Catholics ‘are not required to have one child after another’

In a press conference aboard the papal plane on Monday, Pope Francis affirmed publicly that Catholics may have a responsibility to limit the size of their families.

During his five days in the Philippines, the Pope had made a series of strong defences of the ­family, all in the context of a country where child poverty is endemic, and the presence of thousands of street children is held up by many as showing the need for government-provided contraception.

The Catholic Church in the country of 100 million, 86 per cent of whom are Catholic, fought a years-long battle against a ­government-proposed Reproductive Health Bill that was finally passed in 2012. The bill requires government health centres to provide contraceptives and mandates sex education in schools.

Asked by a Filipino journalist for his views on birth control, the Pope reaffirmed his rejection of “Neo-Malthusian” ideas, according to which continuing growth in world population would inevitably lead to a global food crisis. These ideas, he said, were “an attempt to control humanity”, and low birth rates in Italy (1.4 per woman in 2012) and Spain (1.32 per woman in 2012) were consequences of this thinking.

However, he went on: “This does not signify that the Christian must make children in series.”

He told of a woman he met in a parish in Rome who had had seven children via Caesarean section and was pregnant with an eighth. “Does she want to leave the seven orphans?” Francis asked. “This is to tempt God.” Catholics, he said, must embrace “responsible parenthood”, by means of “dialogue … each person with his pastor”. In Manila three days earlier, the Pope had affirmed the teaching of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which bars Catholics from using “unnatural” family planning methods, and on the plane he again affirmed methods of natural family planning. “God gives you methods to be responsible,” he continued. “Some think that – excuse the word – that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits. No.”

The Pope pointed to “marriage groups” and “pastors” all there precisely to offer guidance. Implying that the guidance must be always within church teaching, he said: “I know so many, many licit ways that have helped this.”

Bishop Peter Doyle, the bishop with responsibility for marriage and family life within the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said: “In his inimitable way, Pope Francis captured the headlines with his reference to ‘rabbits’. What he was doing was reiterating the teaching of Vatican II in the decree Gaudium et Spes that in regard to procreation a married couple ‘should consider their own good and the good of their children already born and yet to come’. In the vocation to marriage, there is the call to openness to new life and to responsible parenthood.”