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Childless Pope Faces Man-Made “Mess”: Children & Climate Change
By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
April 26, 2015
http://christiancatholicism.com/childless-pope-faces-man-made-mess-children-climate-change/
Ironically, among the childless pope’s top problems are two that involve children: those abused by predatory priests and those born to parents unable to nurture them adequately.
Celibate Pope Francis may soon be creating a new self inflicted “mess” with his much hyped climate change encyclical, unless he decisively reverses his papal contraception ban in the process. A reversal would also free the Vatican of the harmful legacy of illusory “infallible” popes that has compelled modern popes to follow misguided decisions of their fallible predecessors.
The pope’s celibate “Family Synod” Bishops last October were almost 95% in favor of continuing the contraception ban. The final “Family Synod” next October is very unlikely to favor reversing the ban, thereby likely greatly weakening the papacy further in the process. Almost all of these bishops reportedly had, in effect, promised, as a pre-condition to being made a bishop, that they would uphold the contraception ban, a key element of the papal claim to infallibility.
The world’s population was about 2 billion in 1930 when Pope Pius XI, the first pope of Francis’ lifetime, unnecessarily banned birth control mainly for geo-political reasons. The population is now 7.3 billion and projected to be 9 billion in 2050, only 35 years from now. It is time for the pope to act responsibly and reasonably to solve this self inflicted papal problem.
The pope is in trouble. He has yet to recover from the revolts of Catholics in Chile and among the members of his “go slow” sex abuse commission over his appointment of Bishop Barros or from his unnecessary “Mexicanization” slur. See my Vatican Revolt Negates Synod & Sex Commission . The pope’s belated and inadequate removal of Bishop Finn has satisfied few and raised the call for more bishops to go. See my Dumping Finn For US President: Who’s Next? .
In January, in flight to the overpopulated and natural disaster ravaged Philippines, reporters asked Pope Francis if he believes that climate change is the result of human activity. The pope replied that he thinks it’s “mostly” man-made. “I don’t know if it (human activity) is the only cause, but mostly, in great part, it is man who has slapped nature in the face,” he reportedly said.
A key factor in climate change, of course, is entirely “man-made”, namely population growth. More children, which the pope consistently pushes for, means more climate change and more unsustainable and “expendable” children to be abandoned, exploited and abused, including by bishops and priests, as was evident in the Dominican Republic with Polish Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski and priest Fr. Alberto Gil.
As Francis prays for drowned African immigrants desperately fleeing to Europe, the combined negative effect of climate change and overpopulation are undeniable. see “Cause behind African migrant flood has terrifying implications for the world” here,
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/04/21/not-science-fiction-changing-climate-pushing-migrants-out-of-africa-and-into-tragedy/
As noted by Reuters, these African victims are not the abstract complaints of climate scientists; this is profoundly disruptive in a region dependent on agriculture. In parts of Africa, frequent droughts have impoverished many and contributed to migration. When faced with deteriorating conditions, humans have long turned to migration; it is a basic adaptive mechanism.
And these trends in combination with rapid projected population growth throughout major areas of Africa are increasing the strain on the countries along this migratory route. Niger, for example, has the world’s second-highest fertility rate, with a median age of just 15 years, and its population is expected to quadruple in the next century.
Nigeria’s population, meanwhile, is expected to double by 2040. Population growth increases the strain on already scarce natural resources like water, land and food and further contributes to migratory decisions. Any effort to address the migrant tragedy playing out in the Mediterranean, must address and incorporate these deeper-root causes. Similar climate driven migrations are happening in many other parts of the world as well.
Interestingly,on his return flight in January from the Philippines, the pope unsurprisingly spoke about birth control in response to a question from a journalist. Use of contraception in the Philippines is a contentious issue, (as it is in Africa and elsewhere, including in the USA for some), as the Philippine government only recently approved contraceptive access against forceful opposition from Catholic bishops.
Pope Francis spoke as he returned from the Philippines, where he met former street children abandoned by parents unable to afford to care for them. Standing firm against artificial birth control, he amazingly said population experts advised three children per family. Indeed, the pope has even said early this year explicitly that choosing not to have children is “selfish,” . How are celibates so certain about how many children to have? Foolishness or arrogance, no?
Interestingly, Pope Francis cites African bishops as an influence on his seemingly rigid and even inconsistent views on sexual morality. Please note the surprising remarks at the recent Family Synod of an Archbishop from Nigeria who said:
“We are wooed by economic things. We are told, “… If you limit your population, we’re going to give you so much.” And we tell them, “Who tells you that our population is overgrown?” In the first place, children die — infant mortality — we die in inter-tribal wars, and diseases of all kinds. And yet, you come with money to say, “Decrease your population; we will give you economic help. … “. “Now you come to tell us about reproductive rights, and you give us condoms and artificial contraceptives. Those are not the things we want. We want food, we want education, we want good roads, regular light, and so on. Good health care. … “.
