Is anyone keeping tab on the costs incurred in the never-ending series of conferences sponsored by the Vatican on social issues? More
concerning, of course, is the thrust of these conferences which appear to be ostensibly and ultimately, anti-Catholic. [As well they would be,
considering they serve the agenda of this anti-Catholic pope, and the speakers are, for the most part, liberals, ultra-liberals and radicals
whose ideology is necessarily anti-Catholic ....
Speaker tells Vatican conference:
Reducing population is best
solution to climate ‘crisis’
VATICAN, November 16, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — One of the main concerns about the Vatican’s frequent conferences on climate change in recent years has been that many of the invited speakers favor population control as a means to protecting the planet.
This became patently clear at a Pontifical Academy for Sciences seminar last week when a key speaker said
“it’s a little ambitious” to think we can cut the population in half by 2050, but it is “smarter” to cull the number of people first, thereby making the move to renewable energy easier.
The November 2-4 conference, hosted at the Casina Pio IV in the Vatican Gardens, was entitled:
"Health of People, Health of Planet, and our responsibility: Climate change, air pollution and health".
Answering a question from the academy’s chancellor, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, on whether there should be a “hierarchy” of solutions to address the “crisis” of climate change and global warming, Taiwanese professor Dr. Yuan-Tseh Lee welcomed the fact that the number of children entering elementary school in his native land has dropped from 400,000 to 200,000 since 1994, calling it “amazing.”
Bishop Sanchez had said in his question that he thought renewable energy came first in Lee’s hierarchy of solutions, but in his answer
Lee said halving the population by 2050 would be his priority as it would significantly reduce consumption. “Then we [can] talk about renewable energy,” he said, which can be “easily” achieved.
“But if we keep on saying that the population should increase, consumption and energy need will be increasing, then I don’t think we have a solution,” Dr. Lee told Bishop Sorondo. “So we really have to accede to the fact that we are overloading the earth […]. I don’t believe that the man-free car, an electric car driving all over the world is called ‘progress’. I think that we have to do something smarter than that.”
Dr. Lee’s remarks were met with silence, and the conference continued on.
In follow-up comments to LifeSite, Dr. Lee, who was appointed a member of the Academy during Benedict XVI’s pontificate, explained his position further, saying the government of Taiwan has tried to encourage couples to have more children. “But I think it’s not the right policy. I think we should let the population go down in Taiwan,” he said.
“We have too many people, 7.3 billion now,” he said. “With so many people consuming so much, it might take 1.7 earths or 2 earths to satisfy this need. So we pretend that with sustainable development we can cut the energy, and we can get there, but it is not right unless we cut down the consumption.”
Asked if he believes lowering the population across the planet is important, the University of California-Berkeley professor emeritus said: “Yes, that’s right. Yes.”
Bishop Sorondo denied Dr. Lee was advocating population control in their exchange, saying he spoke about “education in responsibility.”
“He said you need to regulate births intelligently. It’s not that he said you need to use birth control. This is the difference,” the academy chancellor said.
“The best way to keep the population low is the Christian family. This is what he says.” [If the direct quotations from Dr. Lee are correct, that’s not at all what he said. Unless Sorondo thinks that Lee’s priority of halving the world’s population by 2050 is achievable by having ‘Christian’ families.
Even if the world added not another individual more to the 7.2 billion now populating the earth – an impossibility even in hypothesis – how does Lee propose to eliminate 3.6 billion persons in the next 33 years? I thought these non-stop Vatican conferences on social issues were meant to feature ‘leading experts’ in the chosen fields of discussion. How can not one person raise this obvious commonsense question?
The report says “Dr. Lee’s remarks were met with silence. And the conference continued.” I’d like to think the silence came out of sheer embarrassment among the other participants, but no! Most likely it was because no one else wanted to go on the record at a Vatican conference as supporting such lunacy, but again, no! Paul Ehrlich who has been proposing draconian measures of population control for decades was a recent speaker at one of these conferences.]
But when asked what he thinks “the best means” of lowering the world’s population are, Dr. Lee told LifeSite: “It means that awe really need to mobilize and help Africa,” by improving the life of the people, providing “family planning through education, and
[by making] contraceptives widely available… Out of five babies born [in Africa], three of them are unplanned, and so we have to change that,” Lee said, lamenting that “no action is [being] taken” by the United Nations to remedy this.
