Free Republic

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday that low birth rates in Canada are the result of the "pervasive effects of secularism" and asked the country's bishops to counter the trend by preaching the truth of Christ. Benedict, who has spoken out several times in favor of large families, blamed Canada's low birth rate on social ills and moral ambiguities that result from secular ideology. "Like many countries ... Canada is today suffering from the pervasive effects of secularism," Benedict told visiting bishops from Canada. "One of the more dramatic symptoms of this mentality, clearly evident in your own...

The birth rate has climbed to its highest point in 13 years to an average of 1.8 children for every woman in England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics said yesterday. The climb from an all-time low of 1.63 children per woman in 2001 is still significantly below the level needed for replacement - which is more than two. But there was speculation yesterday that the childcare reforms of the Blair government might be having an impact." We looked at the reasons for this slight, hopeful rise," said Julia Margo, author of a report called Population Politics published in...

There is something rather odd in the way America has come to fight its wars since World War II. For one thing, it is now unimaginable that we would use anything approaching the full measure of our military power (the nuclear option aside) in the wars we fight. And this seems only reasonable given the relative weakness of our Third World enemies in Vietnam and in the Middle East. But the fact is that we lost in Vietnam, and today, despite our vast power, we are only slogging along--if admirably--in Iraq against a hit-and-run insurgency that cannot stop us even...

Germans are getting used to a new kind of immigrant. In 1998, a pack of wolves crossed the shallow Neisse River on the Polish-German border. In the empty landscape of Eastern Saxony, speckled with abandoned strip mines and declining villages, the wolves found plenty of deer and rarely encountered humans. They multiplied so quickly that a second pack has since split off, colonizing a second-growth pine forest 30 kilometers further west. Soon, says local wildlife biologist Gesa Kluth, a third pack will likely form, possibly heading northward in the direction of Berlin. Wolves returning to the heart of Europe? A...

BERLIN: The number of children born in Germany last year fell to its lowest level since at least World War Two, data showed on Friday, putting the birth rate well below that required to maintain the current population. The Federal Statistics Office estimated that between 680,000 and 690,000 children were born in Europe's largest economy last year, implying a birth rate of between 1.33 and 1.36 children per woman - one of the lowest rates in the European Union. In 2004, some 706,000 children, or 1.36 per woman, were born in Germany, a rate which has only been surpassed twice...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Monica Burton did not want to leave San Francisco. Born and raised in the city and a train driver for the Muni transit system for the past 16 years, she loves her home town, volunteers in its women's jail and prays weekly at her church in the Hunter's Point section along the San Francisco Bay. But as the main breadwinner for her family, which includes a 22-year-old daughter and two granddaughters, she faced some hard choices. Stay in San Francisco and abandon the dream of owning her own home because of skyrocketing housing prices, or leave. In...

Like a mellowing parent, America in the 21st century needs to plan for the best possible future for its children and grandchildren. Common to human nature, as our years advance, we begin to search out our roots and pass on hereditary information to our descendants. In this great melting pot of a nation, there are few of us who don’t have links to Europe and we look back at the “old country” with the greatest of affection. But do we want as an ally an aging Europe, with mounting debt and a population that is declining to grow by the...

"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." So Dylan Thomas urged his once-fierce father, then gone soft, to rekindle his spirit. Equally, Thomas could have been expressing the view of many Americans, culturally derived from Father-Europe at its looming death. The bad news from Europe is that its birth rates are low, far below the level needed to maintain the current population. The worse news is that the Europeans are not fighting it. Over the last couple of years Europeans have just begun to recognize a demographic problem exists. In a...

Scholars and politicians are convinced that Australia is threatening its own existence. In the words of one member of Australian Parliament, it will not be possible for the country to know for another fifty years. It is everyone’s fault – the medical drug RU486 which guards against unwanted pregnancy by interfering with the action of hormone progesterone which is crucial to the normal progress of pregnancy. The drug has proved effective and is very popular in over thirty countries including Australia. At this time many immigrants are having many children. A large proportion of these immigrants are Muslim and as...

BRUSSELS: A European Union study has shown that most European couples would on average like at least two children but end up having only one because of worries about financial costs. The study, funded by the EU Commission and based on data from 30,000 people in 14 European countries, said that more than half of all those questioned – male or female – wanted to have two or more children. But it said many stopped after one child because they did not want to see a decline in their standard of living. Couples desiring more than two children lived in...

THE HAGUE, 11/02/06 - More and more people are leaving the Netherlands. As the birth rate is also falling, population growth in 2005 was as a result the lowest since 1900, according to data released Friday by the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS). Last year, 121,000 Dutch people emigrated abroad, compared with 110,000 a year earlier. The number of immigrants was much lower, unchanged from 2004 at 94,000. Among these, the numbers from traditional immigration countries such as Turkey and Morocco shrank considerably. Half of the emigrants were born in the Netherlands. Among these, more and more emigrate to countries...

Two secondary schools in the south Wales valleys will close next week because of falling numbers of children. Bedwellty Comprehensive in Aberbargoed, with 400 pupils, and 277-pupil Vaynor and Penderyn High in Merthyr are the latest casualties of Wales' falling birth rates. Pupils will be moved to nearby schools. The Vaynor closure was confirmed last year when a Welsh Assembly Government letter said it was "educationally and financially unviable". According to official figures, the number of children in Wales is set to fall by over 11% in the next 20 years. We have not got the young people starting families...