June 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) — The international coalition Voice of the Family is deeply concerned by the omission from the encyclical letter Laudato Si of a reaffirmation of the Church’s teaching against contraception and on procreation as the primary end of the sexual act.
The encyclical, published yesterday morning, contains the welcome assertions that “concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion” (No. 120) and “that demographic growth is fully compatible with an integral and shared development” (No. 50).
However the omission of any reference to Church teaching on the use of contraception leaves Catholics ill-prepared to resist the international population control agenda.
“God commanded man to ‘increase and multiply, and fill the earth’ (Gen 1:28),” said Voice of the Family manager Maria Madise, “but the environmental movement commonly regards population growth as a threat.” Madise continued: “Developing nations are being flooded with contraceptives and subjected to pressure to legalise abortion. Given that contraception and environmentalism so often go hand-in-hand it is deeply troubling that Church teaching on the primacy of procreation is not reaffirmed.”
Patrick Buckley, UN lobbyist for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), noted that “The encyclical calls for increased international environmental action in paragraphs 173-175, while neglecting to prepare Catholics for what such action will undoubtedly involve: renewed attempts to further impose contraception and abortion on the developing world.”
Professor Hans Schellnhuber one of the world’s best known climate change alarmists was among those chosen by the Holy See to present the encyclical to the press yesterday morning.
John-Henry Westen, co-founder of Voice of the Family and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews commented “Professor Schellnhuber is an advocate of the establishment of a supreme global government that would have the power to take action to resolve the perceived environmental crises, which in the view of his colleagues such as Jeffrey Sachs requires mass population reduction. In this context the references in the encyclical to the need for a ‘world political authority’, which should have the power to ‘sanction’, is deeply troubling.”
On Wednesday it was revealed that Professor Schellnhuber has been appointed a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) by Pope Francis.
In November 2015 the PAS will be holding workshops to discuss how to use “children as agents of change”. The program involves strategizing on how to deploy children to advance the environmental agenda worldwide. Such efforts seem to be endorsed by the encyclical in paragraphs 209-215. Some of those involved in the workshops, such as Jeffrey Sachs, are among the most vehement promoters of contraception and even abortion as necessary elements of population control.
John Smeaton, co-founder of Voice of the Family and Chief Executive of SPUC, stated “The international environmental movement often seeks to convince children that the world is overpopulated and that this must be resolved by controlling reproduction through contraception and access to abortion. There is now grave danger that our children will be exposed to this agenda under the guise of education on environmental concerns. The proposed plans of the PAS, and the lack of clear teaching on these dangers in the encyclical, put us on our guard. Catholic parents must resist all attacks on our children, even when they emanate from within the Vatican.”