Oh, that story about Pope Francis advocating population control …

t was based on a mis­quo­ta­tion. Oops. Here is what Vat­i­can pan­elist Peter Raven actu­al­ly said: “We need at some point to have a lim­it­ed num­ber of peo­ple which is why Pope Fran­cis and his three most recent pre­de­ces­sors have always argued that you should not have more chil­dren than you can bring up prop­er­ly.”

Uh, yeah.…that’s dif­fer­ent. The pre­vi­ous sto­ry was that the pope had advo­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion con­trol for the sake of “sus­tain­abil­i­ty.”

The truth is that Pope Fran­cis and the last three popes have said: If you can’t bring up chil­dren right, don’t have chil­dren.

The idea is known as “respon­si­ble par­ent­hood”; Pope St. John Paul II spoke about it here. It is the duty of par­ents, he says, to “to increase the fam­i­ly in accor­dance with the cri­te­ria of pru­dence.” A moth­er and father can decide to lim­it how many chil­dren they have “for seri­ous rea­sons” and “with due respect to the moral law.”

This was Pope Paul VI’s teach­ing in Humanae Vitae. (Pope St. John Paul II was quot­ing from §10.)

As for what these “seri­ous rea­sons” are, Gaudi­um et Spes 50 says: “The par­ents them­selves and no one else should ulti­mate­ly make this judg­ment in the sight of God.” They must act with due rev­er­ence for divine law; but whether they are able to bring up more chil­dren than they have is a ques­tion they must dis­cern for them­selves.

Many were out­raged when the pope said that Catholics should not feel they must “breed like rab­bits” in order to be good Catholics. Some mis­quot­ed the pope as hav­ing com­mand­ed: “Don’t breed like rab­bits.” But as I not­ed here, the pope’s remarks were made while dis­cussing a woman who had had sev­en C‑sections. Anoth­er preg­nan­cy could put her life at risk; anoth­er preg­nan­cy could leave her chil­dren with­out a moth­er. Respon­si­ble par­ent­hood, the pope said, would try to avoid anoth­er preg­nan­cy. (Through lic­it means, of course.)

So noth­ing the pope has said is in any way out of har­mo­ny with what the Church has already said.

See? I told you so.