How Many Children in Bethlehem Did Herod Kill?

The Pope Lashes Out

While I know that many people who read this blog (including several in the CADRE) disagree with my assessment on the issue of homosexuality, I do think it important to note that Pope John Paul II has written a new book which condemns homosexuality and abortion. Here is the CNN Report on the book:

Homosexual marriages are part of "a new ideology of evil" that is insidiously threatening society, Pope John Paul says in his newly published book.

In "Memory and Identity," the Pope also calls abortion a "legal extermination" comparable to attempts to wipe out Jews and other groups in the 20th century.

* * *

The 84-year-old Pontiff's book, a highly philosophical and intricate work on the nature of good and evil, is based on conversations with philosopher friends in 1993 and later with some of his aides.

In one section about the role of lawmakers, the Pope takes another swipe at gay marriages when he refers to "pressures" on the European Parliament to allow them.

"It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man," he writes.

* * *

In at least two sections of the book, the Pope talks about the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews and the wholesale slaughter of political opponents by Communist regimes after World War Two.

In following paragraphs he says that legally elected parliaments in formerly totalitarian countries were today allowing what he called new forms of evil and new exterminations.

"There is still, however a legal extermination of human beings who have been conceived but not yet born," he writes.

"And this time we are talking about an extermination which has been allowed by nothing less than democratically elected parliaments where one normally hears appeals for the civil progress of society and all humanity," he writes.

In Germany, a leader of the country's Central Council of Jews called the comparison unacceptable.

At a news conference presenting the book, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's top doctrinal official, dismissed the Jewish charges.

Ratzinger said the Pope "was not trying to put the Holocaust and abortion on the same plane" but only warning that evil lurked everywhere, "even in liberal political systems."

I am not a Roman Catholic, but I have great respect for those in the Roman Catholic faith. I believe that the opinions of Pope John Paul II, while not infallible, are worthy of serious consideration since he is the leader of the largest active Christian church and his opinions are generally well considered.

I, for one, will look forward to an opportunity to read through his arguments more carefully than I expect that CNN has done for this story. But in the meantime, it is interesting to note that Pope John Paul II's words were not too subtle. He apparently has arrived at the conclusion that both the advancement of homosexual rights and the continued practice of abortion are immoral. Not that these assertions are new, but the strength of the language used is, to my recollection, new. He must really feel strongly about this.