So there you have it. Poor couples in the Philippines and elsewhere should be denied access to affordable and effective contraception so that some African bishop can help pump up the population to staff inter-tribal wars. Hello??? What do African women say about this? See more on the African bishop’s comments here,
Francis needs to follow a right and reasonable approach in his upcoming encyclical. He needs to listen to voices of reason, like Princeton philosopher, Peter Singer, here,
As Professor Singer notes, there is overwhelming evidence to show that a lack of access to contraception is bad for women’s health. Frequent pregnancies, especially in countries without universal modern health care, are associated with high maternal mortality. Moreover,when births are more widely spaced, children do better, both physically and in terms of educational attainment.
The broader reason for promoting family planning, however, is that making it available to all who want it is in the interest of the world’s seven billion people and the generations that, barring disaster, should be able to inhabit the planet for untold millennia to come. And here, the relationship between climate change and birth control needs to be brought into focus.
The key facts about climate change are well-known: Our planet’s atmosphere has already absorbed such a large quantity of human-produced greenhouse gases that global warming is underway, with more extreme heat waves, droughts, and floods than ever before. Arctic sea ice is melting, and rising sea levels are threatening to inundate low-lying densely populated coastal regions in several countries. If rainfall patterns change, hundreds of millions of people could become climate refugees.
Moreover, an overwhelming majority of scientists in the relevant fields believe that we are on track to exceed the level of global warming at which feedback mechanisms will kick in and climate change will become uncontrollable, with unpredictable and possibly catastrophic consequences.
It is often pointed out that it is the affluent countries that have caused the problem, owing to their higher greenhouse gas emissions over the past two centuries. They continue to have the highest levels of per capita emissions, and they can reduce emissions with the least hardship. There is no doubt that, ethically, the world’s developed countries should be taking the lead in reducing emissions.
What is not so often mentioned, however, is the extent to which continuing global population growth would undermine the impact of whatever emission reductions affluent countries can be persuaded to make.
Four factors influence the level of emissions: economic output per capita; the units of energy used to generate each unit of economic output; greenhouse gases emitted per unit of energy; and total population. A reduction in any three of these factors will be offset by an increase in the fourth. In the “Summary for Policymakers” of its 2014 Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that, globally, economic and population growth continue to be “the most important drivers” of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel combustion.
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 222 million women in developing countries do not want to have children now, but lack the means to ensure that they do not conceive. Providing them with access to contraception would help them plan their lives as they wish, weaken demand for abortion, reduce maternal deaths, give children a better start in life, and contribute to slowing population growth and greenhouse-gas emissions, thus benefiting us all.
Who could oppose such an obvious win-win proposition? The only naysayers are likely those in the grip of a religious ideology that they seek to impose on others, no matter what the consequences for women, children, and the rest of the world, now and for centuries to come.
Pregnant Catholics are always a “win-win” situation for the Catholic hierarchy. If the baby survives and thrives, the “new Catholic” can be expected, after the customary indoctrination that begins at First Confession no later than 7 years old, to donate meekly and often to bishops, and even often to follow obediently Vatican “political instructions”, a key source of the Vatican’s power and wealth.
This may, for example, be reasonably inferred here; see, in the picture and report here, that suggests related political and financial considerations, as Pope Francis’ welcomes at the end of the celebration of the birth control ban’s proponent, Pope Paul VI’s beatification, Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, hardly the most “prophetic” supporter of Pope Francis’ breeding strategy:
http://en.starafrica.com/news/zimbabwean-leader-among-faithful-marking-pope-paul-v1s-beatification.html
If any “Catholic baby” does not survive or thrive, it is not the hierarchy’s problem in the final analysis. It is the child’s problem, and sometimes the parents’ as well, but ultimately never the hierarchy’s problem. Indeed, we read too often of stories of Catholic priests, protected by their bishops, who sexually prey with impunity on vulnerable children in dismal and “overpopulated” family situations, as with Archbishop Wesolowski and Fr. Gil in the Dominican Republic.
Pope Francis appears at times to give much higher priority to protecting the Middle East interests of his Big Oil associated donors with calls for a new military invasion than to helping desperate couples or to protecting Catholic children from priest sexual abusers enabled by his unaccountable bishops.
