first: um no, I don’t think i’ve ever visited your blog – but it’s a nice technique of insinuation you’ve got there.

which is of course really all your article is. Anti-hagiography is a nice title, but what does your arguement attacking Walesa rest on? a 14 word quote from Walesa himself, which says nothing beyond what most average catholics would say if asked for a soundbite!

the rest of the piece is one long attempt to smear Walesa by attacking Benedict, on the basis of 2 sentences which Walesa, for all the context you give them, could have said when some random hack thrust a microphone in his face.

another clumsy attempt at the same thing is “in a Savonarolaesque narrative, if not in methods, Lech Walesa as political liberator now needs to be recast in an image he is seldom seen; Walesa the reactionary.” brilliant – Walesa as Savaronola. so i suppose you’re casting those well-known proto-capitalists and all-round sensual hedonists the Polish Communist Party as the Medicis? the mention of Savaronla adds nothing except an air of spurious erudition and guilt by (tenuous) association.

on the subject of spurious erudition, i am of course unsure of how much you actually know about liberation theology, but to cast all opponents of it as reactionary impliles the answer would be “very little indeed”. you say “this is a man who, as head of the institution formerly known as the Inquisition, helped to purge from the Church those priests who argued that the Church had to play a role in fighting poverty and oppression.”
Ratzinger’s – and John Paul’s – opposition to LT was founded on its acceptance of the profoundly reactionary and inhumane tenets of Marxism. so it’s hardly a shock that the anti-communist Walesa would approve, is it?

what next? ah, i loved the way that your grand rhetorical flourish a la Shakespeare’s Anthony is “but Lech Walesa hailed him as a ‘good choice’.” the best you can come up with is two rather anodyne words. it’s hardly a ringing endorsement of Ratzinger’s entire moral program and worldview, is it Andrew?

also, i loved your use of irregular verbs –

I was an unwilling participant

You (ie Grass)were “coerced into becoming a member”

He (ie Ratzinger) is “a man with a Nazi past”

so much for the technique. there’s the more important point that Walesa withdrew his criticism after he heard Grass’s side of the story – quite a generous act, wouldn’t you say, considering that his intial reaction shows us how difficult the task of facing the past is, when that past involves seeing the Waffen-SS rape your country?

sorry for length – i knew it would be tedious.

I do not equate being a Catholic with being a Nazi. I call the Pope a Catholic reactionary bigot. Which he is. The Nazis were reactionary bigots of a murderously different order.

My argument was not that Grass should not be criticised – the article is titled Anti-Hagiography – but that Walesa’s criticism of Grass is not what it is being made to appear to be. Walesa’s comments, when read in the Anglophone world, carry the moral weight of a great champion of freedom. But his comments ought to be read as those of a reactionary Catholic nationalist. A man utterly unconcerned with the Nazi past of people whom he shares an affiliation, except where it is useful ammunition in condemning a tolerant left-winger.

Are you saying that Grass was wrong when he called for German’s should face up to the truth of their roles in Nazism? Are you saying that this was not an important task?

He was right. And it was important.

Understanding Walesa’s hypocrisy changes the context of his condemnation, and the moral weight he has assumed or been given.

Understanding Grass’ hypocrisy only tells us how difficult to the task of facing the past is, not whether or not he was right to make his call to do so.

Grass ha claimed for sixty years that he was in an anti_aircraft platoon, whilst preaching that Germans must face up to the truth of thier roles>

overall, the article is so lazy it would be tempting to fisk it, if it wouldnt be such a dreary task. suffice to say, i love how you make being a catholic merge so seamlessly with being a Nazi.

‘Wowbanger’ appears to suffer from reading difficulties. I have no wish to “de-equalise” (horrid compound!) either of the gentlemen concerened. I praise them equally for being, as young men, patriotic in defence of their country. I only enjoy the ‘schadenfreude’ of seeing Grass exposed as a hypocrite long *after* his war effort.

And how is it that you can ‘converse’ with me here, Mr. Jubb, but refuse to do so on your own precious site? No, don’t bother to answer, I’m bored already!

typically unencumbered by fact, I see. It’s strangely comforting to find that some things don’t change.

Peace, brother

What else did they think, in their naivetee/stupidity (delete as necessary), that Lech Walesa was other than a Catholic nationalist like every other historic Polish leader? And how quickly they leap to excuse the humbuggery of their left-wing idol, Gunter Grass, who can certainly be pardoned his youthful patriotism but hardly his 60-year old tirade against those who supported Hitler.

Mind you, I’m impressed with Bartlett’s black propoganda skills in such smears against the Pope as describing him as “head of the institution formerly known as the Inquisition”! ‘Don’cha’ just lurve it’? No? Goebbells would have done.