Gay marriage and abortion.

I was raised Catholic. Despite the fact that I no longer practice, I still manage to have some respect for the institution. It's not the religion for me, but whatever works for you. I don't agree with the Church on a number of points--it really angered me, for example, when they came out against the distribution of condoms as a way to control HIV-infections in Africa. Yes, we know that you're against contraception but people are only going to suffer more in the long run, especially since it's clear that they're going to have sex anyway, condom or not.

Pope John Paul II released his fifth book a few days ago. In it he attacks both gay marriage and abortion. Gay marriage, he suggests, may perhaps be 'part of a new ideology of evil' and he compares abortion, indirectly, to the Holocaust. To give him his due, he says that abortion is the 'legal extermination of human beings who have been conceived but not yet born.'

I no longer feel that I can have sympathy for this man. As far as Popes go, so far as I can tell, he hasn't been that bad. The scary thing is that he's been a fairly liberal Pope, again, as far as these things go--which isn't to say that the Catholic Church is a very liberal institution in general.

*sigh*