Right. Time to get a little more controversial than usual as well as to return this BCD subtext to its origins.
I originally launched this subtext—bonehead comment of the day—to fill the then current lull in admin stupidity with quotes from people who should have known better. Although there have been a few of those, most of the BCDs have been relatively quick rants on my part about some topical nonsense with the C in the title punningly swapped out for something vaguely appropriate.
But, we got ourselves a quote again …
You’re an example for everyone, for all the countries that maybe, and this might sound funny, these families prefer to have a cat or a little dog instead of a child.
The context here is that the Pope made this remark to political leaders during his current visit to Indonesia, which repeats his views implying that people should be having more kids. Seems like Pope Francis has been reading too much about Dope Vance’s ideas about childless cat ladies again …
As always, there are more than a number of things wrong with this comment.
For starters, having children is not an out-and-out commandment that I can find in the Bible. Not killing certainly is and not coveting your neighbour’s wife is too. (So no kids with her.) That being said, “go forth and multiply” certainly is in the Bible. It’s in Genesis 1:28 (among many other places, with most of the multiplying being in the appropriately named Book of Genesis). However, it’s not a general obligation and also not the complete passage. The full, google-translated quote from the original scrolls reveals that God said it to Adam and Eve:
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Genesis 1:28 (King James Bible)
The missing context shows that all the fruitfulness was meant to replenish the Earth, the same as when God said it to Noah and his sons following the Great Flood (Genesis 8:17 as well as Genesis 9:1 in case Noah forgot in the meantime). And some would argue that the Earth is more than plenished enough now. You could also argue that people choosing to have dogs instead of daughters are actually fulfilling the separately and also highly cited, dominion instruction of the very same sentence. Other times, God says to be fruitful mostly to specific people, but never really as a general directive for all humanity that I can find.
Also, isn’t Pope Francis being a little hypocritical here? I mean, how many children does he have? Or all the bishops, priests, and nuns underneath him in the Catholic Church? Yes, you could argue that they are all serving God in a different way, but who says that the same can’t be true for those people choosing to not have children? Ok, many aren’t and are choosing to fruitfully multiply their assets instead. But then more than a few officials in the Catholic Church have served God over the ages in some rather questionable, if not downright un-Biblical, ways too. Many priests also refer to their congregations as “their flock”, something that also sounds more like pets than people.
Finally, what business is all this of the Pope and the Catholic Church anyway? If some couples only want pets, let them have pets. That’s free will and it’s not the Pope’s job to judge them. (Someone else does that later.) And if there’s no free will and only the Divine Plan, then one interpretation is it really wasn’t their decision in the first place.
Or, as God says,
For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you.
Leviticus 26:9 (King James Bible)
The Blog About Fog 