Posted on 02/22/2005 12:46:48 PM PST by Clint N. Suhks
ROME (Reuters) - Homosexual marriages are part of "a new ideology of evil" that is insidiously threatening society, Pope John Paul says in a new book published Tuesday.
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.
He also reveals that he is convinced the Turkish gunman who shot him in 1981 did not act alone and suggests that the former Communist Bloc may have been behind the plot to kill him.
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.
The Pope's fifth book for mass circulation, issued by Italian publisher Rizzoli, sparked controversy in Germany and elsewhere after Jewish groups protested against leaked excerpts comparing the Holocaust to abortion.
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 II.
"LEGAL EXTERMINATION"
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.myway.com ...
Please explain, I'm not familiar with this debate about the Catholic church and being "liberal" on matters of faith.
And how has he damaged the Church?
I'm not impressed. He needs to be as conservative on matters of faith as he is on matters of morals. It is the failure to make this distinction that baffles many Catholics. Faith and morals are not the same. This is why many conservative Catholics have no problem with Assisi or with kissing the Koran. To them Catholicism is all about opposing abortion and homosexuality. But this isn't true. It's also about the Real Presence and Propitiatory sacrifice and the Council of Trent.
Howard Dean performed abortions?
Simple. The sweep of history has seen the extent diminished to which an individual's thoughts, rights, and needs are subservient to the collective's. It was inevitable that some people, though not seeming to be extremists, begin to dogmatize radicial individualism.
I could be wrong, but I think I am correct.
For a frail old gentleman hovering at death's door, there is fire and truth in his words. He speaks to power.
His Church has been plagued with scandals. There has been a loss of faith on a massive scale--statistically measurable and observable--and a corresponding collapse of catechesis. He himself has called the breakdown of Catholic faith a "silent apostasy"--yet he does nothing to reverse the trends. Church attendance has continued to plummet. Vocations have continued to spiral downward. The missions have imploded. The seminaries have been increasingly lavenderized. The highest echelons of the Church seethe with apostasy and corruption. Cronyism is rampant. Yet despite all this, and for 25 years, the Pope has instituted not a single reform of any consequence. Nor need I even mention the heterodoxy on his part that has underscored all this--the scandalous indifferentism and syncretism that has punctuated his long pontificate.
and the homo-advocats will knash their teeth and pant and whine that they are note eeeeeevil.
Homosexual practitioners need to get a grip on reality and what causes what they do for orgasms.
Your thinking is muddled--not unlike the Pope's.
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I don't want to get into a debate about this, nor do I intend to engage in "Papacy Bashing." I was merely asking for some information in an area where I was not aware.
There is no question the Church has problems, which disappoints me greatly. And as a former prosecutor, I certainly don't encourage sexual predation of children, which has been a significant part of the problem in the U.S. Yet many of the problems you identified within the Church are not new. Perhaps it is only that in our information age, there is more public awareness. It seems to me that many of the Church's problems are institutional. And the question is; will the College show enough courage and integrity to elect a Pope who can do something about it?
Who knows, he's such a liar.
I can't wait for the MSM to pick this up, it potentially has legs. We'll see if Peter Jennings has the balls.
Before I get clobbered by others on this thread, let me say I refer not to the Pope's statement on homosexuality when I say his thinking is muddled--but to his writings which are often vague and meandering and internally inconsistent.
Whoa! Strong stuff.
Wrong. These problems spiked under Paul VI and JPII. They are directly attributable to the Vatican Council which these popes have used as an excuse to institute massive changes in the institutional structures, culture and patterns of belief in the Church. Even the way Catholics worship has been radicalized and protestantized. In fact it is a wholly new religion to those who yet cling to traditional Catholicism. So to say these problems had always existed is false--they are directly attributable to the agendas pushed for the past forty years. Nothing has escaped this revolution and the results have been disastrous on every front. Neither pope had anticipated such catastrophic results nor been able to deal with them once they occurred.
While I doubt anyone of traditional practice of the faith will disagree with the Holy Father on this issue. I think many of the non-traditionalists are confused as to why we don't jump for joy when JPII gives a little scrap of what used to the norm for Popes.
Many who have never read the lives and pontificates of Pope St. Pius X or Leo XIII or Pius XI, or XII really don't know how different JPII is in a negative way.
What they often hope he will do regarding "cracking down" is what Popes did with regularity and enormous power.
There would never be a need for St. Pius X to even issue such a statement in the twilight of his pontificate. He would've hammered it from the beginning in no subtle terms, just like he did against modernism.
Pius X was so strong that he was stamping out operatic vocal effects during the Mass in Italy when he was Pope. THAT was crisis in the Church in his time. People were ordered NOT to applaud him when he was carried into St. Peter's on the sedia gestatoria out of humility on his part. JPII has got it all backwards, he got rid of the royal marks of the papacy and allows himself to be lauded by the frenzied masses. I don't think he's ever understood the nature of the papacy as well as his predecessors of the first half of the 20th century and before.
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