Page 12 - AV Free Edition#358

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
In a move likely to raise the hackles of millions of cats, dogs and their human cohab- itees, Pope Francis has sug- gested that cou- ples who prefer pets to children are selfish.
Wading into a debate noted for its toxic tone on social media, the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics said substituting pets for children “takes away our humani- ty”.
During a general audience at
the Vatican, he said: “Today ... we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child. Sometimes they have one, and that’s it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of chil- dren. This may make people laugh but it is a reality.”
Pet keeping was
“a
denial of father- hood and mother- hood and dimin- ishes us, takes away our humani- ty”, he said. The consequence was that “civilisation grows old without humanity because we lose the rich- ness of father- hood and mother- hood, and it is the country that suf- fers”.
While saying cou- ples unable to have children for
bio-
logical reasons could consider adoption, he urged potential parents “not to be afraid” of embark- ing on parent- hood. “Having a child is always a risk, but there is more risk in not having a child,” he said.
“Crazy cat ladies” and couples with “fur babies” are frequently trolled on social media. The former are
depict-
ed as lonely, unloved women, and the latter as self-centred nar- cissists or careerists for whom babies and children are inconvenient.
But there are con- cerns about the falling birth rate in developed coun- tries. According to the US Census Bureau the pro- portion of house- holds made up of married couples
with children fell from 40% in 1970 to 20% in 2012. But seven in 10 households included a pet.
During the Covid- 19 pandemic there has been a further marked fall in the birth rate. In Italy 22% fewer babies were born in December 2020 than in the same month a year ear- lier. In Spain the drop was 20%, and in France 13%.
“I feel like I would be giving up a lot ofmylifetobea parent,” Lisa Rochow of Ypsilanti, Michigan, told the BBC in 2019. “That would cost money, that would cost time, that would cost things that you want to do.” Instead, she and her partner, both in their 20s, had welcomed a Siberian Husky puppy into their lives. Some cou- ples opt to be childless out of
environmental or financial con- cerns.
Francis, who has previously denounced the “demographic winter”, or falling birthrates in the developed world, is not known to have a pet at his Vatican resi- dence. But he has been pho- tographed stroking dogs. He allowed a baby lamb to be draped over his shoul- ders during Epiphany in 2014 and has petted a tiger and panther cub.
In 2014 Francis told Il Messaggero newspaper that having pets instead of chil- dren was “another phenomenon of cultural degrada- tion”, and that emotional rela- tionships with pets was easier than the “com- plex” relationship between parents and children.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Choosing Pets Over Babies Is ‘Selfish And Diminishes Us’, Says Pope