PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
By DONNA GENTILE O'DONNELL
THE RATZINGER brothers "made a different choice."
These were the words of Elizabeth Lohner, lifelong resident of Traunstein, Germany, the hometown of Joseph, now Pope Benedict, Ratzinger. As reported earlier this year in the Sunday Times World, Lohner, whose brother-in-law was sent to Dachau as a conscientious objector, doesn't buy the line adopted by the Ratzinger brothers and their Vatican allies.
The Ratzinger defenders claim that conscription into Hitler's war machine was inevitable, and resistance was impossible. Lohner, a Ratzinger neighbor said, "It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others. The Ratzingers were young and had made a different choice."
The concept of choices made and examples set is important in understanding the deep-seated corruption that is now evidenced in the pedophilia grand jury documentation. These cardinals, alleged moral leaders, elected Ratzinger - a man surrounded by astonishing acts of evil against his neighbors, and who was incapable of personal risk to resist.
We shouldn't be surprised that the men who elected him did the same. Philadelphia's Cardinal Rigali, a participant in the election of Ratzinger as pope, continues to publicly demonstrate his lack of moral compass, despite some recent public efforts to try to ease the pain.
More worthy of note is the fact that, in the time preceding the papal conclave at the Vatican, multiple high masses were held in connection with the funeral of John Paul II. One of them was celebrated by Cardinal Bernard Law, who, after being run out of Boston's archdiocese for his participation in that criminal pedophilia cover-up, was brought to Rome, living under the protection of the Vatican. Only one other cardinal concelebrated the Mass with the disgraced Cardinal Law: Justin Rigali.