Over at the National Review's Amen Corner, house theologian of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy Michael Novak chimes in with one of the weirdest hymns of praise of yet for Pope Benedict XVI.
There's the awkward matter of the necessary compromises of the young Joseph Ratzinger in Nazi Germany to which Novak cuts through by pointing out the extra sacrifice involved in Ratzinger's decision to enter the priesthood. Namely, that 1945 Germany was BABE CENTRAL because there were all these Bavarian frauleins whose husbands were dead, there for the taking for an eligible young man like him. And, No, as with most VRWC commentary these days, we're not making this up:
When the totally humiliating defeat of the Nazis arrived in 1945, Josef Ratzinger had barely reached his 18th birthday. His whole future lay open before him, free at last of Nazi tyranny. There were hundreds of thousands of young women of Germany whose boyfriends or young husbands had perished in distant places ...
He chose, as not so many did, philosophical and theological studies leading toward ordination as a Catholic priest. But one price of making that choice was to sacrifice his sexual life in a vow to seek a higher love, in the following of Christ, the Son of God.
There's the awkward matter of the necessary compromises of the young Joseph Ratzinger in Nazi Germany to which Novak cuts through by pointing out the extra sacrifice involved in Ratzinger's decision to enter the priesthood. Namely, that 1945 Germany was BABE CENTRAL because there were all these Bavarian frauleins whose husbands were dead, there for the taking for an eligible young man like him. And, No, as with most VRWC commentary these days, we're not making this up:
When the totally humiliating defeat of the Nazis arrived in 1945, Josef Ratzinger had barely reached his 18th birthday. His whole future lay open before him, free at last of Nazi tyranny. There were hundreds of thousands of young women of Germany whose boyfriends or young husbands had perished in distant places ...
He chose, as not so many did, philosophical and theological studies leading toward ordination as a Catholic priest. But one price of making that choice was to sacrifice his sexual life in a vow to seek a higher love, in the following of Christ, the Son of God.