Pope Benedict XVI

The new pope is Benedict XVI, ne Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Munich. Cardinal Ratzinger was a nazi (AA Gunner) during world war II. Apparently the fact that the law automatically registered him to be a nazi, meant that he was one despite his 'deep misgivings'. That, coupled to the fact that his father was a cop, probably gave him some sort of social and leadership position that he didn't ask for, which of course meant that the new pope spent much of his time during the war in a little-bombed section of germany trained on our airplanes and trying to shoot them down. Just as the academics are complicit in the rise of Naziism, I fault Ratzinger for not standing up to them when they called him to service. That said, the ascendancy of Ratzinger is positive: orthodoxy, as Chesterton writes - is not staid but in fact, the most radical of viewpoints. Within context, in the grand scheme of things, Ratzingers wartime hobbies (he never once hit a plane) don't amount to much. Still, I wouldn't want my grandfather (a wartime hero who fought in the battle of midway) to think too much about the fact that the largest church in the world now has an Ex-Nazi in charge of it..