Tag: Population Control

A conference, held at the Vatican, is called “Biological Extinction.” What is this all about? What magisterial weight, if any, does it carry?

1. “The Vatican” is a broad term that can be misleading. In this case, the conference was sponsored by the Pontifical Council of Social Sciences and the Pontifical Council of Science.
2. According to Wikipedia:  “The new members of the Academy are elected by the body of Academicians and chosen from men and women of every race and religion based on the high scientific value of their activities and their high moral profile. They are then officially appointed by the Roman Pontiff.” Thus, the Pope is ultimately, though indirectly, responsible for its membership.
3. This meeting was held behind closed doors. The National Catholic Register’s Vatican Correspondent, Edward Pentin has covered the conference. LifeSiteNews has covered the event directly, and extensively. Other news accounts appear to be based on either LifeSiteNews accounts, or a single press conference held prior to the event.
4. Among the guests was the unrepentant population controller and population scare-monger Paul Ehrlich. (He predicted that millions would starve in the 1980’s from overpopulation.) In the meantime, population decline is rapidly becoming a far greater problem than over-population. (I can’t believe anyone still takes this guy seriously.) The UK Guardian reported: “A world population of around a billion would have an overall pro-life effect, Ehrlich argued. This could be supported for many millennia and sustain many more human lives in the long term compared with our current uncontrolled growth and prospect of sudden collapse.”
5. One of the speakers made the following statement:

PAS President Peter Raven said that because of the threat of overpopulation, “we need at some point to have a limited number of people which is why Pope Francis and his three most recent predecessors have always argued that you should not have more children than you can bring up properly.”

Faithful Catholics will recognize this statement as being so misleading that it is a lie. As I said to the Christian Post, an evangelical outlet:

“Of course, the popes have said that people should consider how many children they can bring up properly. But this has never meant population control by governments, or unnatural contraception. Pope Paul VI was very clear on these points. So was Pope St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict. And in fact, so is Pope Francis,” Morse said.

I would add that no pope has ever cited “overpopulation” as part of their reasoning. This statement by Peter Raven is a pathetic attempt to enlist the moral authority of the Catholic Church and the Papacy for his ideological agenda that has nothing to do with the salvation of souls.

What is inexplicable: Peter Raven is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Science, (not the President of the PAS.)

Does this body speak ex cathedra? It does not. The charism of papal infalliability does not extend to the statements of Pontificial Academies. Nor does it extend to the selection of members to Pontifical Academies, or to the invitation list of Pontifical Academy meetings. Whoever put together this guest list, could have found responsible environmental scientists who are not tainted by population control apologia.

The Catholic Church is the only major institution on earth that has stood fast against the human rights catastrophe of governmentally enforced population control. Pope Paul VI famously predicted it in Humanae Vitae Paragraph 17. The Church has stood against it.

The Chinese “birth control police” numbers over 1 million, arguably the largest law enforcement agency in the world. When a family has an “illegal child,” meaning a child for which they do not have a government “birth permit,” the birth control police may just come along and knock down their home.

We do not have to listen to the pronouncements of these academies. One crop of fallible knuckleheads invited another crop of fallible knuckleheads to a meeting inside Vatican City. That is all.

Let not your faith be shaken.