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Thursday September 23, 2010


Vatican: MDG’s for Pop Control “Malevolent and Shortsighted”

By Hilary White

ROME, September 23, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A senior Vatican official warned the UN this week against using the fight against world poverty and hunger as an excuse to push international population control and other anti-human ideologies.

The Cardinal President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Peter Turkson, spoke to the summit of heads of state and government on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on Monday.

“Any attempt to use the MDGs to spread and impose egoistic lifestyles or, worse still, population policies as a cheap means to reduce the number of poor people, would be malevolent and short-sighted,” he said.

“Reverence for human life, from conception until natural death, and respect for the capacity of men and women to live upstanding moral lives, affirms their personal transcendence, even if they live in poverty.

“Controlling one’s passions and overcoming hedonistic impulses, constitute the starting point for building a harmonious society. Such respect is also the necessary and essential condition for sustainable economic development and integral human development.”

Turkson, who hails from Ghana in West Africa, said that most of the problems faced by developing countries, especially in Africa, are the result of “bad governance and irresponsible state conduct on regional and international levels.”

He added, “I say this, not just as a religious leader, but also as an African and a man coming from a poor family. I urge the international community not to be afraid of the poor.

“MDGs should be used to fight poverty and not to eliminate the poor! Instead, give poor countries a friendly financial and trade mainframe and help them to promote good governance and the participation of civil society, and Africa and the other poor regions of the world will effectively contribute to the welfare of all.”

The Vatican maintains the position that the MDGs, which make no direct mention of abortion, can be understood so as to exclude it in international development. Nevertheless, most governments with legalized abortion, which include all the most powerful states of the developed world, support the inclusion of abortion as an intrinsic part of the project.

Goal 3 in the documents – to “promote gender equality and empower women” – is normally taken in the international community to include abortion.

Instead of population control, Turkson urged governments to focus on the “human aspects of development,” including “eradicating hunger, promoting education, providing health care and social services, ensuring equal opportunities for work, and advocating responsible stewardship of the environment.”

Eradication of debt and the development of small scale, local economic productivity, Turkson said, are the keys to bringing the developing world out of poverty. Sharing knowledge of science and technology is also needed to help local people address health care and agricultural and industrial needs.

Turkson spoke against the pressure to impose the West’s secularist, post-Christian sexual mores on African countries. In this, he was taking up a theme that was prominent at the Synod on Africa, held at the Vatican in 2009. At that weeklong gathering of 300 African prelates and international experts, many repeatedly decried the attitude of the developed countries towards an Africa that is seen only as a victim continent and an easily exploited source of natural resources.

The Holy See’s position, he said, is that “great benefits will accrue” if the MDGs are interpreted to uphold “objective moral standards and human nature.” Turkson described “morally responsible openness to life” as a “rich social and economic resource” for the whole world.

During the Synod, African bishops and the heads of international aid organizations not affiliated with the Catholic Church concurred that the solution to hunger in developing countries was not the elimination of those who are hungry.

Dr. Jacques Diouf, head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, said that the agricultural technologies currently in use around the world were more than sufficient to feed the whole human population. He decried the Malthusian principles that say too many human beings are overloading the world’s food production capability.

“On the earth, there is a sufficient number of financial means, effective technologies, natural and human resources to eliminate hunger in the world once and for all.”

In their final document, the 300 assembled prelates of the African Synod issued a stern call for an end to the international population control programs that they repeatedly said had been stifling efforts to help the poor and sick in African countries.

Buti Joseph Tlhagale, Archbishop of Johannesburg, called the international population control movement a “ruthless” “second wave of colonization.”

He warned that traditional African moral values are being “threatened by the new global ethic which aggressively seeks to persuade African governments and communities to accept new and different meanings of concepts of family, marriage and human sexuality.”

Tlhagale added that the “cultures of Africa are under heavy strain from liberalism, secularism and from lobbyists who squat at the United Nations.”


Read more on this topic in LSN’s extensive coverage of the African Synod here.

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