The pope’s top financial adviser, for example, Irish Peter Sutherland, is a former Chairman of BP and longtime Chairman of Goldman Sachs International. BP has significant Middle East oil interests and Goldman is a major player in oil and gas related investments.
Hopefully, Pope Francis will consider ahead of some of his key donors’ interests, the more vital interests of hundreds of millions, mainly poor women and children, as he considers in his encyclical the interplay of climate change and affordable and accessible and effective family planning.
Unfortunately, it appears that the pope may be influenced by the US political implications of reversing the contraception ban. This seems evident from Jeb Bush’s recent interview (with even a smiling Cardinal Angelo Sodano-Jeb Bush photo) by the National Review Online, “ On the 20th Anniversary of His Conversion, Jeb Bush Talks Pope Francis and How to Win on Social Issues“, here, National Review.
Of course, the winning “social” issues discussed include a “get out the fundamentalist vote” discussion of abortion and other “life” issues, with no mention in the interview of the epidemic of priest sexual abuse of children. Apparently, no reporter dares to ask a potential US presidential candidate for his/her views on clerical sex abuse of children. For shame!
This major clerical sex abuse issue was instead relegated recently to a safer plea at First Things, a US neo-conservative outlet, in an article, “Pope Francis and Zero Tolerance“. Likely concerned about the erupting Catholic Revolution, as indicated by the near riot at Chilean Bishop Barros’ recent installation, see here , the First Things author raises the alarm on the politically tricky priest child abuse scandal and cover up, which obviously could undercut Pope Francis’ effort to draw out fundamentalist US Latino voters for right wing Republican candidates.
Of course, Jeb Bush spoke in this “softball interview” about his grandchildren, but, God forbid, could not be asked about the priest child abuse scandal or the Chilean revolt, it appears. Jeb did note, apparently in an appeal to fundamentalist Catholic voters, that the media may be missing the whole story when Pope Francis gets into “specifics.” Jeb predicts that there might “turn out to be a real disappointment” for people, who expect “big changes” in terms of Catholic doctrine, apparently including with respect to the contraception ban.
Jeb added, “But you have to say what you believe as well,” surmising apparently that in the case of Francis, the media, in search of sound bites, may have glossed over some of the pope’s more inconvenient underlying beliefs. And of course Jeb gratuitously asked questions that appeal to fundamentalist voters like, “Do you think a 13-year-old should have an abortion without a parent’s consent, or being notified?”
Sex and its derivative issues aside, it will be interesting to see how Jeb handles the pope’s anticipated encyclical on climate change, given the Bush family’s well reported long standing ties to “Big Oil” and to the Saudi royal family. Of course, the pope has ties to some of these interests as well.
These Big Oil connections may even affect the pope’s expected encyclical on climate change, to the potential disappointment of hundreds of millions. And these are all interrelated since a driving factor in the Middle East wars is control of scarce resources, energy and water, in an increasingly overpopulated world where hundreds of millions of women have inadequate access to desired and effective contraception options, thanks often to Vatican ideological lobbying.
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Will Pope Francis now have the courage to lift the ban on contraception as he realizes the negative impact of overpopulation on families and on the environment? Will other Jesuits address currently this critical and vital issue for billions of people, mostly the poor?
The pope also reportedly said recently that he wanted his encyclical on the environment to be out in June or July so it could influence a UN summit on climate change in Paris in early December. He complained that the last round of UN talks in Peru were disappointing, and said he hopes the Paris gathering will produce “more courageous” choices. The face-value implication is that Francis thinks the UN hasn’t been sufficiently bold and is using his moral authority to encourage it to do more.
It seems hypocritical for the pope to criticize UN officials for lacking courage as the pope, claiming, in effect, that his hands are tied because he is a “Son of the Church”, still advocated excessive baby breeding among Catholics. If, as the pope said, climate change is “mostly man-made”, than having more babies than couples responsibly decide they want to have, irresponsibly accelerates climate change, no? The pope’s current position on contraception is illogical and even irresponsible.
Of course, some of the more likely reasons for the pope’s unnecessarily raising this issue now include that it distracts from the condemnation of the Vatican from two UN committees for failing to protect children from priest rapists. Raising the climate issue this way may help the pope put the UN off guard on these failures when the pope visits the UN in September. Sometimes, the best defense is an unexpected offense.
Of course, as mentioned, the timing of the pope’s encyclical is obviously also tied to next year’s US presidential election where the pope’s seemingly preferred choice, Jeb Bush, will likely be in an election contest with Hillary Clinton. She and the Vatican had already crossed swords on the contraception ban as far back as 1995 at a major UN Conference.
