RNS reports via the Washington Post –
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Monday (June 2) warned married couples against substituting cats and dogs for children — a move that he said leads to the “bitterness of loneliness” in old age.
Fraaaaaaaaaaaaaanciiiiiiiiiiiis – aren’t you forgetting something? You’re substituting a bunch of celibate priests for children, so who are you to tell other people to have children instead of dogs?!
Also, it’s none of your business. It wouldn’t be any of your business even if you had 18 children, which for all I know you do, given the funny ways of your funny church. It’s none of your business; your church doesn’t get to tell us what to do any more. Even Catholics don’t have to obey you; you can’t burn them for disobeying any more. You should mind your own business.
He was blessing some married couples in the Vatican chapel next to his bedsitter.
But he went a step further and strongly criticized those couples who choose not to have children, saying they had been influenced by a culture of “well-being” that says life is better without kids.
“You can go explore the world, go on holiday, you can have a villa in the countryside, you can be carefree,” the pope said.
“It might be better — more comfortable — to have a dog, two cats, and the love goes to the two cats and the dog. Is this true or not? Have you seen it?
“Then, in the end this marriage comes to old age in solitude, with the bitterness of loneliness.”
Or not, and also, having children is not automatically a hedge against loneliness or solitude in old age. Also, as I mentioned, you don’t (at least officially) have any yourself, and that’s the policy and indeed the rule of your horrible tyrannical church, so shut up.