Talk into the mirror Frank
Officially celibate religious boss says it’s selfish not to have children.
The Pope’s comments came as he was discussing parenthood during a general audience at the Vatican in Rome.
Hey if you want to know about parenthood, who better to ask than a prelate whose religion forbids him to be a parent?
“Today … we see a form of selfishness,” he told the audience. “We see that some people do not want to have a child.”
That’s not selfish though. It’s not as if there’s a child sitting there, wanting to be had. What he means by having a child is actually making a child where no child was before. It’s not selfish not to do that. It’s particularly not selfish in this world, in the perilous state it’s in because there are so many people in it. If the world desperately needed more people it might be reasonable to claim it’s selfish not to have some, but that’s not this world. It’s doubly not selfish: by not adding children to the problem of too many people driving cars and all the rest of it, and by not having children who will have to deal with the horrors of the approaching disaster.
“Sometimes they have one, and that’s it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children. This may make people laugh, but it is a reality.”
The practice “is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity”, he added.
Then why doesn’t Frank have a passel of children and grandchildren himself?
Not having children also means there are fewer children being raised by people who really don’t want children. Insisting that an unwanted child be brought into the world is a prescription for disaster.
As for having only one? That might be the opposite of selfish in many ways, not just the environment. It also means you are able to devote more of your time and energy to them, not being exhausted by the other 13 kids. The child won’t get lost in a crowd. There will be more money to send them to college or help them set up a business or just plain meet their needs.
So many people I know who want children to show off to people. Look at all my kids! And my grandkids! They’ve internalized the message that this is appropriate, and they want everyone to know how many spawn they’ve spawned.
Oh good point, I hadn’t thought of that. Urging people who don’t want to have children to have children – bad idea for the children.
This “won’t somebody think of the hypothetical children” argument comes up a lot in the abortion debate. I’m always mystified by it.
So the Pope says having no children is bad. And having one is also bad. So what’s the right number? 2? 5? 20?
Usually the response is something like “well, it’s as many as you can afford (or have without compromising the parenting you give to the existing children).” But what does that mean, exactly? Sure, it’s easy to sneer at the parents who say they “can’t afford” another child because it would mean that little Brandon and Madison would have to give up one of their 10,000 extracurricular activities, or even (gasp!) go to public school. But what’s the stopping point? As many as you can clothe and feed at a subsistence level, cramming in four to a room if necessary?
And of course, aside from the hypocrisy involved in the Catholic Church not allowing its priests to have children, there’s also the fact that the Church is against premarital sex. But those are some fertile years going to “waste”! What about all those hypothetical babies that young Catholic girls could be having!
It seems that some things are more important than hypothetical babies after all. Just not things like personal choice and freedom.
Re #3
It may indeed be easy for some people to sneer at that situation, but to me it’s a reasonable decision. It’s just as reasonable to decide not to have any children because it would mean the parents having to give up their own 10.000 activities or their own expensive college education. There are lots of reasons not to have (more or any) children; crimping a lifestyle is one.
Re the pope
It seems to me that the pope is not so much encouraging people to engage in parenting, not really, but rather to create more people (in particular more people to join the Catholic religion, but that’s not stated). The declining birth rates are viewed as fewer babies, not fewer people who get to experience the wonder and joy of being parents, especially to more than one child.
Sackbut,
To be clear, in saying that it’s easy to sneer, I’m not suggesting that I do that, or think that anyone should. I’m happily child-free myself, at least in part because I don’t want my lifestyle crimped.
I have an image of god working the assembly line in a soul factory, trying to stuff souls into babies as they come down an ever-accelerating conveyor belt. Like the classic Lucy episode. Anyway, all of you women having abortions or just not having babies are making his job a lot more difficult. Have you no empathy?
Of course, we all know people with large families who say “Well I never really wanted children myself, but I thought I’d better do my bit to produce some more humans to keep the cogs of the economy grinding on”. That’s why people have children, right?
I wonder if the pope’s idea that not having children is selfish could be tied to his ideas about birth control. If you use birth control you are basically having sex for fun, not for procreation, so that’s the selfish part.
Thanks for that image of the soul factory, WAM! Could this by tied in with the sudden proliferation of children being trans? Maybe sometimes God has a load of boyl souls lying around, and just has to stuff them into whatever baby happens to come along. If it’s female, tough. Supply and demand, deal with it.
Catwhisperer,
That does seem like a logical extension.
I do know at least two people who had large families because they thought that was their religious duty. I don’t think that can be called actually wanting children. I’m sure there are many families like that. I suspect something similar goes on in families that want children as more help on the farm.
Re the pope, I don’t really have a problem with him suggesting that people doing X is good for society (or the world or whatever), and criticizing people who choose not to do X. There are many arguments like that, where X might be “quitting smoking” or “recycling” or “using public transport” just as easily as it might be “having children” or “going to church”. It’s not a demand, it’s not forcing people to do X, it’s saying that X is good.
I see a bit of hypocrisy in him saying this while having an occupation that forbids him having children himself, or at least doing so while still performing this job. Yes, that’s a silly restriction, but if we take it as a legitimate problem for the job, there are many other jobs where procreation would also be a problem, such as ones that involve being away from home for extremely long periods. A person who works on an ocean vessel away for months or years at a time might be forgiven for suggesting that it’s good for people to have children, most people should have them, but it won’t work for me. (People who don’t know how to drive or who physically can’t drive can nonetheless have opinions on electric vehicles.)
I disagree with his argument, I don’t think having a bunch of children is good for society, I don’t think people who choose to have pets but not children are selfish, but I don’t mind the format of his argument, and I don’t mind him making it while childless himself.
He’s the pope though. I wouldn’t mind the format or the what I say not what I do aspect so much if he were just some random Twitter sage, but he’s the pope. To many Catholics what he says goes, even when (as apparently here) he was just talking as opposed to issuing an official You Must Obey This.
Yeah, I dunno. I see “to many Catholics what he says goes” as a problem with religion, and perhaps a more specific problem with Catholicism, rather than with the pope making this statement. I know too many Catholics who do not take the pope that way, but I agree the view is likely widespread.
I also don’t see it as “do as I say not as I do”. Celibacy is part of the job of being Catholic clergy. It’s a silly part of the job, but it is a long-standing job requirement. It’s more like “do as I think would be good for humanity but I am forbidden by my vows from doing”. It is perhaps like a military officer encouraging people to engage in protests and political activity that might be forbidden to members of the military. Whether the restriction is reasonable is orthogonal to the question of whether it’s OK to encourage other people to do these things.
The two people who came to my mind who had large families because of their sacred duty: one is evangelical Christian, one is ultra-orthodox Jewish. It is indeed unfortunate that some people have children out of some sense of obligation, not because they genuinely want to raise more children. I’m not sure if they could distinguish the point, but it seems clear enough to me.