Maher to Apologize for Calling Pope a 'Nazi'

Maher to Apologize for Calling Pope a 'Nazi' By Melanie Hunter-Omar CNSNews.com Senior Editor April 17, 2008

(CNSNews.com) - Liberal talk show host Bill Maher, whose controversial comments about the pope drew fire from the Catholic community, is planning to apologize Friday night for falsely accusing Pope Benedict XVI of being a Nazi, the Catholic League announced Thursday.

Catholic League President Bill Donohue received a phone call Thursday from an HBO executive regarding comments Maher made last Friday on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher."

As Cybercast News Service previously reported, Donohue said Maher "lied when he said the Pope 'used to be a Nazi.' Like all young men in Germany at the time, he was conscripted into a German Youth organization (from which he fled as soon as he could). Every responsible Jewish leader has acknowledged this reality and has never sought to brand the Pope a Nazi. That job falls to Maher."

Apparently HBO agreed with Donohue's assessment. "Apparently, now Maher does as well. Ergo, the apology," Donohue said.

"Assuming it comes across as genuine, the answer is yes. But I hasten to add that what we would really like to see is for Maher to stop with his hateful diatribes against the Catholic Church. So this is a start, but it hardly puts to rest our concerns," said Donohue.

"After all, there are plenty of factually accurate things Maher could say about other groups that would insult its members, but he chooses not to go there. Perhaps he can add Catholics and the Catholic Church to that protected list as well," he added.

Oh, you mean this (from Wikipedia):

In 1936, Joseph Ratzinger, Sr., became a member of the Ordnungspolizei after all the police forces of Nazi Germany were incorporated into a national police force.

The Ordnungspolizei (OrPo) was the name for the uniformed regular German police force that existed in Nazi Germany between the years of 1936 and 1945. After their green uniforms, they were also referred to as Grüne Polizei (green police).”

This was technically the SS, but Ratziger’s branch was only a rural gendarmerie.

Now, when most people read your words that His Holiness’ father was in the SS, they would take that to mean the Waffen-SS, Hitler’s elite stormtroopers. That was your intent, wasn’t it?

In fact, the elder Ratziger was a provincial police officer before the Nazis, and after his town’s police department was taken over, he continued to be a provincial police officer.

Come now, Doc, your half-truths are just a clumsy attempt at sophistry designed to undermine the Catholic Church. One might even be tempted to call your attempts to bolster your weak argument jesuitical, were it not for the fact that the Jesuits train their students to use language much more precisely and to craft their arguments far more cleverly than you do.

Give up, Doc, just accept that Pope Benedict XVI is a holy man, a learned theologian, the historical successor to Saint Peter, the Vicar of Christ on Earth.

AMDG

the elder Ratziger was a provincial police officer before the Nazis, and after his town's police department was taken over (and incorporated into the S.S.) he continued to be a provincial police officer.

And thus a member of the S.S.

He did not retire after the Night of the Long Knives, instead waiting until his regular retirement age. There is no evidence of his being arrested or at odds with S.S. authorities.

Those are the facts. Deal with them.

Come now, Doc, your half-truths are just a clumsy attempt at sophistry designed to undermine the Catholic Church.

The RCC doesn't need me to undermine it. Scripture undermines it. God's word undermines it. The truth of Christ risen undermines it.

One might even be tempted to call your attempts to bolster your weak argument jesuitical, were it not for the fact that the Jesuits train their students to use language much more precisely and to craft their arguments far more cleverly than you do.

LOL. I blush at the comparison, you sweet-talker.

Give up, Doc, just accept that Pope Benedict XVI is a holy man, a learned theologian, the historical successor to Saint Peter, the Vicar of Christ on Earth.

Nope. The false bishop of Rome is a pretender; he is not anyone's father. There is only one Father who is in heaven. There is only one head of God's church on earth, Jesus Christ.

"And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." -- Matthew 23:9

"And he (Jesus) is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence." -- Colossians 1:18

BOOK IV CHAPTER 18 SECTION 1
THE ROMANIST DOCTRINE
"By these and similar inventions, Satan has attempted to adulterate and envelop the sacred Supper of Christ as with thick darkness, that its purity might not be preserved in the Church. But the head of this horrid abomination was, when he raised a sign by which it was not only obscured and perverted, but altogether obliterated and abolished, vanished away and disappeared from the memory of man; namely, when, with most pestilential error, he blinded almost the whole world into the belief that the Mass was a sacrifice and oblation for obtaining the remission of sins. I say nothing as to the way in which the sounder schoolmen at first received this dogma. I leave them with their puzzling subtleties which, however they may be defended by cavilling, are to be repudiated by all good men, because all they do is to envelop the brightness of the Supper in great darkness. Bidding adieu to them, therefore, let my readers understand that I am here combating that opinion with which the Roman Antichrist and his prophets have imbued the whole world, viz., that the mass is a work by which the priest who offers Christ, and the others who in the oblation receive him, gain merit with God, or that it is an expiatory victim by which they regain the favour of God. And this is not merely the common opinion of the vulgar, but the very act has been so arranged as to be a kind of propitiation, by which satisfaction is made to God for the living and the dead. This is also expressed by the words employed, and the same thing may be inferred from daily practice. I am aware how deeply this plague has struck its roots; under what a semblance of good it conceals its true character, bearing the name of Christ before it, and making many believe that under the single name of Mass is comprehended the whole sum of faith. But when it shall have been most clearly proved by the word of God, that this mass, however glossed and splendid, offers the greatest insult to Christ, suppresses and buries his cross, consigns his death to oblivion, takes away the benefit which it was designed to convey, enervates and dissipates the sacrament, by which the remembrance of his death was retained, will its roots be so deep that this most powerful axe, the word of God, will not cut it down and destroy it? Will any semblance be so specious that this light will not expose the lurking evil?" -- John Calvin

