I no longer have an interest in the attempts to pin the attrocities in Rwanda on the Catholic Church's attitude to population control. Such a view is patent nonsense. The majority of informed commentators (including from recollection the UN commander on the ground) who witnessed the collapse of the country into chaos felt that the international community let Rwanda down.

I count 54 paragraphs in the article quoted by Yabby (please forgive me for any miscount). They refer to a very detailed and complex political history of tribal violence, culture, poverty, colonialism and mis-government. One paragraph, which appears completely disconected to any other part of the article, refers to the alleged failure of the Catholic Church.

Let me restate the scientific evidence clearly; there is no evidence that reducing populations via policies promoting artificial contraception lead to better or more prosperous societies. Rather, the evidence is that prosperity and better education results in a deceleration in population growth. A prosperous economy also seems also to be a precondition for a democratic and truly free society.

Tony, the conclusions reached, were that an increasing imbalance of
land, food and people, caused the Rwanda genocide. Guess who was encouraging Rwandans to keep breeding like rabbits....

The Catholic Church cannot keep sticking its head in the sand over this like ostriches!

The Rwandan economy is based on agriculture, with about 90% living off the land. With plots getting smaller and smaller, with more and more people, eventually the proverbial sh*t hit the fan. If you have
8 kids to feed on less and less land, what do you think will happen?

If you are really interested, not just trying to explain away Catholic dogma with any old excuse, read what Jared Diamond wrote
on Rwanda, his his "Collapse". He is clearly at liberty to be more
explicit as to what happened there, unlike University professors,
who have all sorts of people looking over their shoulders.

Hutus landed up killing hutus, pygmies, who harmed nobody, were wiped out too. In the end people with no land, landed up killing
people with land.

More kids then a family can feed or clothe, is what leads to hunger,
suffering and a lack of education Tony. Economies can't develop either, if people are spending every last penny on kids they don't want. What is this obsession with the Catholic Church for ever increasing masses of suffering people? They are actively encouraging it! Its sad, it really is.

Kay “Thanks for your post”

You are most welcome Kay

Mr Man

Excellent post, succinct and to the point. Well said I agree with almost everything you said (I hold our PM in a different regard).

Philo “I am not Catholic but they cetrainly do not teach fornication, buggary and adultery as acceptable practise.”

Yes but what they teach and what they practice, on the evidence are representative of divergent standards.

Then again, such a disease infects most organised religions, nothing uniquely Catholic and its nothing a condom will help with.

Problems in starving third World communities is not based in the fear of the Pope and the tenets of the Catholic faith or of the Islamic faith for that matter. It is hunger!

When people are hungry they seek physical pleasure and hunger gratification. They do not behave that way because of their religion.

However religion teaches denial of self gratification and delayed sexual pleasures. Those communities that practise self denial and sexual chastity emerge by gaining pleasures in intellectual and atristic expression and become 1st world. This is why rigid discipline and delayed self gratification had developed first world communities. This has been because they have learned by denial to keep sufficient grain to plant the the next years crop, and so use their time in artistic, creative, intellectual and commercial ways to occupy their time.

Since 1st World Western society has developed the condom and pill etc they have removed the delayed need for self gratification and their drive for finding satisfaction in creative and intellectual pursuits has diminished. Beside hunger for a meal, sexual hunger is the most powerful drives we as humans have, so if both of these are met our drives for other things are reduced. The prime reason for money today is the heightened and more pleasurable pursuits of these two drives, so alcohol and drugs become part of the equasion and supposedly enhance that experience. The sheer satisfaction of work or creativity for its own altruistic purpose has diminished.

You refuse to face simple facts, Philo. The website which you resolutely refuse to comment on illustrates how US communities which encourage 'sexual chastity' and 'delayed self gratification', as you choose to call it, have a greater failure rate in terms of unwanted pregnancies than various European communities which teach young people the facts about sex without religious moral overtones.

As Yabby has repeatedly pointed out, the human female has the theoretical capacity to produce far more offspring than anyone could reasonably want, or be able to care for. We now have the means to regulate our own fertility with a high degree of certainty. If you and a minority of others believe that having sex is immoral, except under a rigid set of religiously inspired conditions, then go for it, but don't expect everyone else to follow suit.

Philo “Since 1st World Western society has developed the condom and pill etc they have removed the delayed need for self gratification and their drive for finding satisfaction in creative and intellectual pursuits has diminished.”

Really?

I would like to see what “evidence” you can bring to this forum to support such a statement.

For any measure of acquired knowledge, the rate at which “humanity”, lead by “Western society” has developed has accelerated rather than slowed or atrophied (as your claim suggests).

If you add up the number of significant inventions of the past 100 years it dwarfs all the inventions of all preceding millennia’s.

Now whilst I would be the first to suggest that no individual, in the field of music compares to Mozart, a lot of other people might suggest the Beatles and the Doors compete.
I would equally suggest that, despite the uniqueness of the works of Canaletto or Botticelli, they jostle for eminence along with Lichtenstein and Picasso. As far as sculpture, I find great difficulty in making rational comparison between the brilliance of Hepworth and Cellini.

To suggest the introduction of condoms and contraceptives has diminished creative and intellectual pursuits is complete and utter rubbish.

The only thing which diminishes human creativity is a repressive social order. On that topic we can start with the Cathars of Carcassonne, consider the Spanish Inquisition, discuss the Italian Inquisitions disproval of Galilleo and come up to the current disproval of private individuals use of condoms, all examples of a repressive religious order.

As for “sexual hunger is the most powerful drives we as humans have, so if both of these are met our drives for other things are reduced.”

How on earth does institutionalised sexual frustration and repression help meet any driving force (except for the masochistic) ?

I see, from its dogma, the Catholic church does nothing to satiate sexual hunger. It does, in fact endeavour to do the exact opposite (and maybe that explains why children are not safe in private with many men in vestments).