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Pope Francis has said that families that choose not to have children are making a selfish choice.
The Pope said this in his general audience at St Peter’s Square on February 11, during which he continued a series of reflections on the various roles in the family.
A society that “views children above all as a worry, a burden, a risk, is a depressed society”, Francis said.
Citing European countries where the fertility rate is especially low, the Pope said “they are depressed societies because they don’t want children”.
“They don’t have children. The birth rate doesn’t even reach one per cent.
“Why?” the pontiff asked. “Every one of us, think and respond.”
He praised the 1968 encyclical of Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, which reiterated the ban against artificial contraception while enjoining Catholics to practice “responsible parenthood” by spacing out births as necessary.
Francis added, however, that “to have more children cannot automatically become an irresponsible choice”.
“Not to have children is a selfish choice,” he said.
“Life rejuvenates and acquires energy when it multiplies: It is enriched, not impoverished!”
Last month, during an in-flight press conference on his way back from the Philippines, Francis also spoke about responsible parenthood.
“God gives you methods to be responsible,” Francis said then.
“Some think that – excuse the word – that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits. No.”
During his February 11 audience, the Pope recounted an occasion when he had asked his own mother which of he and his four siblings was her favourite.
Francis said that she compared her five children to her five fingers.
“All are my children, but all are different like the fingers on a hand,” the Pope recalled his mother saying.
“It is like this, the family. The children are different, but all children.”
The Pope also spoke of the difficulty many children face today, when he said it looks more difficult for many of them to “imagine their future”.
Children, he said, “must not have fear of the need to construct a new world”.
Sources
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News category: World.