Yes, Hillary Clinton has been in Vatican struggles over women and children’s rights since at least her clash at the 1995 UN Beijing Conference on women’s reproductive rights with Mary Ann Glendon, now apparently Pope Francis’ top female adviser.
For a recent look back at Hillary Clinton’s 1995 efforts, please see , “20 Minutes That Changed The World: Hillary Clinton In Beijing.” and her 1995 address at Beijing, see here,
Two world media stars are on course to collide in the “battle of the sexes”, senior style, in 2015. Pope Francis appears to be laying the groundwork for the Vatican’s ultimate clash with Hillary Clinton that began over two decades ago. It goes back at least to the 1995 Beijing UN Conference challenge to Hillary Clinton led by Mary Ann Glendon, seemingly as Pope John Paul II’s “female warrior”, with help from Cardinal Sodano’s subordinate, Diarmuid Martin, now Dublin’s Archbishop.
The 1995 Vatican’s self serving position, still held, with regard to family-planning services, was that the ” … the Holy See’s actions during this Conference should in no way be interpreted as changing its well-known position that ” … the Holy See in no way endorses contraception or the use of condoms, either as a family-planning measure or in HIV/AIDS prevention programs …”. (my emphasis)
The Vatican’s battle over contraception recently heated up when Pope Francis visited the Philippines a few months ago. As a prominent defender of the Catholic voiceless, theologian Jamie Manson, recently noted: “…
As I have documented previously in NCR, the Catholic church in the Philippines spent 10 years in the Supreme Court blocking the implementation of a state-sponsored reproductive health bill. Although 82 percent of Filipinos say that “the choice of a family planning method is a personal choice of couples and no one should interfere with it,” the Filipino hierarchy pressed on until a modified and more limited version of the law went into effect earlier this year. “
Jamie Manson then pointedly observed about the main stream media’s defenseless deference to the Catholic hierarchy: “Yet in all of the interviews I’ve seen with Cardinal Luis Tagle of Manila (a darling of some Catholic progressives) at the synod {of bishops in Rome in October}, I have not seen any reporter question him about contraception, the swelling population crisis in the Philippines, or the fact that Catholic Filipino families want access to contraception so they can feed their children and give them access to education.”
Will any reporter dare to ask Pope Francis about the contraception ban when the pope issues his climate change encyclical? Will many Jesuits dare to press the Jesuit pope on re-assessing his unnecessary and harmful contraception ban?
Importantly, the papal ban on artificial contraception was recently further affirmed by approximately 95% of the bishops at the all celibate male Synod on the Family this past October.
For Jamie Manson’s informative full remarks, please see:
The continuing and future battleground until the US elections in November of next year for Hillary Clinton and the Pope will likely be the rights of women and children. Boston based Mary Anne Glendon continues apparently to be a significant Vatican force, although bachelor ex-bouncer Pope Francis seems quite eager to do battle on women’s issues directly, while usually ducking children’s issues as best he can, it appears.
Although, like Cardinal George Pell, Mrs. Glendon has limited financial management experience, she currently serves as a director of the Vatican Bank. She likely continues also as a senior adviser on the Vatican’s sexual politics. Her reported longstanding close ties to disgraced Boston Cardinal Bernard Law and to the Legion of Christ’s pedophile founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel, have not diminished her Vatican influence, from all indications.
To date, Mrs. Glendon has, it appears, had little publicly to say about Law’s and Maciel’s misdeeds that led to harm for so many innocent children and their families. Francis seems to be opportunistically oblivious to much of this sordid history, as he seems opportunistically to be too often about child abuse matters generally.
The landscape has changed considerably since 1995, however. A well regarded US constitutional law litigator and professor, Marci Hamiton, who clerked for Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female US Supreme Court Justice, has recently indicated the current situation quite well.
Prof. Hamilton writes: “The President and all members of Congress failed to acknowledge the fact of clergy sex abuse and the role religion has played in creating the conditions for abuse. Congress and the President continued their 12-year tradition of never uttering the term “clergy sex abuse,” let alone acknowledging its existence. Apparently they believe only the Australian federal government should hold churches responsible for the protection of children from horrendous actions by trusted religious leaders, which I discuss below. Our national leaders sadly have chosen the path of political least resistance, rather than justice and the protection of children. It will be interesting to see whether the presidential candidates and their parties take up child safety as a platform plank. It was a lot easier to ignore the issue 12 years ago. They ignore it now at their peril … “.
Please see Professor Hamilton’s significant full remarks here,
http://verdict.justia.com/2014/12/11/2014-review-ups-downs-child-protection#sthash.ekISkKSL.dpuf
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