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German pope becomes an embarrassment in homeland
Reuters ^ | February 3, 2009 | Madeline Chambers

Posted on 02/04/2009 7:06:59 AM PST by Ravnagora

BERLIN (Reuters) - Nearly four years after a rare outburst of national pride over the election of a German pope, Germans are falling out of love with Pope Benedict because of his rehabilitation of a bishop who denies the Holocaust.

Prominent Catholics, politicians and newspaper commentators in Joseph Ratzinger's homeland are pulling no punches in their criticism of his lifting of the excommunications of four bishops, including one who denies the extent of the Holocaust.

Chancellor Angela Merkel also criticized him, prompting a sharp response from the Vatican.

"Worldwide criticism of the Pope," read the front page of top-selling daily Bild. It was a contrast to the jubilant "We are the pope!" headline in April 2005 to celebrate his election.

"The pope has made a serious mistake. That he is a German pope makes the matter especially bad," read its editorial.

"Pope Benedict XVI is inflicting great damage on Germany ... The pope must correct his mistake, reverse his decision and excuse himself," it said, in comments echoed by other papers.

(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: benedict; catholic; germany; holocaust; popebenedict; reutersspin
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To: Ravnagora
As any good bomber pilot will tell you, the flak gets heavier as you approach the most sensitive targets. For the international left to be squealing like this means that BXVI is a major threat. We, however, must be vigilant about the left’s responses and means of retaliation. The left is preparing a counter campaign modeled upon their effective counter to the moral authority of the Church in the 1930s in Germany. There will be a two pronged approach. The first will be when the left attempts to counter balance the significance of the Church by seemingly embracing non-Catholic and anti-Catholic denominations and sects. The second will be an all out legal and publicity assault on the Church and its leaders and institutions in the form of high publicity “Immorality Trials”.
21 posted on 02/04/2009 7:54:29 AM PST by Natural Law
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To: ArrogantBustard

So they are not excommunicated if,and only if, they return to the Church? Or is this a blanket good faith gesture. I must proclaim my ignorance on this subject.


22 posted on 02/04/2009 7:56:53 AM PST by allmost
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To: Ravnagora

Let me see if I have this right: Last summer BHO visited Berlin and was wildly received by an adoring crowd of 200,000 people in that socialist stronghold. Hitler, too, attracted enormous and enthusiastic crowds in Germany as well.

Ronald Reagan travelled to Berlin and bravely challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” RR did not get nearly the crowd the messiah received last summer.

And now we have Pope Benedict XVI, a traditional Catholic, the best Pope of my lifetime, being attacked and reviled by his own pathetic, socialistic, and secular countrymen.

What is it with Germany? Give me the Pope and Ronald Reagan any day of the week. The krauts can have their phony rabble rousing messiahs and shove them where the sun don’t shine.


23 posted on 02/04/2009 8:01:52 AM PST by Welcome2thejungle
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To: allmost
Pope has removed all formar barriers to their return, as individual Catholics.

They will, no doubt, wish to return as "Fr. So-and-so" or even perhaps "Bishop So-and-so" ... that part, the actual exercise of legitimate ecclesiastical authority, will require some negotiations. What form said negotiations may take, remains to be seen ... Benedict is Pope (and I'm not), so I'll let him do his job.

24 posted on 02/04/2009 8:08:06 AM PST by ArrogantBustard (Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)
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To: Natural Law

Thank you very much for this post. You have given a clear and correct explanation of what is actually happening and why, and what is yet to come.

We are approaching the eleventh hour.


25 posted on 02/04/2009 8:08:59 AM PST by Running On Empty ((The three sorriest words:"It's too late"))
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To: QBFimi

Hey, I hear the Tiber is starting to get mighty warm. Maybe you should consider taking a dip? ;-)


26 posted on 02/04/2009 8:13:31 AM PST by thefrankbaum (Ad maiorem Dei gloriam)
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To: ArrogantBustard

So it’s an ongoing negotiation process that the media is criticizing and blowing out of proportion because Christians are fair game. I must admit the rhetoric from muslim ‘holy men’ is so thoroughly disgusting and incitant that the details of this article were a bit perplexing in context.


27 posted on 02/04/2009 8:14:05 AM PST by allmost
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To: Ravnagora

“If the world hates you, know that it hated Me before it hated you.”


28 posted on 02/04/2009 8:20:19 AM PST by Oratam
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To: thefrankbaum; Ravnagora; Bokababe; maher
The news is terrible; I mean especially the reporting. The purported connection between the Latin Mass and conservative /reactionary views is absurd. I love the Missa Tridentina, the Mass as ordained at the Council of Trent. (This of course also gave us the murderous Counter-Reformation.) Esthetically the good liturgy is the Missa cantata [sung]— High Mass; not Missa lecta / low Mass [read, not sung]. Ratzinger has a wimpy singing voice, by the way. — Why Vat-II partisans prefer looking into the celebrant's face is weird. A brocaded chasuble back is more inspiring; the platoon leader faces in the same direction as the troops.

Papa Ratzinger’s choice of moniker is noteworthy, but overlooked. His predecessor Benedict XV was a huge figure in the outbreak of World War I. In Vienna Kaiser Franz-Josef was not hot to attack. The Hungarians at the outset were against war. The war party in Vienna was not yet quite in total charge, but the hawks got the pope's blessing to annihilate “schismatic” Orthodox Serbia. Far more than Gavrilo Princip, Ben Fifteen started the war.

