From: conan@durban.berkeley.edu (David Cruz-Uribe)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Vatican and Rio Summit
Date: 24 Jul 92 07:11:29 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Math. Department.

During the recent Rio Summit on the environment, several press reports
and a number of pundits criticised the Vatican for "preventing" the
summit from addressing population problems, though no factual
information was presented.  In light of this I would like to
share the following quote from the intervention given by 
Archbishop Renato Martino, the Holy See's permanent observer to
the U.N.  It is from the July 17 issue of L'Osservatore Romano.

===

When considering the problems of environment and development one
must also pay due attention to the complex issue of population.
The position of the Holy See regarding procreation is frequently
misinterpreted.  The Catholic Church does not propose procreation
at any cost.  She keeps on insisting that the transmission of
and caring for human life must be exercised with an utmost sense
of responsibility.  She restates her constant position that human
life is sacred; that the aim of public policy is to enhance the
welfare of families; that it is the right of spouses to decide
on the size of the family and spacing of births, without pressure
from governments or organizations.  This decision must fully
respect the moral order established by God, taking into account
the couple's responsibilities toward each other, the children
they already have and the society to which they belong.  What 
the Church opposes is the imposition of demographic policies
and the promotion of methods of limiting births which are
contrary to the objective moral order and to the liberty, dignity
and conscience of the human being.  At the same time, the Holy
See does not consider people as mere numbers, or only in
economic terms.  It emphatically states its concern that the poor
not be singled out as if, by their very existence, they were the
cause, rahter than the victims, of the lack of development
and of environmental degradation.

Serious as the problem of interrelation among environment,
development and population is, it cannot be solved in an over-
simplistic manner and many of the most alarming predictions have
proven false and have been discredited by a number of recent
studies.  'People are born not only with mouths that need to
be fed, but also with hands that can produce, and minds that
can create and innovate.'

As for the environment, just to mention one instance, countries
with as few as five percent of the world population are 
responsible for more than one quarter of the principal greenhouse
gas, while countries with up to a quarter of the world population
contribute as little as five percent of the same greenhouse gas.

===

The rest of the speech, and the Vatican's offical position paper
(published earlier in June in L'O-R) are based on recent papal
encyclicals on social justice (Centissimus Annus, Populorum
Progresivo, etc.) and constantly stress that the needs and rights of
individual people must be the basis of any economic and developmental
plan.  Their tenor in many ways allies the Vatican with the demands of
the Third World for a more equitable distribution of technology and
resources.

Yours in Christ,

David Cruz-Uribe, SFO