then, that the Pope’s pri­vate sec­re­tary is already begin­ning to inspire dread in lib­er­al Catholic cir­cles. In Ger­many, the Catholic church is divid­ed more or less between two fig­ures — the lib­er­al-con­ser­v­a­tive Car­di­nal Lehmann, the head of the Ger­man arch­bish­op’s con­fer­ence, and the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Car­di­nal Joachim Meis­ner, the Arch­bish­op of Cologne. Both men were with the Pope last week. But it is no secret as to which Bish­op the Vat­i­can favours. “Gän­swein is an oppo­nent of Lehmann,” one source in the Ger­man Catholic church said. “One of Ratzinger’s great weak­ness­es is that his judg­ment of peo­ple isn’t always suf­fi­cient. He has a small out-reach.”

    Posted by Swamp | February 20, 2013, 10:16 am

  4. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100218780/neo-nazi-holocaust-deniers-plan-takeover-of-sspx-claim-anti-fascist-campaigners/

    Neo-Nazi Holo­caust deniers ‘plan takeover’ of SSPX, claim anti-Fas­cist cam­paign­ers

    By Dami­an Thomp­son Reli­gion Last updat­ed: May 25th, 2013

    Far-Right sup­port­ers of the dis­graced rebel Catholic bish­op Richard Williamson are plan­ning a takeover of the ultra-tra­di­tion­al­ist Soci­ety of St Pius X (SSPX), accord­ing to the anti-fas­cist mag­a­zine Search­light.

    Williamson, a con­vict­ed Holo­caust denier, had his excom­mu­ni­ca­tion lift­ed by Pope Bene­dict XVI along with that of the SSPX’s three oth­er bish­ops as a pre­lude to pos­si­ble rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with Rome. But the uni­ty plans fell apart after Williamson was exposed as a Holo­caust denier – and after Bish­op Bernard Fel­lay, the “mod­er­ate” leader of the SSPX, failed to grasp Pope Bene­dic­t’s olive branch.

    Williamson was even­tu­al­ly expelled from the SPPX – but now, accord­ing to Search­light, his sup­port­ers are try­ing to wrest con­trol of the body, alien­at­ed from Rome since the 1970s, from Fel­lay. The fol­low­ing is from a Search­light doc­u­ment which pro­vides detailed claims of links between allies of the Eng­lish-born Williamson and for­mer sup­port­ers of the British Nation­al Front and the BNP:

    A coup with­in Catholi­cism is immi­nent. The tar­get is The Soci­ety of Pius X (SSPX), an ultra-tra­di­tion­al­ist group found­ed in 1970 out of oppo­si­tion to the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil (1962–65). The plot­ters intend to make a major step towards their takeover at a con­fer­ence on the week­end of 1 and 2 June, which we can reveal will be held at Earls­field Library Hall, 276 Mag­dalen Road, Earls­field Lon­don SW18 from 9am to 5pm. The key play­ers in this plot are a bunch of neo-Nazis, fas­cists and oth­ers with dis­rep­utable back­grounds. Their objec­tive is to replace SSPX’s cur­rent Supe­ri­or Gen­er­al, Bish­op Bernard Fel­lay, with the con­vict­ed Holo­caust-denier Bish­op Richard Williamson. This plot is a very wor­ry­ing turn of events.

    SSPX is no stranger to con­tro­ver­sy. Its mem­bers have sup­port­ed the French Front Nation­al and giv­en sanc­tu­ary to a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor and war crim­i­nal. A pre­vi­ous Dis­trict Supe­ri­or… removed Nazi sym­pa­this­ers from the Soci­ety, but our sources inform us that they have re-infil­trat­ed it … This has left many decent mem­bers shocked and fear­ful for its future. They do not want to see it fall into the hands of neo-Nazis.

    The SSPX is, in my opin­ion, more trou­ble than it’s worth: main­stream Catholic bish­ops use its extreme stance as an excuse to per­se­cute tra­di­tion­al­ists with­in the offi­cial Church and deny them their canon­i­cal right to cel­e­brate the tra­di­tion­al Latin litur­gy. That said, far-Right views have hith­er­to been con­fined to a (fair­ly sig­nif­i­cant) anti-Semit­ic fringe with­in the SSPX. But now that hard­lin­ers in the Soci­ety have set their face against reunion with Rome, the dynam­ics of sec­tar­i­an­ism are tak­ing over and the fringe risks becom­ing the SSPX main­stream.

    Posted by Vanfield | May 29, 2013, 3:02 pm

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