Pope-criticism in the US not PC. Go to Catholic countries and you'll find criticism is in flower. Fast forward: Benedict XVI was a dhimmi for backtracking in the face of the jihadis It was perfectly correct to quote Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus on Mohammed spreading his religion by the sword. Doesn't the Koran divide the world into the Land of the Sword and the Land of Submission — Islam? Who's in Denial? YouTube the output of the mujahedin themselves. And lay a flower on the tomb of the Dutch film director VanGogh. On gas chambers, even Deutsche Welle (roughly “Voice of Germany) has stupid American news-readers talking about the gas chambers as the only murder weapon. If 6 million were not gassed, it doesn't follow that 6 million were not killed — by gas, hunger & disease (inseparable), bullets etc. The gas chambers were ordered dismantled (for eventual later use) by the IIIrd Reich. The first to die in them were Red Army POWS, if I recall rightly. Germany had enough Zyklon-B left over after the Jewish Final Solution to kill 20 million more people. Who was next? —Poles, Russians, that's who.

29 posted on 02/04/2009 8:24:27 AM PST by maher (Benedict XVI (and Benedict XV))
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To: Running On Empty
"We are approaching the eleventh hour."

No one knows the hour of His return, only that His return is certain. Everyone should know that the outcome of the struggle against evil is already written. With God on our side how can it be otherwise. The struggle will go forward only as a test of each of us. Our individual success or failure will determine our spiritual fates and the severity of the tests that our children and our children's children will face. Let's not fail God, them, or ourselves.

30 posted on 02/04/2009 8:27:51 AM PST by Natural Law
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To: allmost
So it’s an ongoing negotiation process that the media is criticizing and blowing out of proportion

That's pretty much "it" in a nutshell.

31 posted on 02/04/2009 8:31:15 AM PST by ArrogantBustard (Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)
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To: maher

What? So you oppose the counter-reformation, don’t like the way BXVI sings, the NO Mass, blame BXV for WWI, believe there isn’t enough criticism of the Pope in the US, and see the “next step” of Holocaust to include Poles and Slavs, who of course were the first real victims? Is that a fair summation of your post?


32 posted on 02/04/2009 8:31:33 AM PST by thefrankbaum (Ad maiorem Dei gloriam)
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To: eastsider
"Media merely fanning the flames of which it knows nothing about."

The issue of Catholic dogma and the selection of the Pope is a real blow to the collective ego and psyche of the MSM because it reinforces how irrelevant and insignificant they really are. They cannot change the word and will of God and it drives them nuts. They are empowered and often subsidized and adulated because of their belief that they can and have made and destroyed presidents and other world leaders, but the Church remains above their grasp. Manipulation of public opinion may affect the number of adherents to the teachings, but it will not change the teachings. This drives them beyond rationality.

33 posted on 02/04/2009 8:44:09 AM PST by Natural Law
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To: Natural Law

Again, I agree whole-heartedly.

As a parent, a grandparent and great-grandparent, I have always believed that the most important “portfolio” we can leave our children and their children is a life lived in the presence of God and His marvelous grace.


34 posted on 02/04/2009 8:52:02 AM PST by Running On Empty ((The three sorriest words:"It's too late"))
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To: RobbyS

The Muslims indeed are potential Holocaust “re-enactors”.


35 posted on 02/04/2009 9:11:08 AM PST by ZULU ( God, guts and guns made America great. Non nobis, non nobis Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.)
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To: ArrogantBustard
7) The Church's enemies wish to delay or derail Pope Benedict's efforts to renew the Church.

...and by renewing the church, you mean accepting this nut and his followers into the church right? As an outsider, I have to ask, is that really a good idea? Do you as a Catholic want your church to be associated with lunatics? Because that is what is happening.

36 posted on 02/04/2009 10:17:50 AM PST by monday
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To: ArrogantBustard

This post pretty much sums it up.

I attended an SSPX chapel for a few years in the nineties. The majority of the people there are good Catholics who want to be in full communion with the Pope. Bishop Williamson has always been regarded as something of a crank by most SSPX folks, including the priests.

Pope Benedict’s lifting of the excommunications has absolutely nothing to do with Williamson’s crazy opinions. It has everything to do with helping a group of Catholics back into the bosom of Holy Mother Church, where they belong.

If the media had made as much of a firestorm over the liberal Bishops who have dismantled the Church for the last forty years, maybe the world and the Church would be a better place today. The SSPX and other traditionalists certainly have a lot less to answer for before Almighty God than does Bernadin, Weakland, Mahoney and their ilk.


37 posted on 02/04/2009 10:21:16 AM PST by Palin4ever
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To: Palin4ever

“Bishop Williamson has always been regarded as something of a crank by most SSPX folks, including the priests.”

If this is true then why haven’t they got rid of him?


38 posted on 02/04/2009 10:27:28 AM PST by monday
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To: monday
This nut is a small part of a very big picture. The vast majority of folks who are either members of or associated with SSPX are not genocide-denying nutjobs. They're orthodox Christians who are disgusted with the heresy and liberalism that has infested some parts of the Church since the 1960s.

They are not lunatics ... quite the contrary. Most of the folks creating all this fuss and feathers are lunatics. The MSM and liberal politicians are supporting the lunatics.

You can swallow the MSM bilge if you like ... but it does you no credit.

39 posted on 02/04/2009 10:29:12 AM PST by ArrogantBustard (Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)
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To: monday
Full disclosure time:

To what Faith, Religion, Church or ecclesial community do you belong?

40 posted on 02/04/2009 10:31:17 AM PST by ArrogantBustard (Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)
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