According to an
article published yesterday in La Repubblica , the Pope has finished writing a new book in which he rieterates his previously stated outrageous affermation that, as the title of the article puts it: "Abortion is like the Shoah."
In his new book, the Pope also expresses his view that certain forms of Western secularism (specifically those which permit legalized abortion, artificial insemination and other practices contrary to Church docrine) contain the seeds of a new totalitarianism similar to Nazism and Communism.
According to the article:
"Opposition to the teachings of the Gospels is the new form of totalitarianism." Those who have been able to get a look at John Paul II's new book can assure that that is one of the key points of his work. It's the torment that has been presecuting the old Pope for years. And frequently, the Pope adds , "this totalitarianism conceals itself insidiously under the appearance of democracy".
<snip>
The nihilism of the West anguishes Karol Wojtyla. His accusation is that the democratic parliaments (of the Western world) are becoming its propagators. Democracy, in sum, is in danger of becoming the destroyer of the eternal laws of God.
Hmmm, interesting comment that, especially coming from a man with pretensions to (at least occasional) infallibility and who runs an institution (directly descended from the Roman Empire) with one of the most inflexible and authoritian systems of hierarchy left in the Western world.
The Pope then goes on to offer this invidious and overblown analogy:
It was an elected parliament...that permitted Hitler to obtain power in Germany in the 1930's. The Reichstag itself gave Hitler the power which paved the way for the "political invasion of Europe, the creation of concentration camps, the introduction of the so-called "final solution" tothe Jewish question which resulted in the extermination of millions of Jews. The most immediate association of ideas that comes to mind are the laws on abortion . The parliaments that create and promulgate such laws must be conscious that they are abusing their power and remain in open conflict with the laws of God.
Strong stuff indeed!! Beyond the repugnant and logically silly parallel between the annihilation of 6 million living human beings with the, perfectly morally legitimate, medical operation of removing unwanted, non-living, neurologically inactive clumps of matter from a woman's body, the Pope seems to be suggesting that the current Western representative democracies are on a slippery slope toward Nazi-like totalitarianism
because they do not accept his absurd ideas on the matter of abortion. He makes this somewhat clearer later on in the article. The Pope also distorts history in this passage, suggesting that the Reichstag, under Hitler's reign, was something like a representative democracy---with multiple parties, balance of powers and all the rest. That is an obvious falsehood.
But, onward....
The article then states that:
Wojtyla accuses the Western societies of propagating the idea the one must live as if God does not exist, but in this manner they leave the coordinates of Good and Evil.
Well, Plato refuted that argument two thousand years ago, so I won't rehearse his refutation here. But here's a shortened and simplified version: if god himself determines what is good or evil by fiat, then how (on what basis) can god, himself, be judged good or evil? Good and evil must be anterior to god in order for us to be able to judge whether or not he is good or evil or indifferent. The Pope, as an educated, well-read man who worked his way through the seminary, must certainly have encountered Plato and his unassailable refutation of this nonsense in a first-year philosophy course, as did I. I suspect he chooses to ignore it out of narrow-mindedness and dogmatic intolerance toward rational debate.
Furthermore, which society is it exactly that is propagating the idea that God does not exist? The US is the nation in the West that is, by far, the most successful at the the propagation of its culture and
and ideas through globalization and it is also, by far, the most religious nation, perhaps,in the history recorded human civilization. Are Tim LaHaye and Mel Gibson responsible for propagating the insatiable specter of an amoral atheism throughout the Christocentric universe?
Here the Pope makes clearer his view of modern secular liberalism (in the sense of progressivism or leftism, as you prefer):
The fall of the Soviet Union does not mean that communism as an ideology and a philoopshyhave beenn complelty liquidated. "In some parts of the west - dichiara Wojtyla - the sunset of communism is still considered a bad thing and its disapperance is lamented."
Given his earlier stated view, which I snipped for brevity's sake, that the hope for God and religion lies in the Eastern (former communist) countries; and given that the whole discussion in the book appears to be about the danger to the West of certain anti-theological ideas, it seems pretty clear that the
kind old Pope is engaging in a subtle bit of McCarthyism here. Who is it who is nostalgic for the old Communist system? Well, as his good friend Berlusconi has recently said: the left of course!!!!