Often overlooked in coverage of the pontificate of Pope Francis (RIP) were his strong comments on the family, the right to life, the dangers of gender ideology and the emerging demographic crisis. Here we have collated some of his thoughts on these important issues.
The family
The family – as God wants it, composed of a man and a woman for the good of the spouses and also the generation and education of children – is deformed by powerful contrary projects supported by ideological colonisation.
(To members of Equipes Notre Dame, September 2015)
The family is the foundation of co-existence and a guarantee against social fragmentation. Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s growth and emotional development. This is why, in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I stressed the ‘indispensable’ contribution of marriage to society, a contribution which ‘transcends the feelings and momentary needs of the couple’ (n. 66). And this is why I am grateful to you for the emphasis that your colloquium has placed on the benefits that marriage can provide children, the spouses themselves, and society.
(To attendees of The Complementarity of Man and Woman, November, 2014)
Disregard for families has another dramatic effect – particularly present in some parts of the world – namely, a decline in the birth rate. We are experiencing a true demographic winter! This is a sign of societies that struggle to face the challenges of the present, and thus become ever more fearful of the future, with the result that they close in on themselves.
(Address to the diplomatic corps, 2018)
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2018-01/pope-francis-to-diplomatic-corps–full-text.html [3]
We must not accept that our society gives up on generating life and degenerates into sadness. When there is no generation of life, sadness steps in, which is an ugly and gray sickness.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pope-francis-italy-birth-rate-europe-demographic-winter/ [4]
Throwaway culture
We are living in a throwaway culture. What is useless is discarded. Old people are disposable material: they are a nuisance. Not all of them, but in the collective unconscious of the throwaway culture, the old… the most terminally ill, too; the unwanted children, too, and they are sent to the sender before they are born.
(Radio interview, September 2021)
At the origin of this ‘throwaway culture’ is a gross lack of respect for human dignity, the promotion of ideologies with reductive understandings of the human person, a denial of the universality of fundamental human rights, and a craving for absolute power and control that is widespread in today’s society. Let us name this for what it is: an attack against humanity itself.
Abortion
Abortion is a grave injustice. It can never be a legitimate expression of autonomy and power. If our autonomy requires the death of others, then that autonomy of ours is nothing more than an iron cage. I often ask myself two questions: Is it right to eliminate a human life in order to solve a problem? And is it right to hire a hitman in order to solve a problem?
https://ionainstitute.ie/pope-francis-outspokenness-on-abortion-ignored/ [7]
At a distance of seventy years, it is painful to see how many fundamental rights continue to be violated today. First among all of these is the right of every human person to life, liberty and personal security. It is not only war or violence that infringes these rights. In our day, there are more subtle means: I think primarily of innocent children discarded even before they are born, unwanted at times simply because they are ill or malformed, or as a result of the selfishness of adults.
(Address to the diplomatic corps, 2018)
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2018-01/pope-francis-to-diplomatic-corps–full-text.html [3]
Euthanasia
The right to care and treatment for all must always be prioritized, so that the weakest, particularly the elderly and the sick, are never discarded. Indeed, life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not administered. And this ethical principle applies to everyone, not just Christians or believers.
Gender ideology
I ask myself if the so-called gender theory is not, at the same time, an expression of frustration and resignation, which seeks to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it. Yes, we risk taking a step backwards. The removal of difference in fact creates a problem, not a solution.
Today the worst danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences. I asked for studies to be made on this ugly ideology of our time, which erases differences and makes everything the same; to erase difference is to erase humanity. Man and woman, on the other hand, stand in fruitful ‘tension’.