Joseph Ratzinger's father was born in Passau in 1877 and joined the local police force in Passau in 1899. Then, at the age of 25 he joined the Royal Bavarian Gendarmerie Corps, which he served for the next 35 years.

Ratzinger Sr. opposed Hitler's Brown Shirts' attempts to take over or disrupt village and rural police services from their very first incursions (1933), because he regarded them as thugs (which they were.) When the SS formally nationalized all the village and district police services, he continued trying to help legitimate local police to evade SS supervision. When he found himself in an impossible position, he got out of police work at the age of 60, preferring to give up his career rather than suffer what he regarded as criminal entanglement. His three children Maria, Georg and Joseph were 15, 12, and 10 at the time.

In other words, rather than risk entanglement in SS crap he left his profession entirely--- in 1937--- a year before Kristallnacht.

Your attempt to portray Pope Benedict;s father as a Nazi collaborator is truly "bearing false witness agfainst a neighbor." I am disappointed. Frankly, I had thought better of you.

In other words, rather than risk entanglement in SS crap he left his profession entirely--- in 1937--- a year before Kristallnacht.

Is this what passes for Catholic scholarship these days? In your own words, "frankly, I had thought better of you."

As you can read in my post, the reference is to the Night of the Long Knives, not Kristallnacht.

As I said, the Night of the Long Knives occurred on June 30, 1934, three years before Ratzinger Sr. retired from the S.S. police force.

NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES

As noted earlier, apparently Ratzinger and his family did not suffer any ill effects due to any sort of resistance on his part. Instead, he served out his term as a member of the S.S. and retired from the police force on time.

You're saying that those who opposed the SS takeover of local police forces, and those who willingly cooperated with them are equivalent.

You're saying that those who refused to go to Hitler Youth meetings, and those who went to them willingly, are equivalent.

And you're saying that those who deserted the army, risking being shot or hung, and those who cooperated willingly with the army, were equivalent.

You seem unwilling or unable to make obvious moral distinctions.

We've been living through a holocaust since Roe vs Wade, and we're all paying for part of it via DHHS Title X funding to Planned Parenthood and other filthy abortion "providers." Many of us here have an arrest record for opposing this. Do you? No? And you still pay taxes? Then you're a collaborator and a thug?

Do I need a sarc/ tag?

That just about ends the discussion.

That just about ends the discussion.

LOL. We've seen this before. When (some) Catholics are given evidence of an error they've made, as you have been shown by your mixing up the Night of the Long Knives with the Night of the Broken Glass (which would have helped to let Ratzinger Sr. off the hook), you simply ignore the fact, change the subject (to abortion arrest records, no less) and declare "the discussion is over."

We've seen this before. We'll see it again.

Once more, Ratzinger's father stayed on the police force for at least a year after it had been subsumed into the S.S. in 1936. He and his family suffered no reprisals for his beliefs. His family survived and apparently prospered after the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 when Hitler killed most of his opposition within the German army and local police forces.

Supposedly Ratzinger Jr. "deserted the army" in May of 1945, but I'm sure you realize this occurred at the very end of the war when half of Hitler's army was "deserting" rather than being captured by the Allies. It wasn't a desertion based on antipathy for Nazism. It was an evasion of the consequences resulting from losing the war to the Allies. Much of what remained of the German army headed for home and hills as Patton pressed into Germany in the spring of 1945.

There is no evidence Ratzinger Jr. refused to attend Hitler Youth meetings. There is only evidence that he was a member of the Hitler Youth and that his family was like most families in Germany at that time -- willing fellow travelers with the goals and means of national socialism and German conquest.

They were wrong. We don't have to lie about who they were in order to believe someone might change. Ratzinger and his family may have changed. People change. Some change is good. Hopefully, he's changed in a good way.

Judging a man on who he is today includes understanding where he's come from. It's called progress. It's called sanctification. It's not a bad word. It's life, if we're so blessed.

To whitewash the past disrespects the past, and denies the suffering of its victims, making it that much easier to repeat the mistakes of the past.

If this "ends the discussion," thanks. It's been swell.

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