Jumping to conclusions
A friend pulled me into a conversation about the Pope’s recent remarks about pets, children, parenthood, and “diminished humanity.” Her concerns came via a Washington Post article (in other words, from a reliable source) and they seemed very well founded. At first, I worried that the Pope might be kind of losing his grip.
He seemed to be encouraging people to have more children. His reasons for that seemed to be that a declining birthrate would hurt the economy, leave people abandoned and bitter in old age, and that a choice not to have children was selfish and that refusing parenthood diminished our humanity. Instead of children, people are having more pets.
And I wondered: what is the leader of a church whose entire leadership is celebate doing saying that non-parents have some kind of diminished, selfish humanity? We have, how many people on this planet? Is the Pope insensitive to the unsustainability of constant growth either economically or in terms of population? Good grief!
I went back to the article and double-checked — so I thought. And yes, it appeared as if this really was what the pope was saying. And so I thought, “this is worth a blog post.” And just to make sure I was arguing against what the pope actually said, I looked for a transcript (in translation, of course) of Pope Francis’ speech. I found one on Snopes.
Oops. Turns out that the Washington Post article did accurately report what the Pope said — at least in a fast translation. But it also stripped the context from the remarks. Evidently, the context of these remarks was a section of his speech in which he was encouraging the adoption of orphaned children.
I still have some issues with what Pope Francis has said here! I have a hard time arguing, in this overpopulated world, for an increase in the birth rate. But a declining birth rate probably will, as he says, bring economic hardship — at least in the economy as it’s structured now. Parenthood transformed me, I think, and for the better — but I wouldn’t want to assert that such transformation can only be brought about by parenthood —or something like it, that Pope Francis describes as “spiritual parenthood.” Still, the overall impression that I get from the speech is not that everyone should be a parent or suffer from a diminished, selfish humanity. Rather, it is that the Pope is asking us to accept a duty of care for children, specifically for refugees and orphans, and saying that our humanity is diminished if we, collectively, are more willing to rescue dogs and cats than children. And that… has some merit. (Yes, and it also opens another can of worms. Here in Canada we have a long-standing problem with racism in our child welfare systems, in which adoption and other child “welfare” measures have been used as a tool of colonial oppression. Is there any uncomplicated issue?)
Someone said to me a while ago that the Internet and social media is excellent at multiplying outrage. Stuff on the internet gets more hits if it’s inflammatory. So journalists and bloggers have heavy pressure to sensationalize, to whip up controversy, to make things seem worse (or more extreme) than they are. I think that’s worth remembering. I try to avoid jumping to conclusions! But I just got caught, again.
