Pope John Paul II has released a new controversial book where he suggests same-sex marriage is part of an "ideology of evil" and draws an analogy between abortion and the Holocaust.
The book, his fifth, is titled, Memory and Identity. It covers a range of issues, including his thoughts on the damage wrought by communism and fascism in the 20th century. It's based on conversations with Polish friends.
In one section, he addresses the issue of gay marriage and the pressures on European governments to legalize such unions.
"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.
"We have to question the legal regulations that have been decided in the parliaments of present-day democracies. The most direct association which comes to mind is the abortion laws."
"Parliaments which create and promulgate such laws must be aware that they are transgressing their powers and remain in open conflict with the law of God and the law of nature."
The pope refers to abortion as the "legal extermination of human beings who have been conceived but not yet born."
Paul Spiegel, the head of Germany's Central Council of Jews, told the Netzeitung daily that such statements show that the Roman Catholic Church "has not understood or does not want to understand that there is a tremendous difference between factory-like genocide and what women do to their bodies."
But Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's top doctrinal official, rejected the idea that the Pope was comparing abortion to the Holocaust.
He 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."