“Better planning” requires providing security, jobs, better education and infrastructure, and making contraceptives more widely available, he said. '
Lee acknowledged that “would be a big thing for Catholics, if Pope Francis would say that they should accept contraceptives.” He hopes this pope will change the Church’s teaching on contraception, but added that he didn’t know if the pope would be open to this. “We can try, always trying. He’s a very decent person and always with his heart in the people,” he said.
“Abortion is a different thing,” Professor Lee made clear. But the Church’s acceptance of contraception would be a “big change” that would be very welcome.
[Aha! Further laying down foundations for an eventual abrogation (be it ever by footnotes!) by Bergoglio of Humanae Vitae? Still, Dr. Lee, even if every reproductive-age woman on earth were to ‘contracept’, how do you propose to get rid of at least 3 billion people by 2050 by your lunatic dystopian desire?]
But as far as Bishop Sanchez was concerned,
Professor Lee’s comments to LifeSite in support of contraception were irrelevant, because “he didn’t say it here [at the conference].” [Is that ridiculous argument really coming from the Chancellor of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences?]
The academy chancellor argued: “The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that
we have to regulate the population. […] It’s part of the social doctrine. […] [NO, NO AND NO!] tAnd that is why I say that the Christian family is the best way to control the population. […] because it’s not only about having children but about educating them.”
[Sanchez Sorondo maybe thinks no one will go and check what the Catechism actually says!]
The Catechism states that the regulation of births is one aspect of responsible parenthood, but says “legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception)” (CCC 2399).
It further states that, while for just reasons “spouses may wish to space the births of their children,” it is their duty to “make certain that their desire is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood.”
In the same section on ‘the fecundity of marriage,’ the Catechism says the state “has a responsibility for its citizens’ well-being,” and “in this capacity” may legitimately “intervene to orient the demography of the population.” Such intervention can be done “by means of objective and respectful information, but certainly not by authoritarian, coercive measures. The state,” it says, “may not legitimately usurp the initiative of spouses, who have the primary responsibility for the procreation and education of their children.” (CCC 2372)
In other words, prudence requires that one consider the common good, including population size, when regulating birth in a moral way. But as one moral theologian told LifeSite: “For all Western societies, this means having more babies!”
[True, because of the West’s demographic winter which is only getting worse while the Muslim populations in the West are procreating merrily.]
A central figure at the conference was Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, a close collaborator of George Soros and one of the UN gurus on climate change and sustainable development.
LifeSite spoke with Sachs one day before Dr. Lee’s comments emerged. Sachs, who received great adulation during the conference, denied the seminar had anything to do with “population control” — a term he said he found difficult to define.
“If you mean by population control access to contraceptives, you’d find that most people outside this Church, and many, many people inside, support that,” he said.
And yet according to what he wrote in 2015, Sachs believes that
“reducing the fertility rates voluntarily” is “essential” to sustainable development.
“Fertility rates must decline from their current levels,” he wrote in 2015, or the “unthinkable” will happen and the earth “would not be able to sustain it.”
[Considering that fertility rates are currently below replacement level in most Western countries, Sachs surely cannot want those fertility rates further reduced. So whose fertility rates is he speaking of? Obviously, the Third World!]
Reducing the world’s population below current levels by the end of this century would be the “preferred” outcome, Sachs added, as it would “make it much easier to meet the social, economic, and environmental needs and goals of humanity.”
[Again, without a worldwide program to eliminate billions of people in the next few decades – Do Lee, Sachs and their companion ideologues know exactly how they will carry out such massive human extermination? - how does anyone think that the world’s population can be reduced below current levels by the end of the century? Sachs is saying the same thing as Lee, only his time frame is 50 years longer.]
Sachs preferred to home in on contraceptive access and welcomed lower fertility rates across the globe. The “one place” where population growth is still high, he explained, is Sub-Saharan Africa, a region where Sachs has advocated educating girls “about sexual and reproductive health, and about the options for contraception.”
Revealingly, Sachs seemed misinformed about the Church’s teaching on life and the family, even
suggesting the Church supports declining fertility rates.
“This Church has long understood that that is a very relevant and acceptable issue. […] Anyone can go and read Humanae Vitae and see that the Church recognizes both the importance and right of responsible parenthood.
The issue for this Church has been which kind of contraceptive methods are used.”
