Posted on 06/10/2014 7:13:31 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Pope Francis said something so important last week that it will either be widely ignored or widely disparaged.
The pope criticized “these marriages in which the spouses do not want children, in which the spouses want to remain without fertility.”
“This culture of well-being,” he said, has “convinced us: It’s better not to have children! It’s better! You can go explore the world, go on holiday, you can have a villa in the countryside, you can be carefree. It might be better — more comfortable — to have a dog, two cats, and the love goes to the two cats and the dog.”
He is right. More than ever before, young men and women in most affluent Western countries (and Russia) have decided not to have children. Instead, many shower love and attention on dogs and cats. Ask many young women — married or single — if they have any children, and if they do not, you are likely to be told, “I have two cats” or “I have two dogs.” There are authors whose book-jacket photo shows them with their dog or cat.
In much of the West, animals are the new children.
The pope made this declaration for two reasons: one demographic and one religious and moral.
The demographic reason is that the populations of European countries such as the one in which he lives, Italy, are gradually disappearing.
Italy’s birth rate is approximately 1.41 children per woman, making Italy 203rd out of 224 countries in terms of its fertility rate. LifeSiteNews, a religious-oriented news website, reported that Italian demographer Giancarlo Baliga said last year that by 2041, “The age group most represented in the structure of the Italians will become the 70s.” According to Fred Pearce in the Guardian, “Italy has the world’s second oldest population.” According to population-statistics website Geohive, Italy will have 2.5 million fewer people at the end of this century than it had in the beginning. And the only reason it will not have far fewer is that so many Italian residents will be immigrants. In fact, according to Professor Peter McDonald, former president of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, if Italy remains at its current fertility levels and does not compensate with immigrants, it will lose 86 percent of its population by the end of the century — falling to 8 million people, compared with today’s 56 million.
The pope knows that Italians and other nations are slowly disappearing.
The question is: Why? Why do so many people prefer to parent pets rather than children?
Throughout history, there were three primary reasons people had many children: Lack of contraception, economic necessity, and religion.
All three reasons are gone.
Thanks to modern contraception, couples can have all the sex they want without conceiving.
Most people in welfare states no longer need children to care for them in old age because the state will do that.
And with the demise of religion in the developed world, there are no values-based reasons to have children.
Because of contraception and the welfare state, the one compelling reason to have children is that one’s values demand it.
Those values overwhelmingly come from religion. The dominant religions of the Western world, Judaism and Christianity, hold up marriage and children as an ideal. Consequently, the people in affluent Western countries most likely to have more than two, and certainly more than three, children are Orthodox Jews, Evangelical Protestants, religious Catholics, and active Mormons.
But secularism is now dominant in the West, which ends the values-based reason to have children.
One might argue that there is a fourth reason to have children — a desire to raise and love children and have a family. But one shouldn’t put too much stock in that argument. Without religion, even those who want children almost never have more than two. And more and more secular individuals find that their desire to nurture is fulfilled by loving cats and dogs.
That was the pope’s point. It’s an important one.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His most recent book is Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
He might change his mind if he visits some of our inner cities. If the parents, both mother and father, aren’t going to be responsible and raise their own children, they need to be fixed so they don’t have any more.
The moslems invading Western Europe and Hispanics invading the United States don’t have these problems. They eat their pets to feed their 8 kids.
Actually, Spengler ( David Goldman ) argues that Muslims too have a demographic problem.
See here:
Fertility, Faith, and the Decline of Islam: Strategic Implications
Any viewer of HGTV can vouch for this. Couples chose homes based on whether their dog will approve of the back yard!
If people have dogs.... of course they want a “dog friendly” back yard. To say they are letting the “dog” choose the house they buy is a little far fetched.
It is troubling, for the future of society, when you consider that some of the most accomplished and brightest, “yuppie” types, if I can use that term, just do not want to have children. And some of these same people lavish lots of attention on their pets.
I think that modern thinking, the whole sexual revolution idea, and modern contraceptives, have created a culture in which many people just will never have children. And there are implications for the whole society.
Prager should visit Los Feliz. To quote from Danny DeVito’s “Ratings Game”: “I ain’t never seen so many white people in one place.”
Does anyone else suspect this invasion is being orchestrated and funded by the Obama administration itself, and some of his backers like Soros, and the COC, and the GOP establishment, etc?
Any hard evidence yet who’s ultimately behind this?
Sorry, posted reply to the wrong thread . . . .
Here’s Why.
“I want you to love me like my dog”
http://www.musicstop.org/billy-currington-like-my-dog-lyrics-with-video/
In the long run, this is a good thing.
When, these low impulse controls don’t breed and produce more low impulse controls, our country and world is better off.
Interestingly, your comment is still actually somewhat related to this.
Illegal immigration is allowed to continue because government needs people to pay into the system, and the native population is not reproducing. Well, that’s one reason, anyhow.
They’re sooo evolved! Not the dog owners but the dogs themselves.
Can’t really argue with that.
I have no desire to raise a child in this society.
I think there’s another reason, which is that contemporary philosophy and the teachings of academia are very antihuman. “Nature” is their God and an environment free of human beings is their goal.
This has always been a part of American progressive Utopian thought. Even from the time of Emerson, who thought he could go and live with animals… because they were so peaceful and superior to human beings. That just shows you how much he knew about animals!
Man is central to Christianity, which is based on God’s having become man. And Man is central to Judaism, since Man was the other party to the Covenant. But Man is nothing in the eastern religions and in modern progressivism (for which these religions form an unacknowledged spiritual basis to the extent that it has one).
So the rejection of Judeo-Christian thought has resulted in reducing the centrality of mankind and putting all creatures on the same level. So why not wear your dog’s picture in a locket around your neck?
The article seems to focus on muslim countries, not the muslims in Western Europe, where I believe they do have higher fertility rates.
Looks like the entire world, with the exception of the urban poor in the United States, is experiencing issues with an aging population. China, Japan, the muslim countries, Western Europe, the United States and Canada...
RE: Looks like the entire world, with the exception of the urban poor in the United States
Have a look at the predominantly Christian country of the Philippines... it has a fast growing economy with a birth rate of 3.1 children per family....
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