MEANWHILE, AFRICA RISES

By Tim Rohr

In a recent post (yesterday, actually) I re-reported what the NY Times was reporting about the conclusion of Pope Francis' weird Synod on Synodality.

In short, the conclusion was a massive DUD - at least for the progressives, given that said Synod, after a three-year build up, held their best hope ever for the (Catholic) Church to change its teaching on all things "sacred" to them: everything from homosexual relations to the ordination of women.

However...!

However, not reported by the Times is probably the REAL REASON Francis backed down from his much-trumpeted synodal agenda: simple math, or more specifically, demographic math.

It's no secret that the Catholic Faith, if not all of Christianity, has been waning in The West for a very long time. 

True, the decline of the Christian Faith in The West can be blamed on everything from modernity to the exposition of the the rot of Catholic clergy sex abuse. 

However, the real bottom line for The West is that we just aren't reproducing - not just converts, but babies, children - the next generation.

Western Christian churches are not so much empty because of scandals or watered-down doctrine, but because western clergy, including many Catholic clergy, since the 1960's, have embraced and have quietly allowed for - if not promoted -  artificial contraception.

Whether one is for or against contraception, the fact is: Nature doesn't care. 

Contraception means less children and a smaller future for whoever embraces it - while cultures which eschew it, continue to "be fruitful and multiply."

This is why some experts believe Europe will be mostly Muslim by 2050 (and the U.S. mostly Latino). 

Europe will not be Muslim by Jihad. There is no need. Christians, mostly white, European Christians, are simply contracepting themselves out of existence. 

But back to the Synod and its conclusion. 

Just a few days before said conclusion of the Synod, the Catholic News Agency posted:

Vatican statistics: Africa had biggest increase in Catholics, while numbers fell in Europe

This isn't news and it isn't new. This has been going on for decades. 

In fact, the most powerful person in the universal Catholic Church, probably much to Francis' consternation, is a Black Man, a Black African Man, a certain Cardinal Robert Sarah - who many thought would be the next pope after Benedict quit The Chair in 2013.

After Benedict quit, Sarah was sidelined, and Francis was elected under suspicious circumstances - which is why some, if not many, question the legitimacy of his papacy.

Upon his election - in almost Banana Republic style - Francis would be quick to get rid of his most powerful adversaries: the likes of Sarah (who, at the time was Prefect of the very powerful Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and (Cardinal Raymond) Burke (who, at the time was Prefect for the Apostolic Signatura - the "Supreme Court" of the Vatican) from the papal halls of power.

But, as the saying goes, "it's not nice to fool Mother Nature." And, in fact, it's not only "not nice to fool Mother Nature," it's impossible. As the great-late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once said: 

"God will forgive, man may forgive, but Nature never forgives." 

In short, and by way of analogy, a habitual drunkard, may, at the end of his life, repent for his drunkenness. And while he may find forgiveness from God and his wife (if he still has one), he will not find forgiveness from Nature. 

It will kill him anyway.

For nearly 70 years, Europe, followed by the rest of The West, has been preaching, teaching, and providing for a chemically, surgically, and mechanically "spaded" population...and mostly limitless access to abortion in case any of that fails. 

Meanwhile, Africans, Muslims, (and in The West) Latin Americans, continue to do what Nature manufactured them to do: reproduce...which is what all of Nature seeks to do unless it is "chemically, surgically, or mechanically" impeded by "bright" human beings. 

Certainly there are the concerns relative to the "quality of life" of those children who make it through the womb. But Nature cares nothing for that. In the end, "quality of life" will find its own measure: there will be no quality of anything if there is not life to work with. 

In the End

In the end, at least for Francis and his Synod, the reality is that the progressives of The West are old and soon to be dead - leaving, via their own decree, a just-as-dead lack of progeny. 

Meanwhile, Africa will rise...and probably already has.