[DUH! The only method acceptable to the Church is natural birth control, which is as simple as refraining from sex for a few days every month around the time the woman ovulates. Why can’t non-Catholics and Catholics intent only on artificial contraceptive methods consider the rationality of this?]
When this reporter suggested that the Church opposes a “contraceptive mentality” regardless of the methods used, Sachs replied: “That may be your interpretation. That’s not necessarily the interpretation of many people here.”
A leading figure behind the Sustainable Development Goals, Sachs denied abortion had anything to do with the SDGs and seemed keen not to be called “pro-abortion.”
[Like Sorondo, he deliberately chooses to misread what the SDGs clearly say, and which makes it so reprehensible that the reigning pope endorsed it so unconditionally in person at the United Nations in Sept, 2015.]
“I’m not in favor of anything that’s forced,” Sachs insisted, a statement consistent with views he expressed in 2008, when he wrote that
abortion being illegal in Sub-Saharan Africa is a “problem,” as is the “strong role of leaders from many religious affiliations” who oppose the use of contraception.]
[The very fact he thinks abortion being illegal in sub-Saharan Africa is a problem means he thinks abortion should be legal, so if anyone can abort, then no one is being forced to keep an unwanted baby. Is that it?]
For Sachs, the real evil seems to be big oil and billions of dollars being used by a “tiny” elite to influence and “confuse the public.”
[What exactly does he mean by that? Why doesn’t he come right out and say that drug companies have a vested interest in contraception for everyone, so they have to make sure the UN and rich Western nations will go on buying contraceptives in bulk for distribution in the Third World countries?]
But again, for Bishop Sanchez, Jeffrey Sachs’s comments to LifeSite in support of contraception and population control didn’t matter, pointing out that Sachs’s writings have not advocated legalized abortion.
“Jeffrey Sachs, in public, didn’t say it,” the academy chancellor insisted. “He didn’t speak here about this. He didn’t write here anything like this.” [Great, Sorondo’s OK with Sachs’s views provided Sachs does not express them at a Vatican conference. But I am sure he has done so in previous conferences, and it should be easy to check that out. Notably at that ‘climate change’ conference last year where a small delegation l of those who dissent with the establishment group think – which is Bergoglio’s, of course - were physically barred from attending.]
Peter Raven, a longtime mover behind the Vatican climate conferences, told LifeSite at the climate conference that “population growth is a very difficult problem for the Church.
“[Population growth] obviously has a major effect on the environment,” Raven said. “On the other hand, the Catholic Church, along with most Christian religions and many other religions, does not accept abortion … and does not accept contraception … That means clearly that it has to be a matter of choice, a matter of women’s choice. Actually,
the Catholic countries of the world are the slowest growing countries of the world now.”
[One must check out that statement, but Brazil, the largest Catholic country in the world, despite its many social problems, is, along with China and India, the emerging economic powers since the turn of the century.]
Raven, who has been a member of the academy since 1990, attributed the downturn to “women being more empowered and making choices about how many children to have and how to lead their lives.” The longtime academy member did not seem to see this as a negative, however.
“There have to be a stable and sustainable number of people in the world,” Raven said, and
the Church will “find ways to do it without embarrassing itself” or “breaking long held beliefs, except formally.” [Obviously, this is the argument that the experts have been using on Bergoglio, whom they must consider manipulable in this respect, if not already predisposed on his own to do what they want the Church to do.]
The Church can change, we have to “find our own moral ways,” and in any case,” Francis said you don’t have to have large numbers of children to be a Christian, or
he even said it’s not necessary to ‘breed like a rabbit’ to be a good Christian". [COLORE]=#0026FF]
[What he was recorded to have said was: "It’s not true that to be a good Catholic, you have to be like rabbits." [Who ever said that, to begin with? I think even the most Catholic of Irish priests back in the days when the Irish were genuinely Catholic n,ever would have gone beyond telling women of reproductive age, “Do not avoid pregnancy. You must welcome every new life as a gift from God”, or “Have as many children as you want – the more, the better!” But surely, never “To be a good Catholic, you must breed like a rabbit”. What priest would be so gross as to say to that to any woman, especially since it is also a lie?] On the contrary, responsible parenthood requires that couples regulate the births of their children, as church teaching allows.” And citing the case of a woman he met who was pregnant with her eighth child after seven Cesarean sections, he said, “That is an irresponsibility!”]