Miranda in Dallas, Texas, we may just get to your question and then Father
will have to give you the answer over the break. I'm not sure, but if you could
just give us your question quickly, Miranda in Dallas, Texas, listening on
the iHeartRadio app, your question for Fr. Joseph Fessio. Hi, Father, thank
you for taking my call. I'll try to be brief. My husband and I, we're married
in the Catholic Church, and we have a three-year-old right now, and I am
pregnant and we recently found out that we're having twins. Hey congratulations!
Oh thank you, thank you, yeah, we're very very excited.
Unfortunately, my husband has said, you know, after three kids he doesn't want to have
any more children. I have not felt that way. He is
non-denominational Christian, but we did get married in the Church and we are
raising our children Catholic. And I thought I had a few years until we had
our third child but now we're going to already have two and three, and one of
his arguments is that he thinks, you know, population growth--he's concerned about
carbon footprint and overpopulation. So I'm just wondering if there are any
resources to kind of debunk that myth and argue that with him from a Catholic
standpoint. Father, Miranda's question before we went to the
break had to do with: is it an appropriate kind of argument, or is it a
valid argument, to say a child is using up the resources of this world and
therefore we should not have so many children? It's not appropriate, I'll tell
you why. First of all Miranda, you ever flown in an airplane? Yes I have. And so
you're flying out of Dallas, Texas, you see a lot of empty space down below,
don't you? Yes that's correct. You know that every human being alive in the world
today, that's over 7 billion, could live inside the boundaries of Texas in a
three-bedroom house and there'd be room for everybody? Ever even being alive on the
planet, they could lie down on the ground and be within the city limits of
Jacksonville, Florida. It's just that we travel in the corridors. We travel in
Dallas, San Francisco, we think it's crowded. It's not crowded. The problem in the
West--and I--when the West I say especially Europe--there's not a
replacement of population. The United States is, except for immigration, would
be below replacement. So here's why--first of all I hope that your
husband loves those twins so much that he's gonna want to have triplets next time.
Because the greatest--the greatest resource we have, it's not fossil fuels, it's
not electricity, it's not nuclear power, it's the human brain and the human person.
And in the 1970's, Paul Ehrlich wrote his book called the Population Bomb predicting that
by the 1980's, the world be in starvation. We have more food
per person on the planet now than we had thirty years ago;
the human mind, human productivity, has been able to to provide so much that the
world, even though there's poverty in the world there's, there's less poverty in the world
now than there was fifty years ago and a hundred years ago. So the idea that
we're going to somehow save the planet by having fewer children, that is totally
mistaken. Plus the fact, how long are we supposed to have this planet? You know,
it's not forever. We don't know what God's plan is. We do know this: the very
first thing God said in Genesis chapter one is, when he created man and woman, he
says, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth." That's the one big commandment,
the first thing God said. So I realize this may not convince your husband.
The most important thing for you, Miranda, is to love your husband, love your
children, get him to love your children and be a real father to them, and
appreciate the fact that, you know, the best thing we can do for our country is
to have a large family with parents that live together and stay together and
pass on our culture and our faith to them. Because--why do we have crime? Why
do we have poverty? You look at the statistics, it's broken families. I mean,
people in prison, broken families, drug use, broken families, divorce, single
parenthood; we have to pray for those people, but the thing is, what makes a
society great is strong, healthy families. And leave it to God. You know, I mean,
how many kids should each one have? I don't know, but St. Ignatius alone, the founder of the
Jesuits, was number 13 in his family. Saint Catherine of Siena, when she,
you know, criticized the Pope and got him to go back from Avignon to Rome in the 14th
century, she was a twin, number 21 and 22. So
let's not, let's not limit what God can do. But I'm clearly--Miranda, I'm not trying
to exhort--you know, exhort you, because I know you want to have children, you want to be a
mother. Thank God you've got three now, but don't stop there. Tell your husband, have
one more for me, because I can't have it. Thank you so much Father
you really have solidified my stance, and I hope that God just gives me the
correct words and softens my husband's heart to having more children. One last thing,
Miranda, there may be some good books on this. Cy, can you think of some books she should
read? I'll tell you what, I'm gonna recommend a resource that you're gonna
be surprised that I recommend; but Miranda, if you go to the New York Times
website and type in "Paul Ehrlich," last year the New York Times made a video
about the population bomb and the hysteria, and they included themselves,
what the New York Times had reported, and they really demonstrate the whole thing
was nonsense. It wasn't a hoax as much as it was a panic, and it's just not true.
There's never been a better time in the history of the world to have children,
the world needs them, the world can feed them, and we ought to have more of them.
So I'll send you to the New York Times, just typed in "Paul Ehrlich Population
Bomb," and you're going to see a video that's gonna--it'll change things for you. Thank you,
thank you so much, Cy Kellett. Thank you Father.
Thank you very much Miranda, very very happy to take your call.