The Pope announced today that non-Catholic variations on Christianity are inferior to Catholicism. Leaders of other Christian sects announced they were shocked and also announced that they had the only true version of Christianity and that all other Christian sects are inferior.

Well, it may be a small step backwards towards intollerance, but Pope Benedict's current position is still very liberal compared to the Catholic Church of, say, 1400 which declared any deviation at all to be a form of atheism and devil worship. Back then the Inquisition made a sincere effort to torture people back to the True Faith and only burned you at the stake if you failed to confess your sins and kiss the Pope's feet.

Pope Benedict XVI (that's number 16, for you Latin feebs), formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ("The Rat"), was a member of the Hitler Youth when he was a child. He claims he did not really like Hitler even back then. So that is a bit of a fib. We know what happened to all of Hitler's opponents. They were killed. So Pope Benedict XVI was a get-along, go-along type of kid back then. Only as he grew powerful did he feel that he should bend other people to his will.

Hitler was Catholic. Most American's don't know that. Neither the American govenment nor the American Catholic Church wanted Americans to know that. Hitler was born Catholic and Hitler died Catholic. Most of the early Nazis, in Bavaria, were Catholic, though it was not a requirement for joining the party.

Of course Hitler was a bad Catholic. He did not give primacy to the Church. If he had been a good Catholic he would have given Jews the option of converting to Catholicism rather than being roasted. If he had been a good Catholic he would have made Catholicism the sole religion of Germany. If you look at history, that is where most Catholic nations come from. At some point some ruler made everyone convert to Catholicism, and killed those that resisted. That is how Mexico and Latin America became Catholic. In the 1930s Hitler's fellow Catholic, General Franco, killed people in Spain for not being Catholic. This is why Franco is considered to be a Good Catholic, but Hitler was a Bad Catholic.

Catholicism Uber Alles is the new keynote of the Catholic Church. The only reason to tolerate non-Catholics is to get them to knuckle under and pay their union dues to the Pope. I am sure Ratzinger wishes he had an army, like the Pope's did until a couple of centuries ago, to further what he now must try to accomplish by diplomacy.

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