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(Vatican Radio) The Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, wrote an address delivered to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday which said “the protection of civilians should be one of the central elements of [United Nations] peacekeeping mandates.”

“In the early 1900s, around 5 percent of fatalities were civilians, while in the 1990s; over 90 percent of the fatalities were non-combatants,” – the Vatican diplomat said – “And it continues to get worse: All the recent reports and studies on this theme unanimously affirm that the deliberate targeting of and indiscriminate attacks on civilians are still increasing and tragically are becoming routine in defiant violation of international humanitarian law.”

Archbishop Auza also encouraged the United Nations to work harder to achieve a ‘zero tolerance’ policy on abuse by UN peacekeepers in conflict zones.

“Despite special measures taken by the Secretary General and adopted by the Security Council, the problem remains a serious one and must be urgently addressed,” – the Archbishop said – “More preventive measures must be considered, because much of the credibility and effectiveness of the United Nations peacekeeping  operations, indeed of the United Nations itself, depends on this issue, and all Countries that provide peace forces should make provision for judging and punishing such crimes.”

The full speech can be found below

Statement by H.E. Archbishop Bernardito Auza

Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See

Seventy-First Session of the United Nations General Assembly

Fourth Committee Agenda Item 51: Comprehensive review

of the whole question of peacekeeping operations in all their aspects

New York, 26 October 2016

Mr. Chair,

In  his  Address to the General Assembly on September 25 last year, Pope Francis singled  out “operations of peacekeeping and reconciliation” as one of the achievements and advances that the United  Nations  has  been  able  to  accomplish in its more than  seventy-year history. Successful peacekeeping missions, reconciliation and peacebuilding efforts have kept in check violence and conflict  stemming  from, as the Pope said in the same Address, “unrestrained ambitions and collective forms of selfishness.”

Mr. Chair,

My  delegation believes that the protection of civilians should be one of the central elements of peacekeeping mandates. An examination of the evolution of conflicts indicates that more and more victims are innocent civilians. In the early 1900s, around 5 percent of fatalities were civilians, while in the 1990s; over 90 percent of the fatalities were non-combatants. And it continues to get worse: All the recent reports and studies on this theme unanimously affirm that the deliberate targeting of and indiscriminate attacks on civilians are still increasing and tragically are becoming routine in defiant violation of international humanitarian law.

The consequences are there for the whole world to see: huge civilian casualties including many children; massive population displacements; the refugee and migration crisis; the intentional destruction of civilian infrastructure like schools and medical facilities; the use  of civilians as weapons of war by depriving them, inter alia, of food and other basic necessities; a total disregard for the safety of humanitarian workers and journalists; and other blatant violations of international humanitarian law.

In particular, woman and girls suffer disproportionately from the ravages of conflict, as they are specifically targeted as a tactic to incite fear and crush their will. Pope Francis reminds us that we must not “overlook the fact that wars involve another horrendous crime, the crime of rape. This is a most grave offense against the dignity of women, who are not only violated in body but also in spirit, resulting in a trauma hard to erase and with effects on society as well.”

Efforts to spare women and girls from becoming victims of conflicts should be accompanied by initiatives to strengthen the role of women in preventive diplomacy, mediation efforts, and post conflict peacebuilding and reconciliation measures. The role of women in peace and security should not be an afterthought or simply considered as something politically correct, but as an essential contribution to all our efforts to spare our world from further scourges of war and violence.

Mr. Chair,

My delegation believes that the peacekeeping mandate to protect innocent civilians caught in armed conflicts should be considered within the framework of the responsibility to protect. Genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity continue to  affect different areas of the planet, while the memory of the atrocities committed in the past, recent and remote, is still alive in the conscience of humanity.

In the face of these grave crimes, there exists a grave responsibility, first for States and then for the international community, to defend those who are exposed to war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. The international community is called upon “as appropriate, [to] encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility.”2

The 2005 World Summit Outcome thus provides that if a State is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the UN Charter.   Peacekeeping missions are  the  United  Nations’  primary instrument to help States weakened by conflicts exercise the responsibility to protect their citizens.

