Adding to my previous
diary, I've found more by Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger covering similar topics, such as feminism, contraception, abortion and euthanasia.
On feminism:
"However, so-called feminism is frequently based on the same utilitarian presuppositions as machismo and, far from liberating woman, contributes rather to her enslavement."
"When, in line with the dualism just described, woman denies her own body, considering it simply as an object to be used for acquiring happiness through self-fulfillment, she also denies her own femininity, a properly feminine gift of self and her acceptance of another person, of which motherhood is the most typical sign and the most concrete realization."
"An individualistic type of anthropology, as we have seen, leads one to consider objective truth as inaccessible, freedom as arbitrary, conscience as a tribunal closed in on itself. Such an anthropology leads woman not only to hatred of men, but also to hatred of herself and of her own femininity, and above all, of her own motherhood."
More after the fold. Here's a link to the source.
On contraception and abortion:
"It is rather a matter of ensuring complete control over procreation, which rejects even the idea of an unplanned child. Understood in these terms, contraception necessarily leads to abortion as a "backup solution". One cannot strengthen the contraceptive mentality without strengthening at the same time the ideology which supports it, and therefore without implicitly encouraging abortion."
"The war on life today"
If, in fact, today we can observe a mobilizing of forces for the defense of human life in the various "pro-life" movements, a mobilization which is encouraging and gives cause for hope, we must nevertheless frankly realize that till now the opposite movement has been stronger: the spread of legislation and practices which deliberately destroy human life, above all the life of the weakest: unborn babies. Today we are the witnesses of a true war of the mighty against the weak, a war which looks to the elimination of the disabled, of those who are a nuisance, and even of those who are poor and "useless", in all the moments of their existence. With the complicity of States, colossal means have been used against people, at the dawn of their life, or when their life has been rendered vulnerable by accident or illness, or when it is near death.
A violent attack is made on life in the womb by abortion (evidence shows that there are 30 to 40 million a year worldwide), and to facilitate abortion millions have been invested to develop abortifacient pills (RU 486). Millions more have been budgeted for making contraception less harmful to women, with the result that most chemical contraceptives on sale now act primarily against implantation, i.e., as abortifacients, without women knowing it. Who will be able to calculate the number of victims from this unseen holocaust?
Surplus embryos, the inevitable product of in vitro fertilization, are frozen and eliminated, unless they join their little aborted brothers and sisters who are to be turned into guinea-pigs for experimentation or into raw materials for curing illnesses such as Parkinson's disease and diabetes. In vitro fertilization itself frequently becomes the occasion for "selective" abortions (e.g. choice of sex), when there are undesired multiple pregnancies.
Prenatal diagnosis is almost routinely used on so-called women "at risk" to eliminate systematically all fetuses which could be more or less malformed or diseased. All of those who have the good fortune of being carried to term by their mother, but have the misfortune of being born disabled, run the serious risk of being eliminated immediately after birth or of being deprived of nourishment or the most elementary care.
Later, those whom illness or accident cause to fall into an "irreversible" coma will frequently be put to death in order to meet the demand for organ transplants, or will even be used for medical experiments ("warm cadavers").
Finally, when the prognosis is terminal, many will be tempted to hasten its arrival by euthanasia.
Report of Cardinal Ratzinger - Vatican City, April 4-7, 1991