The Pope and the Chancellor

What does their running battle tell us about the future of European politics?

BY PAUL HOCKENOS | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010

In 2005, two unlikely Germans were elected to office, and a defining cultural rift was thrown wide open. First, Germany's ranking Roman Catholic cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger, the former Hitler Youth recruit from Bavaria turned archconservative theologian, became Pope Benedict XVI. Six months later, Germany elected as its chancellor Angela Merkel, a childless and twice-married Protestant from East Germany bent on updating her country and her hidebound Christian Democratic party. Over the ensuing years, the pope and the chancellor have worked in almost constant opposition to one another, though the struggle, at least until recently, remained behind the scenes. Their battle may well decide whether conservatives have a future at all in the new Europe-and if so, what kind.

Merkel and Benedict share, if awkwardly, a political base: the big-tented Christian Democratic Union born after World War II. The philosophy of West Germany's premier postwar conservative, Konrad Adenauer, was not to dwell on the Nazi past, but rather to plow forward with economic recovery and integration into the Western alliance -- all the while respecting the staunch conservatism of Chancellor Adenauer's own Catholic Rhineland.

In Catholic-dominated West Germany, the church had enormous influence on state policies regarding abortion, sex education, and gender roles, as summed up by the Christian Democrat dictum for women: Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church). Legal equality between men and women didn't make it into the law books until 1958. As late as 1967, only a handful of the Christian Democrats' MPs were women. Even after the Berlin Wall came down and Helmut Kohl took over reunited Germany, the Christian Democrats remained a male-dominated, socially traditional party that envisioned the nuclear family as the basis for a God-fearing nation-state. In short, it was the very definition of European Christian democracy.

By the time Merkel arrived on the national political scene, however, this conservatism was as out of date as the Cold War that had preserved it. Since taking over the Christian Democrats in 2000, Merkel has proceeded to dramatically reconfigure German politics, an overhaul that has important lessons for conservatives across Europe and one that is recounted in fascinating detail in German journalist Mariam Lau's new portrait of Merkel, Die Letzte Volkspartei: Angela Merkel und die Modernisierung der CDU ("The Last People's Party: Angela Merkel and the Modernization of the Christian Democratic Union"). "Even though the official party program still stipulates the state's protection of marriage and family," Lau writes, "in light of societal reality (and a party leadership) in which there are ever more divorcés, childless people, singles, and homosexuals, the party quite suddenly discovered a breathtaking aptitude for open-minded coexistence."

MICHAEL URBAN/AFP/Getty Images

 
Facebook|Twitter|Reddit

NORMAN ROGERS

9:38 AM ET

January 4, 2010

A continuing smear

against the Pope is this trotting out of the whole "Hitler Youth" thing. While I am not Catholic, and don't much care one way or the other, in point of fact, the Hitler Youth was compulsory for all German boys, beginning at age ten, based on a law passed in 1939. Does someone need to explain "compulsory" and "fascist state" to you? The kid had no choice.

This Pope and Chancellor Merkel are, decidedly, post-war Germans, and should be considered as much.

 

SNART

12:58 PM ET

January 4, 2010

"Hitler Youth"

As Norman Rogers says, this continuing smear of Pope Benedict XVI as a "former Hitler Youth recruit" belies the facts of life in Germany when Joseph was a boy. It does no honor to any writer to refer to him as a former Hitler Youth, making the rest of the article suspect in every way.

 

BHAWK99

3:59 PM ET

January 4, 2010

Shoddy at best

To write accusations such as "former hitler youth" (w/o clarification), or that his brand of 'fundamentalism' is set toward disestablishing modern democracy akin to 'islamic radicalism' is patently ludicrous.

It's telling that the author provides *no* examples to substantiate any of these bombastic claims.

I had come to expect better from FP. This is at best shoddy, at worst intellectually dishonest.

 

ZINDIQ

1:11 PM ET

January 5, 2010

Interesting the reaction to fact...

While you may not like the the inclusion of the well-established fact the Benedict was a member of the Hitler Youth, that does not change the validity of the statement. I agree that it might not have any bearing on his attitudes, but his support of the English Bishop who claims the Nazi ethnic cleansing of Jews has been exaggerated makes the mention the Pope's involvement in the perpetrator's organization noteworthy.
While your point about mandatory involvement in the Nazi Youth is well taken, a brief perusal of the actions of the Nazi Youth, well beyond what was legally mandated is also worthy of review.
Last point, and that is if Benedict's participation was merely because of the legal requirement, and he did not participate in any of the unsavory activities - then this mention of it and the public examination of the facts should demonstrate his superior character in those times - and if not - well that speaks for itself.

 

GERONIMO

4:46 PM ET

January 12, 2010

The "running battle" between Pope and Chancellor...

...I live in Germany, and haven't noticed any such thing.Merkel was cherrypicked as chancellor by her party in the hope that a new face belonging to an East German divorcee, daughter of a Protestant pastor ,would lend the party some remedial zip. Trouble was, its chancellor for 16 years, Helmut Kohl, had come to bore voters and alarm them concerning a party-fund scandal that deeply involved him. Merkel eventually made the running and has now been in charge for going on five years. These have been years in which the German Catholic bishopric has remained predominantly progressive; modernization has continued its normal pace since, directly postwar, the American Forces Network radio provided, and sold, Germans to that vector of American cool called jazz. Merkel remains noncomittal about the relationship with America but remains ckose to the French. Her dealings with Ratzinger makes very occasional headlines, the infrequency being justified by its inconsequence. The Vatican is about staunching the drain of membership while retaining the faith: Merkel is about staunching the drain of her popularity while running a government in partnership with Germany's Liberal party, which happens to be led by a homosexual who is also an aetheist. It may have come clear by now that neither Merkel nor the Pope really have any inteterest, or time, in squaring off against one another.