I want to like the Pope—I really do. And I do like him as a man: he’s not arrogant, is concerned for the poor, and lives abstemiously, dedicated to his mission as head of the Catholic Church. But it’s his mission that I’m concerned about, because, compassionate though he is, Francis conspicuously neglects one issue directly related to what he’s preached to Congress and the United Nations. And we know what that is.
In his talk to Congress on Thursday, Frances took a liberal stance, decrying poverty, exhorting people to accept immigrants into their country, touting freedom of religion, and criticizing capitalism, the death penalty, the international arms trade—even religious fundamentalism. These are all Enlightenment values. And, instead of going to a scheduled lunch with politicians, he did this:
[Pope Francis] waded into a crowd of mostly homeless men and women, including felons, mentally ill people, victims of domestic violence and substance abusers. He stopped to lay his hand on the heads of children who had kept quiet for hours of waiting with special pope coloring books.
That’s lovely: the act of a man of compassion and empathy.
But his compassion has limits, circumscribed by his Church’s dogma on reproduction. As we know, the Church frowns on birth control, whether by pills, IUDs, or vasectomy and tubal ligation. Its prohibition of abortion is absolute, save for the year’s grace Francis gave women to obtain forgiveness for abortions in ways not previously allowed.
The Pope’s views on reproduction were condensed into one sentence of his address to Congress: “The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development.” But he then went on to discuss the death penalty, knowing that if he said more than that already-clear sentence, he’d wade into a huge controversy.
Yes, the Pope’s Big Failure is that an obvious solution to both global warming and poverty—not the only solution, but an important one—is something he cannot sanction: allowing women to control their own reproduction. And so, in his recent encyclical on climate change, the Pope blamed global warming on capitalism and explicitly argued that we shouldn’t blame overpopulation (my emphasis):
50. Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate. At times, developing countries face forms of international pressure which make economic assistance contingent on certain policies of “reproductive health”. Yet “while it is true that an unequal distribution of the population and of available resources creates obstacles to development and a sustainable use of the environment, it must nonetheless be recognized that demographic growth is fully compatible with an integral and shared development”. To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues.
The part in bold is sheer cant—a justification of the Church’s desire for more Catholics. In fact, in his Encyclical, Francis viewed abortion itself as inimical to concern for global warming!:
120. Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away”.[97]
Overpopulation is a big contributor not just to global warming, but to poverty as well. Who can deny that allowing women to practice the kind of birth control prohibited by the Church would help lift them and their societies out of poverty? Remember what Christopher Hitchens said (and remember, too, the accusations of his misogyny that are belied by his words):
“The cure for poverty has a name, in fact: it’s called the empowerment of women. If you give women some control over the rate at which they reproduce, if you give them some say, take them off the animal cycle of reproduction to which nature and some doctrine—religious doctrine condemns them, and then if you’ll throw in a handful of seeds perhaps and some credit, the floor of everything in that village, not just poverty, but education, health, and optimism will increase. It doesn’t matter; try it in Bangladesh, try it in Bolivia, it works—works all the time. Name me one religion that stands for that, or ever has. Wherever you look in the world and you try to remove the shackles of ignorance and disease stupidity from women, it is invariably the clericy that stands in the way, or in the case of—now, furthermore, if you are going to grant this to Catholic charities, say, which I would hope are doing a lot of work in Africa, if I was a member of a church that had preached that AIDS was not as bad as condoms, I’d be putting some conscience money into Africa too, I must say.”
And so Katha Pollitt’s new piece in The Nation has an appropriate title: “If Pope Francis really wanted to fight climate change, he’d be a feminist.” Politt’s message is similar to that of Hitchens: if the Pope really cared about poverty—or at least cared more about poverty than breeding more Catholics and enforcing antiquated dogma—he’d free women from their reproductive shackles. For half of the poor about whom Francis is so concerned happen to have two X chromosomes, and aren’t allowed ways to escape their status as breeders.
Pollitt’s opening sentence is brilliant:
If the world consisted only of straight men, Pope Francis would be the world’s greatest voice for everything progressives believe in.
She goes on to discuss how, blinkered by his faith, the Pope simply can’t approve of a simple solution to poverty and global warming. For, in truth, it’s far easier to give women contraception and abortions than to overthrow capitalism and greed:
I know I risk being the feminist killjoy at the vegan love feast, but the world, unlike Vatican City, is half women. It will never be healed of its economic, social, and ecological ills as long as women cannot control their fertility or the timing of their children; are married off in childhood or early adolescence; are barred from education and decent jobs; have very little socioeconomic or political power or human rights; and are basically under the control—often the violent control—of men.
. . . Pope Francis places the blame for the sorry state of the planet only on excess consumption by the privileged and says that international campaigns for “reproductive health” (scare quotes his) are really all about population control and the imposition of foreign values on the developing world—as if the church itself was not a foreign power using its might to restrict reproductive rights in those same places. But why is it an either/or question? Why not: There are billions of people who want a modern standard of living, which makes a lot of sense compared to the alternative—backbreaking farm labor in a poor village with no electricity or running water—and those desires can only be satisfied if people have fewer children, which happens to be what they want anyway.
It’s a medium-long piece that you should read in its entirety, but I’ll finish with Pollitt’s final paragraph, as brilliant as her opening:
Never mind the 47,000 women who die every year in illegal abortions, and the even greater number who are injured: Abortion causes glaciers to melt and species to vanish. From Eden to ecology, it’s always women’s fault.