The Secretary General’s 2016 report “Mobilizing collective action: the next decade of the responsibility to protect” urges Member States to consolidate the consensus built since 2005 on the responsibility to protect. The Secretary General concludes that “it is time for Member States to show greater resolve in defending and upholding the norms that safeguard humanity, on which the responsibility to protect rests. If we do not, the achievements made in the first decade of the responsibility to protect will be eroded.”

The work toward a fuller application of the principle demands a "vigorous and comprehensive global campaign" to reinforce the fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law that underpin the global commitment to the principle.

While the Holy See continues to advocate efforts toward a fuller and more effective application of this principle, and strongly believes that it is a fundamental principle for the protection of innocent peoples from the ravages of mass atrocities, it is also aware that it is  not always easy to carry out this principle in practice, not least because its application is not easily reconciled with the principle  of non-intervention as sanctioned by Paragraph 7 of Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations.

Moreover, it may also give rise to the suspicion that, under the guise of humanitarian intervention or the maintenance of international peace and security, the principle of the sovereign equality of the Members of the United Nations, established in the same Article of the UN’s Charter, can be overridden by the invocation of Chapter VII of the Charter.

Nonetheless, due to the unacceptable human costs of inaction, my delegation wishes to reiterate the suggestion that the Holy See made to the General Assembly a little more than two years ago, namely, “it would be most useful if the States present in [the] General Assembly, in the Security Council and in the other bodies of the United Nations, could discern clear and effective criteria for applying the principle, and for the corresponding integration of Chapter 7 of the Charter of the United Nations.”

Mr. Chair,

Arms control is an effective strategy to prevent conflicts, protect civilians, restore peace and promote reconciliation. The Holy See renews its call to States to limit strictly the manufacture, sale and gifting of weapons that fuel conflicts and also are used to terrorize the civilian population.

Positive measures to put an end to the trafficking of arms and the financing that might directly or indirectly help in committing crimes of atrocity must be undertaken. Strictly limiting the trade and supply of arms in conflict areas or areas of latent conflicts are, after all, fully consistent with the pleas of the United Nations.

Mr. Chair,

Sexual abuses and other forms of exploitation by United Nations peacekeepers are  profoundly disturbing. The Zero Tolerance policy articulated twenty years ago has remained an elusive goal.

Despite special measures taken by the Secretary General and adopted by the Security Council, the problem remains a serious one and must be urgently addressed. More preventive measures must be considered, because much of the credibility and effectiveness of the United Nations peacekeeping  operations, indeed of the United Nations itself, depends on this issue, and all Countries that provide peace forces should make provision for judging and punishing such crimes.

The world expects that all peacekeeping personnel adhere to the highest standards of behavior and conduct themselves in a professional and disciplined manner at all times. The world, in particular the people who are caught in conflicts and wars, without any fault of their own, deserve no less.

The Holy See commends the activities of the UN Peacekeeping Missions and the sacrifices undertaken by the peacekeepers who, in many instances, have made the ultimate sacrifice in the interest of peace. Pope Francis expresses deep appreciation for what the blue helmet missions have been able to accomplish to restore peace and stability in many  regions in the world, restoring social harmony and making development possible. My delegation reiterates the commitment of the Holy See to collaborate, where possible, in the work of conflict prevention, conflict resolution and post conflict stabilization and peace consolidation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis addressed the administration, faculty, students, and staff of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Rome on Thursday, at the opening of the Institute’s academic year.

The Holy Father’s address was also in view of the Institute’s upcoming 35^th anniversary, to be marked in November.

In remarks prepared for the occasion and delivered on Thursday morning in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace, Pope Francis described the Church’s understanding of the family based on marriage as an expression and fulfilment of human nature and ordered to the general flourishing of the human race as a “great treasure” that is in need of “ransom” from several alarming intellectual, cultural, and social trends threatening it in many political societies around the world.

