I was watching CNN recently, and a crawl went by that read, "RATZINGER'S PARENTS WERE ANTI-NAZI." That's kind of an odd thing to report, I thought. That was before I found out about his Nazi past, among other things, in this excellent Salon article by Sidney Blumenthal.

The story is that Ratzinger and his brother (now both Church officials) were in Hitler Youth when membership became mandatory and served in the army until Ratzinger defected in 1945.

Now I have to wait more than twenty years to hear them spin this when he gets canonized.