Why Much Journalism Is Deeply Suspect In Many Eyes

Stephen Pollard, in The Times:

The Pope is deeply suspect to Jewish eyes

Mr Pollard then goes on to outline his apparently eyeball depth level grasp of matters:

…Take the earliest public act of Pope Benedict XVI. As a young man, Joseph Ratzinger was in the Hitler Youth and enlisted with the Wehrmacht. Yes, he had the excuse that this was standard practice for young German men at the time. But it is hardly the most propitious CV entry for popularity with Jews.

On the surface, there is no taking issue with that.  However, it also might be worth noting, as Mr Pollard graciously concedes, that it was almost impossible for (non-Jewish) boys in this pope’s then age group to have avoided membership in the Hitler Youth and later serving in the military.  And with the end approaching and Berlin scrapping the bottom of the manpower barrel, shoving panzerfausts into the hands of 13 year olds and commanding them to stop Allied tanks meant they were in both essentially simultaneously.

But what’s actually new in observing that?  What is the point precisely in re-bringing up (for the umpteenth time) that about which he could have done little to nothing then as a child, and definitely can do nothing about now?  Likely it is part of an attempt to try to set the journalistic stage:

What was certainly not standard practice was his decision in 2004, when representing John Paul II at the 60th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy, to visit La Cambe cemetery. Slipping away after official events, he took a 20-minute drive to the graves of the Waffen SS panzer division, Das Reich, including men such as Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, who commanded the troops who murdered 642 villagers in Oradour-sur-Glane. Ratzinger said that it was not for him to judge the men at La Cambe, “into whose conscience only God can see”.

The source for that paragraph from Mr Pollard is apparently a February 2006 New Yorker article, which is available in some length here.  Reacting to it a week later, a History News Network writer had observed that then, nearly two years after the visit, no other web searchable account (in English?) of it appeared to exist.  (There still seems none contemporary with the visit.)  So we have only that one New Yorker piece upon which to base opinion.

Yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion, given Mr Pollard’s confident language, that he has concluded the visit had anti-Semitic, even arguably pro-Waffen SS, undertones.  That is an incredibly serious charge.  One would think it would demand rather more evidence to underpin it beyond an account in a single New Yorker article.

If you have been to Normandy, you are likely aware that La Cambe is probably the best known least visited cemetery there.  Curiously, Mr Pollard tellingly omits that then Cardinal Ratzinger did not make that 2004 “20-minute drive” to La Cambe alone.  According to what’s available online from that New Yorker piece, other church officials were reportedly with him, and one of them was even a French bishop:

…Shortly after two o’clock, Ratzinger entered the cemetery, accompanied by Pican [Pierre Pican, the Bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux] and Fortunato Baldelli, the papal nuncio to France, as well as a few other Church officials…

…Bishop Pican described the ceremony in an open letter on his Web site as “un grand moment d’une emotion inoubliable.”…

Here, this bit of elementary journalistic skepticism might seem called for.  Yet it is badly lacking from Mr Pollard’s evaluation.  Given that among the dead of La Cambe are interred the killers of thousands of French civilians, would a French bishop have been so willing to accompany the then Cardinal Ratzinger to the cemetery had the Bishop considered it an attempt to paper over or diminish those butcheries?

It would seem extremely unlikely.  Far more likely this: the soon-to-be Pope was NOT there to pay homage to the criminals of Oradour and others similar.  Perhaps he thought primarily of any buried there who didn’t want the war and yet found themselves driven to the battlefield by a criminal regime, and ended their lives miserably in ditches blown to bits by Allied “Jabos” or tanks?

We can only conjecture, but this other comparison would appear very revealing as to what the motivation for the La Cambe visit may have been.  For we may also recall a papal visit which the world openly witnessed.  At “Ground Zero” in lower Manhattan, this same pope prayed before millions for an end to the madness of terrorism.

Which is reasonable enough.  Surely that is something upon which we ALL may agree?  But while doing so he prayed also even for terrorists, hoping that the hearts of those who engage in such vile acts be changed, so such acts don’t happen again.

In doing that Pope Benedict XVI, while standing on ground where suicidal jihadist maniacs had slaughtered thousands, definitely was NOT showing sympathy towards Al Qaeda.

As difficult as it is for us Roman Catholics, let alone non-Catholics, to understand, the Catholic Church holds the essential view that no one deserves to be forgotten, and that even the worst sinner should be prayed for.  That appears quite lost on Mr Pollard.  So having unexplored that, he whisks readers quickly ahead:

…Far worse, however, was his invitation this year to Bishop Richard Williamson, a Holocaust denier, to return to the Catholic fold. The excuse — that Benedict had no idea of his views — was ridiculously implausible. Williamson was infamous. Does the Vatican not have access to Google?

This is also much better known than La Cambe; and it was also a far more complicated intra-church “struggle” than Mr Pollard’s incomplete, reductionist summation allows for.  Indeed, as we can tell from the previous paragraph, in his seemingly having located the La Cambe piece, Mr Pollard himself does “google.”  Yet he obviously didn’t “google” the Bishop Williamson issue.

Because, guess what?  It was NOT about Holocaust denial.  But it certainly appears Mr Pollard (along with many others in media) desire people to think that it was.

And last July he widened the use of the 1962 Latin Tridentine Mass, which includes a Good Friday prayer asking Catholics to “pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge Our Lord Jesus Christ”, asking God not to “refuse your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness”…

The obvious inference to be drawn from that is the Mass is anti-Semitic.  Others, however, straightforwardly disagree in no uncertain terms with that contention.  For example, back in July 2007 (and had Mr Pollard “googled” this also, he would likely have found this), the fervently Roman Catholic and Israel-supporting blogger Nora at Spanish Pundit, was unequivocal:

Whatever media outlets have been saying, there will be no prayer for the conversion of the “perfidious Jews“…

Ah, media.  Mr Pollard is of course one of that noisy crowd, and noisily here he continues:

Negotiations surrounding his itinerary have been fraught. The Vatican objected to part of his visit to Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem memorial to the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, because one exhibit discusses Pope Pius XII’s “neutral position”. In a compromise, he will bypass that room.

Here is perhaps a reason for that objection: fundamental sharp disagreement with the assertion that Pope Pius XII was “neutral” about the Holocaust?

If ever there was a case for avoiding public display and concentrating on quiet activity, surely it is this. Instead of a visit that risks inflaming already heated passions, far better to let the Pope’s future deeds demonstrate that his actions to date have been an aberration.

So what actions exactly are “an aberration?”  For as we can see, everything Mr Pollard just condemned can be addressed reasonably.  Despite that, and all else this pope has stated and already done — including even according to the Jewish Virtual Library (again, Mr Pollard can’t “google”?) — he is quite possibly some semi-secret anti-Semite?

That is dangerous stuff.  But quite what those like Mr Pollard hope ultimately to accomplish through struggling to construct wedges to drive between Catholics and Jews is anyone’s guess.  Especially with most of the “Muslim world” hungry to destroy Israel, it hardly seems to make much sense now to pick fights with the Catholic Church.

Meanwhile, separately, insofar as it is possible to discern, another prominent “journalist” believes that this pope manages, all at once, to be unreconstructed-Nazi, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian Christian.

Tired yet?  And has Mr Pollard so quickly also forgotten that Muslim extremists, many of whom openly fantasize of a world in which Hitler had finished the job, also earnestly wish this very same pope dead?  Yet given Mr Pollard’s conviction as to the (not always so) hidden darkness that motivates this pope, one would think this pope would be another of their “heroes”?