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Multiplying misery – Vatican sins against humanity As the Roman Catholic world celebrates the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul's pontificate, Héctor Abad Faciolince argues that continuing Church opposition to birth control now threatens planetary disaster The Catholic Church’s greatest crime in history was not the blindness it showed in condemning Galileo, Copernicus and Darwin. Nor was it the moral wretchedness of the Holy Inquisition tortures and the burning of victims at the stakes or the bloody religious wars against protestants, natives, heretics, Jews and pagans. The Catholic Church’s most abominable crime is being committed right now in the Third World (expanding from there into the whole world) and consists in its recalcitrant and absurd opposition to birth control. Could anything be more insane and senseless than the prohibition of all physical and chemical methods of birth control (the pill, withdrawal, intrauterine devices, spermicides, contraceptives, tubal occlusion, onanism and vasectomy) and the sole acceptance, on rare occasions, of the unsafe rhythm method? This harsh, irresponsible attitude is not only a crime against millions of unhappy children who will be born into the world only to lead miserable, subhuman lives. It is also a crime against the entire human species and ecological balance of our planet. Perhaps there is no more serious and urgent problem on Earth than the annihilative demographic explosion in the poorest continents. Eight hundred and forty million people are suffering from hunger in the world today and that number is rising by millions each year. E.O. Wilson, the US scientist and conservationist, notes: “Between 13 and 18 million people – the entire population of Sweden – are dying every year of starvation or as a result of the secondary effects of malnutrition.” According to Wilson, if we continue at the current growth rate, the Earth will not be able to bear the weight of human biomass together with our pets and livestock and an environmental catastrophe will occur before the end of the century. The accomplice to this world tragedy (in Africa, Asia and Latin America) is the Church in Rome and its anachronistic reproductive policy. If missionaries really want to perform humanitarian work, they should include among their tasks of evangelisation in the Third World that of teaching radical and efficient methods of birth control. The 25 years of Pope John Paul II’s pontificate, the anniversary of which is currently being celebrated, have marked the lamentable strengthening of the Church’s most conservative positions on sex and human reproduction. The recent (recidivist) condemnation of the condom by the ineffable cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, prefect of the Pontifical Family Counsel – a sort of Vatican ministry – is simply another illustration of the base and hypocritical position of the Church that prevails today in Rome. To say that the condom does not prevent Aids because contraceptives may at times be porous is like saying that cars should run without tyres because they are prone to punctures. Also, and here is the hypocrisy, the Church’s position has not been dictated by technical altruistic motives (porousness) but rather by short-sighted moral positions (sex must always be open to procreation). And here we come back to the same point, namely to the literal and perverse reading of the Scriptures, a reading which the majority of other Christian denominations do not share. “Go forth and multiply” may have been a valid imperative within the primitive world, and also within the ancient world, which was always on the verge of extinction owing ro wars, pestilences, generally unhealthy conditions, high maternal and infant mortality, etc. To apply the same norm without control to the present conditions of the world with technical and hygenic advancements that do not permit “natural” population control is to condemn the planet to the pernicious invasion of a single species, the human species which, as we know, is the most mercilessly depredatory of all our natural resources. If we do not contain our growth (country by country and globally), the Apocalypse will not be announced by the trumpets prophecied by John but by the multitudes prophecied by the successors of Peter. I have a friend who is an obstetrician at a prestigious clinic in Medellín where, through the wise suggestion of the Church, it is forbidden to teach contraceptive methods to patients. She recently delivered the seventh child for a 26-year-old woman who lives in a slum area of the city. This same woman asked for tubal occlusion to be carried out after giving birth. But no. This prestigious clinic does not permit such an operation. It prefers to have children begging at traffic lights or dying of hunger in their shacks. So she will go on to have an eighth child and a ninth and maybe even more. In this way (not only by the actions of the guerrilla, the paramilitary or corrupt politicians) a crime is being committed which deepens our national disaster. And this crime is being committed by the fanaticism and prejudices of a Church which, at least within a human reproductive context, has lost contact with reality. Note: This article was first published in English by JUST Response on October 25 2003. Héctor Abad Faciolince is a leading Colombian journalist, novelist and academic who resides in Medellín.
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