Courtney McGrailDear Editor, Pope Francis gave an interview on an airplane again and that means one thing: several media outlets waiting in the wings, like piranha in a tank, for morsels of ambiguity or concession on moral teaching, usually relating to sexual morality, to spin into sensational headlines.
The holy father gave a vigorous defence of Humanae Vitae, the most ignored, despised and disobeyed encyclical of recent times. The openness to life and a respect for human dignity makes the family an icon of God’s love. The aspect of this interview that the media made headlines out of, however, was the Pope’s mentioning the prudence involved in growing a family and not to “breed like rabbits”. It’s unfortunate that this was propagated in the Western media’s headlines, and perhaps it would have been prudent to make a geographical qualification when making the statement.
With birth rates in America at a record low, Europe’s birth rate having been dropping like a stone for decades now, and attacks too numerous to mention on children, marriage and family, a warning about breeding like rabbits, is not what we should be hearing. It’s a bit like telling the Taliban about just war theory. It’s true teaching, but you oughtn’t emphasise it to all audiences.
Yours etc,
Mark Hickey,
Sandymount, Dublin 4.