A couple of things I will note is that an excellent way to encourage a resurgent Nazism is to blame people who were born 20 years ago for things their grandparents did. It\u2019s as plausible as demanding \u201creparations for slavery\u201d from Americans. One very common human response to such guilt manipulation is to conclude \u201cI may as well indulge in the sin everybody keeps accusing me of since they will go on accusing me no matter what I do or say.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is an issue we ran into quite recently on Pope Benedict\u2019s recent visit to the Holy Land. It\u2019s been a consistent criticism of his engagement with the Holocaust, that he doesn\u2019t seem to embrace the collective responsibility model that has dominated Germany for over half a century. When he talks about the Nazis, he describes them as a sort of other, a foreign invasion upon German soil and not something that was able to grow because it was rooted in the German soul. Part of this has to do with his upbringing; he was not raised in a Nazi household, but in a family which was staunchly opposed to the ideals Hitler promulgated. He served at gunpoint \u2014 and unenthusiastically at that \u2014 in the Hitler Youth and in the Wehrmact, from which he ultimately deserted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This, while true, does not get at another vital fact: Benedict believes the Revelation. And the revelation insists that sin does not define us: Christ does. So it is quite understandable that he regards Nazism as ultimately alien because he does not believe that sin constitutes our humanness. Sin is, in the Catholic tradition, normal but never natural, since God is the author of nature. Nature is no corrupt. Corruption is corrupt. From the beginning it was not so. This is a cardinal difference between a Catholic anthropology and a Calvinist, Manichaean or post-Protestant one.<\/p>\n