MEMORY AND IDENTITY-THE POPE'S NEW BOOK

In his most candid writings yet, John Paul II's "Memory and Identity, Conversations at the Dawn of a Millenniums" tackles hot button issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, and fearlessly makes the case for his Church's positions.

Written in a question-and-answer format, the book is said to be a must-read not only for Catholics, but also for Christians concerned about the direction Western society is heading.

"Memory and Identity" has already set off a heated controversy in Germany and among Jewish groups after it was revealed that the Pope compares abortion to the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, for example, a leader of the country's Central Council of Jews called the comparison "unacceptable."

In this book the Pope:

Recalls his near-death memories after the attempt on his life, and compares abortion to the Holocaust.
Denounces gay marriages as part of "a new ideology of evil." He argues that same-sex marriages threaten society by undermining the traditional family.
Takes another swing 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.
Calls abortion "legal extermination" comparable to attempts to wipe out Jews and other groups in the 20th century. The Pope openly talks about the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews and the wholesale slaughter of political opponents by Communist regimes after World War II.
Writes about Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot and nearly killed him in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981. The Pope believes the gunman did not act alone, suggesting that the former Soviet Communist Bloc was probably behind the plot. The Pope says that the assassination attempt was not the gunman's initiative: "Someone else masterminded it and someone else commissioned it."
Posits a connection between the assassination attempt and "the last convulsion" of the ideologies of the 20th century - a clear reference to the Communist bloc.
Warns that new evils as bad the Nazis and Communism are rising, and claims that legally elected parliaments in formerly totalitarian countries are today allowing what he calls "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. "And this time we are talking about an extermination which has been allowed by nothing less than democratically elected parliaments where one normally hears appeals for the civil progress of society and all humanity," he writes.

At a news conference introducing the Pope's new book, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's top doctrinal official, explained the Pope's comparison of abortion and the Holocaust by noting that the Pope was warning that evil lurked everywhere, "even in liberal political systems."

"Memory and Identity" is based on the Pope's conversations with philosopher friends in 1993 and later with some of his aides.

"Pope John Paul II reveals his personal thoughts in a truly historic document," Orion writes. "The world's greatest communicator offers a moving insight into his intellectual and spiritual journey and pastoral experience."

With the Pope in his twilight years, the publisher notes this book contains his last words for posterity, "an intellectual and spiritual testament in an attempt to seek the answer to defining problems that vex our lives."

An Associated Press (AP) story takes it a step further: The book, it says, looks at Western Civilization with the goal of identifying nothing less than the "roots of evil."