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Posted on 09/08/2007 7:00:51 AM PDT by RckyRaCoCo
MARIAZELL, Austria (AFP) — Pope Benedict XVI blasted Europeans for being selfish and not having enough children, in a sermon on Saturday at the 850-year-old pilgrimage site of Mariazell in Austria.
"Europe has become child-poor. We want everything for ourselves and place little trust in the future," the pope told a crowd of faithful from his canopied area at an open-air mass that took place under heavy rain.
But Benedict held out hope, saying: "The earth will be deprived of a future only when the forces of the human heart and of reason illuminated by the heart are extinguished . . . Where God is, there is the future."
The pontiff had slammed abortion upon arriving in Austria Friday as the "very opposite" of human rights.
"The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself," he told members of the government and the diplomatic corps at the Hofburg, the seat of the Austrian presidency in Vienna.
The pope also warned at the mass Saturday that science must be used for good if man is not to be threatened with destruction.
(Excerpt) Read more at afp.google.com ...
I have no idea if it’s an issue of faith, or basic anti-catholic hatred.
Some people just cannot help themselves.
Even when the pope clearly DOES NOT say something, they then have to “fix” it, declare him a liar, and state what he “really” meant.
It’s really something to see.
You see good debates on this forum that usually center around what people actually SAY, and the assumption people are being honest about their opinion (why wouldn’t they be?)
But this person cannot even critique what Benedict actually said.
He had to change the words and debate an opinion that doesn’t exist.
Strange.
Not as dumb as your stating he was celibate in the first place!
The law from God DOES apply to all people, including both Catholics, Protestants and other religious denomination members.
God said, “Go forth and be fruitful and multiply.”
He didn’t say “Catholics go forth and be fruitful and multiply.”
Am I wrong here?
“Am I wrong here?”
absolutely not, and Pope Benedict never said otherwise.
He has left a long trail over the years of his spiritual/intellectual/political development through his writings.
Open for anyone interested enough to read it for themselves.
That was exactly my point one can not prove it therefore the statement should never have been made as fact.
“Sex is very taxing on both men and women, and they can have more and stronger children if they do not waste their energy on endless “practice” for pleasure, with no intention of making children.”
Gosh, I never knew that sex for pleasure made for weaker children. Can you tell me where you found this?
You mean like a prophet? As I recall the Hebrew word for prophet means roughly to be as a "wild man yelling and shaking his fist at the crowd."
One of the most hateful things I ever read on the internet was from an anti-Catholic here on FR criticizing poorer Catholics for their predilection toward large families. I'll never forget it; went something like: "In my experience, those who breed like rats usually live like rats."
True but the pope is not god and when we have a article about god then I'll address the issue., until then this story is about the pope.
ahh yes...”breeders” , “bitches in heat”, “breeding like rabbits”...these have become acceptable ways to refer to anyone who goes beyond the 2 child formula.
Here’s something you’ll enjoy...so outrageous it’s funny
I said he was celibate. One purpose of celibacy is not to produce an heir. One must presume that a celibate person has no children, or a non-celibate person has no bastards until someone brings a charge. THEN it may be proved or disproved. But by all accounts, the pope has lived a chaste life. And you?
You are correct. A seismic shift in our society’s fundamental values is the primary culprit; superindividualism combined with maximum consumerism with an overdose of secular humanism does it every time. Probably the ugliest parts of a free society in the West. I wasn’t using the tax problem as the source, just a contributing factor. For those of us who wanted families and had them, this would’ve certainly come in handy in saving more income for their education; whether it was college or trade school, depending on their skill sets. Regardless, people taking out second mortgages to support their lifestyles on either expensive vacations, etc. or depreciating assets is an incredibly stupid thing to do. They will pay for it, now or in the near future. Or, I suppose we’ll end up paying higher taxes as the government bails them out. We live in sick times.
Over a billion currently, and counting, and probably a billion or more historically. He considered us all is His children, in the highest form, spiritually. We believe He wasn’t to be married given His special task as assigned to Him by God, that is to provide for all of God’s children, which would have prevented him should He had married and had his own. It doesn’t work that way.
There are several ways that profligate sex can impact children.
1) To start with, people have a unique microorganism culture on their bodies, as distinct as a fingerprint. It is denser and has a greater number of pathogens in the “coliform zone”, from about the knees to the navel. (This is the real reason that it has long been suggested that you wash your hands after going to the bathroom.)
When people have sex, there is an enormous transfer of new types and strains of microorganisms between them. This is why when women lose their virginity, they often develop yeast infections, their immune system having difficulty fighting all these new infections simultaneously.
If people remain monogamous, this is usually no problem for more than a short time. Couples quickly develop similar cultures. However, with multiple sexual partners, people develop “supercultures” of microorganisms on their bodies that can opportunistically impact a person with a simple culture enough to inhibit their fertility. It is unknown what impact having “superculture” parents could have on the development of fetuses and infants.
2) Animals use a great deal of energy in reproduction. In some cases, even a lethal amount. People are unique both in having sex for its side effect of pleasure, and in assuming that sex is not taxing to their bodies. Often in strongly denying the fact. Young people, especially, believe they have the three “I’s”: they are impervious, immune and immortal.
Many people do not have enough energy to ever reproduce, and some have such limited energy that they cannot even have sex without serious consequences to their health. Reproduction has strong effects to both females, and it is now being learned, males.
On top of everything else, raising children is very energy intensive. More and more couples are abandoning sex entirely after having children. This is why I say it is such a critical issue that women, especially, are permitted to use their energy in child rearing, instead of to raise national productivity for free, their extra income being taxed away.
Reproduction is a very complex and difficult biological process, made more so with social and economic factors, and other stresses placed on reproductive age adults. The US was fortunate after WWII to have an explosion of suburbia, based on the Levittown model, which created the ideal situation for a baby boom.
Using it in contrast with life today, we see how they succeeded in producing children, where we are failing.
No, as a rule it is difficult if not impossible to prove a negative. OTOH, we know for a fact that the pope has taken a vow of celibacy, we also know for a fact that he has risen to the top of an organization that values that vow. Given those facts, among others, and given the lack of evidence to the contrary, we can safely say that the assertion is true.
Yes that is true but no one can say for a fact he has been celibate his whole life and thus the reason the statement should never have been stated as fact unless of course the OP can prove it.
that US rate is skewed by illegitimacy amongst minorities
your average married woman has less children than that
from my observing
that may be but it doesn't mean that when he's right like now that it's irrelevant to all Christians, it's not...at least not to me.
I welcome this sorta talk....a Proddie like me admonishes my fellow travelers to have more children in the face of non-Christians which often but not always has a racial component to it and I'm a bigot
He can say it and it sounds great....it's practical and it's a realworld view of demographic reality in the west.
Perhaps you should look up the definition of the word "celibate". It doesn't mean what you think it does.
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