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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.
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Q&A

What would be a proper response to someone who brings up Pope Benedict XVI’s membership in the Hitler Youth just to be provocative?

Catholic Answers Staff

Question:

What would be a proper response to someone who brings up Pope Benedict XVI’s membership in the Hitler Youth in a negative way, without any other information, and in the company of others?

Answer:

You might say calmly and politely, “Do you consider it fair to defame a man who is not present to defend himself? Perhaps you are unaware of this, but the Anti-Defamation League (www.adl.org) welcomed Benedict XVI’s election as pope and stated that he had spent his entire adult life atoning for his teenage membership in the Hitler Youth, which, by the way, was compulsory and not his choice.”

 

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