Pope Francis blasted the West’s ongoing demographic decline, saying that fewer children shows there wo n’t be any hope for the future.
Ignoring “outdated” tales of harmful urbanization, the pope contended that far from being a concern, human beings are the answer to the country’s problems.
The bishop appeared to have referred to characters like Stanford researcher Paul Ehrlich, the author of the 1968 doom bestseller The Population Bomb, who reportedly wrote about the world’s future and how the earth might support human life without naming names.
In addition to the wildly false predictions that Ehrlich made, he also said that India, which had an overacquired population, did end up starving millions of people in the 1970s, 65 million of whom would be Americans, and that it was most likely that” England does not exist in the year 2000.”
Francis stated in his address to the General States of Natality, an annual event held by the Roman government in Rome to explain the country’s declining beginning level, that “every present of a child reminds us that God has confidence in humanity” because our existence “is not the result of chance: God wanted us.”
At the root of waste and hunger in the world are not too many children being born, he asserted, but more” the options of those who think only of themselves, the insanity of an unrestrained, blinded and rampant materialism, of a materialism that, like an evil disease, undermines the existence of people and society”.
Houses “fill up with objects and are emptied of children, becoming very sad places”, the pope added. Dogs and cats are abundant, they say. … These are not lacking. There is a shortage of children”.
” The problem of our world is not the children who are born: it is selfishness, consumerism and individualism, which make people satiated, lonely and unhappy”, he said.
The pope claims that a people’s birth rate is” the first indicator of their hope.”
A nation loses its desire for the future without children and young people, he said, noting that the Italian population is now 47 years old on average.
If we were to base this information on,” we would be forced to say that, like the rest of Europe, Italy is gradually losing its hope in the future,” he said.
The Old Continent is becoming more and more like the continent of the old, a tired and resigned continent that is so consumed with exorcising loneliness and suffering that it is unable to appreciate the true beauty of life, he said.
The pope continued by quoting a demographer who claimed that “weapons manufacturing and contraceptives” are the two main sources of income for him.
” One destroys life, the other prevents life. And these are the most profitable investments. What future can we expect”? he said.
Francis also urged more social and political action to promote a cultured marriage and childbirth environment in his address.
He cited as examples how mothers should be freed from” the burden of job insecurity and the impossibility of buying a house” and how they should be able to choose between work and childcare.
