2. A world which makes such an absolute option for efficiency, a world which so approves of a utilitarian logic, a world which for the most part thinks of freedom as an absolute right of the individual and conscience as a totally solitary, subjectivist court of appeal, necessarily tends to impoverish all human relations to the point of considering them finally as relations of power, and of not allowing the weakest human beings to have the place which is their due.From this point of view, utilitarian ideology heads in the direction of machismo, and feminism becomes the legitimate reaction against the exploitation of woman.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.
When woman opts for free love and reaches the point of claiming the right to abortion, she helps to reinforce a notion of human relations according to which the dignity of each one depends, in the eyes of the other, on how much he is able to give. In all of this, woman takes a position against her own femininity and against the values of which she is the bearer: acceptance of life, availability to the weakest, unconditional devotion to the needy. An authentic feminism, working for the advancement of woman in her integral truth and for the liberation of all women, would also work for the advancement of the whole human person and for the liberation of all human beings. This feminism would, in fact, struggle for the recognition of the human person in the dignity which is due to him or her from the sole fact of existence, of being willed and created by God, and not for his or her usefulness, power, beauty, intelligence, wealth, or health. It would strive to advance an anthropology which values the essence of the person as made for the gift of self and the acceptance of the other, of which the body, male or female, is the sign and instrument.
It is precisely by developing an anthropology which presents man in his personal and relational wholeness that we can respond to the widespread argument that the best way to fight against abortion would be to promote contraception. Each of us has already heard this rebuke leveled against the Church: "It is absurd that you want to prevent both contraception and abortion. Blocking access to the former means making the latter inevitable". Such an assertion, which at first sight seems totally plausible, is, however, contradicted by experience: the fact is that generally an increase in the rate of contraception is paralleled by an increase in the rate of abortion. The paradox is only apparent. It must be noted, in fact, that contraception and abortion both have their roots in that depersonalized and utilitarian view of sexuality and procreation which we have just described and which in turn is based on a truncated notion of man and his freedom. It is not a matter of assuming a stewardship that is responsible and worthy of one's own fertility as the result of a generous plan that is always open to the possible acceptance of unforeseen new life.
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. On the contrary, if one develops the idea that man only discovers himself fully in the generous gift of himself and in the unconditional acceptance of the other, simply because the latter exists, then abortion will increasingly be seen to be a senseless crime.
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 generally such an anthropology leads human beings to hatred of themselves. Man despises himself; he is no longer in accord with God who found his human creation to be "something very good" (Gn 1:31). On the contrary, man today sees himself as the destroyer of the world, an unhappy product of evolution. In reality, man who no longer has access to the infinite, to God, is a contradictory being, a failed product. Thus we see the logic of sin: by wanting to be like God, man seeks absolute independence. To be self-sufficient, he must become independent, he must be emancipated even from love, which is always a free grace, not something that can be produced or made. However, by making himself independent of love, man is separated from the true richness of his being and becomes empty.
Opposition to his own being is inevitable. "It is not good to be a human being" - the logic of death belongs to the logic of sin. The road to abortion, to euthanasia and the exploitation of the weakest lies open.
Notice that he refers to an "authentic feminism" as a speculative thing that doesn't actually exist. So he does not pretend that any really existing feminism is anything other than destructive.
But it is incredibly imprudent for someone in Ratzinger's position to speculate about the potential existence of an imaginary "authentic feminism." This is precisely the kind of sloppy thinking and ambiguous expression that would never have seen the light of day from the magisterium before Vatican II.
It is precisely by developing an anthropology which presents man in his personal and relational wholeness that we can respond to the widespread argument that the best way to fight against abortion would be to promote contraception.
Here is where Ratzinger reveals his dangerous and un-Catholic mindset. He participates in the Hegelian approach to post-conciliar theology. It is heresy to say that the Church can only respond to an evil if it develops a new anthropology. No, the Church does not need to develop any new anthropology. It needs to teach the truth of unchanging Catholic doctrine. Contraception and abortion are both intrinsically evil, and so they are both opposed to the truth. To demonstrate the abyss between the truth of Christ and the evil of contraception and abortion requires only a knowledge of the perennial theology possessed by every generation of the Church from the Apostles 2000 years ago until today.
Only in today's corrupted hierarchy could the man with the obligation to defend Catholic dogma make such an outlandish statement in which he claims that Catholic teaching cannot be defended without the aid of a non-existent anthropology.