POPE RATZINGER DEPLOYS CENSORSHIP AT THE WORLD YOUTH CONGRESS--IN THE PRESS ROOM!

  Pope Benedict XVI -- a.k.a Joseph Ratzinger, a.k.a. The Rat, formerly a.k.a. Der PanzerKardinal -- has had his doctrinal shock troops deploy censorship at the Catholic World Youth Congress (WYC) taking place in Cologne, Germany....and in, of all places, the Congress press room. Yet such is the fawning, uncritical coverage of the WYC in the U.S. press that not a word about this censorship has penetrated the dispatches from Cologne by U.S. correspondents.

Luckily, the German newsweekly Stern -- which has a 1 million circulation -- dispatched an alert reporter to the WYC in Cologne who discovered this censorship, which targets homosexuality in particular, but also Stern's magazine spinoff for youth . Here, in translation, are excerpts from Stern's report (thanks to frequent DIRELAND contributor Norman Birnbaum for the translation, denn mein Deutsch ist zehr schlecht):

World Youth Congress: Surfing Without Sin by Lutz Kinkel, Stern

Censorship has been abolished but not in the Press Center of the World Youth Congress. Precisely there, where daily hundreds of journalists sit at computers, Internet access has been limited—an embarrassing attempt at manipulation.

I found out by accident. With Stern photographer Janna Frohnhaus I had planned to do an article on "Homosexuals and the Catholic Church." She got her press pass for the WYC and then went into the enormous exhibition hall on the Auenplatz in Deutz (Koeln suburb, NB) established as the Press Center, sat down at one of the large number of personal computers reserved for journalists.To find Contact Addresses she used Google under the theme and tried to get a web page of the Ecumenical Working Group  on Homosexuals and the Church. It was impossible, it was blocked -- quite officially, by the WYC. (Photo, right, shows the blocked page on the WYC computer)

I’ll admit I did not believe it as she told me of it by email. The Catholic Church for centuries burned books and heretics. But putting Homepages on the Index in the 21^{st Century? And for journalists? It is impossible to impose Catholic policing on the Information Society --even the Vatican must realize that.}

The Devil On-Line: But I visited the Press Center and found that it was so. For a good hour we tried everything on the PC that bothered the Church. We found pages on Satanic Rites but no pages on "Homosexuality and the Catholic Church." They were on the Index—lots of them.   Keep your hands off! Porn pages? Nazi pages? Not here. Even Neon , Stern's youth magazine, could not be called up. Apparently the Devil was everywhere, and his menacing face was given no chance to creep through online. The WYC press officer, Nina Schmedding, professed astonishment at out first inquiry. She said it must be a technical problem-- or an attack by hackers. She contacted her boss by telephone.

Pilgrims Without A Filter: After intensive efforts to reach him, her boss Kopp telephoned me personally. No no one spoke of "idiocy." Yes, they did install a Filter. After all, the journalists did not wish to surf the pornographic pages. He could not answer when I asked what Neon or the Ecumenical Work Group, Homosexuals and the Church had to do with pornography. He did not know according to what standards they were put on the Index. That this must have something to do with conservative Catholic belief even we laypersons could understand.

Waiting between our visit to the Press Center and the call from Kopp, the photographer and I visited the Internet Café for the pilgrims, in the next Exhibition Hall. We sought to verify the hypothesis, that a secret Custodian of the Faith had been installed in Internet Explorer in all WYC terminals. No----without any problem we could call up all the URLs, Nazi propaganda, Homosexuals, Condoms, Pornography, even criticism of the Pope---everything came easily.

The organizers of the WYC obviously believe that the youthful pilgrims are immune to these things---but adult journalists not. They seek to keep us from looking for material critical of the Church. That is an embarrassing attempt at censorship

A propos "Homosexuals and the Catholic Church," the Lutheran Pastors Dr Bertold Hoecker and Stefan Meschig from the Gay-Lesbian Consultation Center Rubicon (photo left) organized a meeting place in the inner city for homosexuals at the Antoniterkirche. Of course, no mention in the official brochures of the WYC. What Catholic doctrine does not allow, can obviously not exist. Hoecker, Meschig, Janna Frohnhaus and I spoke for a long time about the problem. "God said, Do Not Be Afraid," concluded Pastor Hoecker...."

POLITICAL SCANDAL AS GERMANY'S C.D.U. CENSORS SCHOOL MANUAL DISCUSSING HOMOSEXUALITY IN MIDST OF NATIONAL ELECTION

In the midst of Germany's national election campaign, a political firestorm has been ignited because a pedagogic manual for teachers about homosexuality-- which was financed by the European Union's Commission Against Discrimination, and has been  part of the curriculum in the German state of Rhineland-Westphalia since 2004 -- has been suppressed by the state's Minister for Education, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party member Barbara Sommer, the daily news bulletin of the French gay monthly Tetu reported today. Power passed to the conservative CDU in a regional election upset earlier this year, when it defeated the Social Democrats (SDP) who had held power in the state for 40 years. The conservative Minister's press spokesperson sneered that discussing homosexuality in school is "propaganda for certain sexual orientations...We shouldn't give our children the feeling that being gay or lesbian is an obligation." The education spokesperson for the center-right, free-market Free Democratic Party (FDP) attacked the censorship of the manual, saying that "discussing the subject of homosexuality in schools is necessary, and teachers should be supported in doing so with adequate training materials."  The affair has now become a subject of a bitter debate in parliament, where the Green Party has demanded that the FDP's chairman, Guido Westerwelle (right) -- himself homosexual -- intervene directly "instead of offering a few vague words." This affair comes just weeks before a national parliamentary election, and could have an effect at the polls in  the September 18 voting by considerably raising the level of the CDU's identity as an anti-gay party.