Like going to church on a sunday somehow makes one good. Not that I would suggets for amoment that the ethics that the church promulgate are taken from Aristotle and friends - pagan Greeks. Anyway a painting from a famous Nazi named Hitler, whose biographical journey also sold many copies ( remind you of anybody else ). BTW later forays into paganism dosent' make pagans evil either ( likewise many high ranking Nazis being somehow gay and fascist and early supporters, or many supporters of Mussolini being Italian Jewish nationalists ( doesn't mean being Jewish is fascist either ) etc etc. Anyway as Bacchus says bring on the wine and lets have some veritae. Believing in something is just that...

Pope Benedict XVI and his brother Georg Ratzinger stand in the baptistry where they were baptised, inside the Church of St. Oswald during the pope's visit to Marktl am Inn, Sept. 11, 2006. The pope spent part of the third day of his six-day tour in Bavaria at Marktl am Inn, a village where he spent the first two years of his life. (Andreas Gebert/Reuters) Click to enlarge photo

The mists of history swirl around Pope Benedict XVI's hometown in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps in Germany.

It was there that he came of age as Joseph Ratzinger and served in Hitler Youth during the rise of the Third Reich.

Shining a light on that history offers a glimpse of the context underpinning the Vatican's current crisis, which results from the pope's decision last month to rescind the excommunication of a renegade, ultra-conservative bishop who actively denies the Holocaust.

The decision unleashed a firestorm of controversy, with the German government weighing in last week, Israel's chief rabbinate severing ties with the Vatican, and Catholics and Jews worldwide feeling that decades of hard work and goodwill in improving relations between the two faiths had been undermined.

So can we draw a line from this oversight by the pope, this inability to see how much his decision would insult so many, back to his German past and a decision as a 14-year-old boy to join the Hitler Youth?

Most thoughtful Catholics and many Jewish historians I know would say, no, that is not a line that can be drawn, nor is it fair.

But one man who knows some of the hidden truths in the pope's hometown of Traunstein is Father Rupert Berger, and his story deserves telling.

Berger, now 81, was ordained a Catholic priest alongside Joseph Ratzinger and his brother, Georg, in 1951 in the beautiful church in the center of the town where they all grew up together.
But there was something that set their two families apart.

Berger's family sympathized with the Catholic resistance to Nazism in the town. Rupert was the same age as Joseph Ratzinger and at 14 years old he refused to join Hitler Youth. His family suffered as a result. He told me in an interview in 2005 that his father was sent to Dachau. He returned after the war and became the mayor.

Ratzinger's father was a policeman. The family was never affiliated with the Nazi party. But the Ratzingers chose to go with the vast majority of Germany and acquiesce to the regulations requiring 14 year olds to join Hitler Youth. They wanted to survive and allow their two sons to focus on academics in the seminary. So Ratzinger and his brother joined at 14 and went through with the parades and the salutes to the Fuehrer. Ratzinger also served briefly with a German army anti-aircraft unit just before the end of the war.

When I interviewed Berger in April 2005, just after Ratzinger had been elevated to the papacy, he spoke well of Ratzinger's intellect and discipline as a young man. But he said he couldn't understand why Ratzinger had insisted for so long in so many public statements that no one had a choice but to join Hitler Youth.

''It was a hard time to live, and there were hard choices to make," Berger said.

He was too modest or polite, or perhaps uncertain about what to tell a reporter who landed on his doorstep, to state his opinion about the new pope's choices any more clearly.

But what I took away from the interview and my research in the town was that the pope's repeated assertion that he had no choice but to join Hitler Youth was simply not true.

In fact, the statement is an insult to the memory and the lives of those who did resist Nazism and those who did refuse to join the organizations that were formed to perpetuate its power.
The pope's poorly-thought-out edict to reinstate the Holocaust-denying bishop — from which the Vatican is now vigorously back peddling — was also an insult to those who resisted Nazism and to Jews and Catholics alike around the world.

At the end of the day, it shouldn't surprise us that this pope overlooked — or failed to adequately investigate — the dangerous and virulent strains of anti-Semitism that ran through British Bishop Richard Williamson's research that denied the Holocaust.

Like other religious and extremist nutters before him.

Five held over Pope terror alert
breaking news

Five men have been arrested by the Metropolitan Police in London in relation to a potential threat to the Pope.

The arrests were made at 0545 BST at addresses in London after counter-terrorism officers received intelligence of a potential threat.

The five men have been taken to a central London police station.

Officers are continuing searches at premises connected to the raids.

In a statement from Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police said that the five men had been arrested in an operation launched by officers from the force's Counter-Terrorism Command.

The five were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000.

The five men are 26, 27, 36, 40 and 50 years old. They were arrested in an armed operation at business premises where searches are continuing.

Residential premises in north and east London are also being searched. Officers have not found any hazardous items.

"The arrests were made at 0545 BST at addresses in London after counter-terrorism officers received intelligence of a potential threat.

The five men have been taken to a central London police station.

Officers are continuing searches at premises connected to the raids.

In a statement from Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police said that the five men had been arrested in an operation launched by officers from the force's Counter-Terrorism Command."

Dismissing the usual "state affiliated" crapola that "reality check" usually carps on about.

I think we can safely dismiss this hierarchical, cut & paste comment as met police PR rubbish. The police were always going to find terrorists while the Pope was here.

Odd that a senior Pakistani political figure is found brutally murdered and the police are fucking clueless, but they still have enough to pull in half a dozen 'immigrants' on terrorism charges on the day the pope arrives in Westminster!

Where did this intelligence 'tip-off' come from I wonder, the police themselves?

Reality check, you need to grow up and get a pair sonny boy!

He was talking about himself obviously. Whatever else you say about the pope ,he's a shrewd old boy , he must know that all the religious stuff is a load of bollox. I can't believe that he isn't an athiest .

Hitler was anti-Christian. That's mainly because he was an occultist. He was heavily influenced by the Theosophy of Helena Blavatsky. It was she who promoted the Swastika, which was popular throughout Western Europe before Hitler came to power. The Swastiks represented order and creativity and, you guessed it, the Aryan. (Blatvatsky actually believed Aryans were Indians but Hitler et al overlooked that inconvenient thought.) Hitler also went on about the Teutonic Knights, German pre-history and the Runes. SS members had to be taught about the Runes. Many people believed this bollocks.

The Pope knows all this but prefers to overlook and call Hitler an atheists. This is because some of this occult nonsense has found it way into the Vatican. The previous Pope, John, was an initiate of a secret society that teaches this bollocks. Given Ratsinger was a Nazi youth himself, it would not be surprising if he knew an awful lot about this.