This story has been publicized somewhat, but it's worth remembering when ignorant people claim that Joseph Ratzinger
was a Nazi sympathizer because he was a member of the Hitler Jugend and served in the German army:
Sadly, there are those who would argue that a Downs syndrome child should never be born but should be aborted upon discovery of the condition. I often wonder how people who make this kind of an argument would react if they were to be afflicted with a debilitating disease and be told that their families decided to have them killed because they're now defective and imperfect human beings.
Many people are expecting Pope Benedict XVI to speak out in defense of human life and against abortion during his visit to the United States next week. What few people realize, however, is that the pope knows first hand what happens when a society refuses to defend the most defenseless of its citizens.
As a boy of fourteen, Joseph Ratzinger had a cousin who had been born with Down's Syndrome, only a bit younger than himself. In 1941, German state "therapists" came to the boy's house and probably informed the parents of the government regulation that prohibited mentally handicapped children from remaining in their parents' home. In spite of the family's pleas, the representatives of the Nazi state took the child away. The Ratzinger family never saw him again. Later the family learned that he had "died," most likely murdered, for being merely "undesirable," a blemish in the race, and a drain on the productivity of the nation. This was Joseph Ratzinger's first experience of a murderous philosophy that asserts that some people are disposable.
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As the pope said during his visit to Austria in 2007, the right to life is the first of all human rights. To speak, then, of a "right" to abort an unborn child is a contradiction in terms. This is a truth that, for Pope Benedict, is self-evident. But how will he convey this message in America where the abortion movement is so firmly entrenched? "He will present the Catholic teaching as a positive," Pursell says. "But at the same time he will be unapologetic about it."
Sadly, there are those who would argue that a Downs syndrome child should never be born but should be aborted upon discovery of the condition. I often wonder how people who make this kind of an argument would react if they were to be afflicted with a debilitating disease and be told that their families decided to have them killed because they're now defective and imperfect human beings.