“It is necessary,” said Pope Francis, “to apply ourselves with greater enthusiasm to the work of rehabilitating – I would almost say the ‘ransom’ of this amazing ‘invention’ – of this divine creation,” which is marriage and the family. “This work of ransom must be taken seriously,” he said, “both in the doctrinal sense in the practical senses of ministry and witness: the dynamics of the relationship between God, man and woman, and their children, are the golden key to understanding the world and history, with all that they contain.”

Click below to hear our report

Pope Francis went on to explain that, as we are about our work in the world, we must not be unmindful of the frailty and wickedness in human nature. “Let us bear always in mind that we carry this treasure in ‘vessels of clay’,” he said.

Quoting from his recent post-Synodal exhortation, Amoris laetitia, Pope Francis went on to say, “At times we have also proposed a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real families. This excessive idealization, especially when we have failed to inspire trust in God’s grace, has not helped to make marriage more desirable and attractive, but quite the opposite.”

“Theology and pastoral solicitude go hand-in-hand,” said Pope Francis. “A theological doctrine that does not let itself be guided and shaped by the evangelizing purpose and the pastoral concern of the Church is just as unthinkable as a pastoral plan for the Church that does not know how to make a treasure of revelation and tradition with a view to the better understanding and transmission of the faith.”

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis said God weeps over the calamities and over the wars waged nowadays to worship ‘the idol of money’ and for the many innocent victims killed by the bombs. He stressed that God weeps because humanity does not understand “the peace that He offers us.” His words came during the Mass celebrated on Thursday morning in the chapel of the Santa Marta residence.

Taking his inspiration from a reading from the gospel of Luke where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, the “closed” city that “kills the prophets and stones those sent” to it, Pope Francis’ homily reflected on some of the moments of weeping during Christ’s ministry. He explained that Jesus had the tenderness of His Father looking at his children when he wept over the city of Jerusalem in the gospel account saying: “How many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling.”

“Somebody said that God became man in order to be able to weep, to weep over what His children had done. The weeping in front of the tomb of Lazarus is the weeping of a friend. This is the weeping of the Father.”

In the same way, the Pope continued, we can look at the behaviour of the father of the prodigal son and what happens when this son asks for his inheritance and leaves home. He said the father did not go to his neighbours to say “Look what has happened to me! This horrible thing he did to me! But I will curse this son…” Pope Francis said he is certain that the father did not do this although maybe he went “to weep alone in his bedroom.”

“And why do I tell you this? Because the Gospel does not talk about this, it says that when his son returned home, he saw him from afar: this means that the Father was continually going up onto the terrace to look at the road to see if his son was coming back. And a father who does this is a father who lives in tears, waiting for his son to return home. This is the weeping of God the Father. And with his weeping, the Father recreates through his Son all of creation.”

Turning next to the moment when Jesus is carrying the cross to Calvary, Pope Francis reflected on the pious women who were weeping, saying they were not weeping over Him but over their own children. He stressed that this weeping like that of a father and of a mother is one that God still continues to do in our times.

“Even nowadays in front of the calamities, the wars waged in order to worship the god of money, the many innocent people killed by the bombs launched by those who worship the idol of money, God still weeps and He also says: ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, my children, what are you doing?’ And he also says this to the poor victims, to the arms traffickers and to all those who sell the life of people. We’d do well to think both about how God our Father became man in order to be able to weep and how God our Father weeps nowadays: he weeps over humanity that ends up not understanding the peace that He offers us, the peace of love.”

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With nearly 17.000 Jesuit priests and brothers working in some 112 nations across the globe, the Society of Jesus, founded in 1540 by Spaniard St. Ignatius of Loyola and his companions, is the largest men’s religious congregation in the Catholic Church. Jesuits have been engaged in ministries as diverse as spiritual direction, education, the care of refugees, outreach to the homeless and theological, philosophical and intellectual pursuits. With its worldwide headquarters here in Rome, Jesuit communities and apostolic works are organized into some 80 provinces which belong to one of ten 'assistancies' around the world.  And among them is the Near East Jesuit Province, based in Beirut, Lebanon, that comprises the Jesuit missions in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco.  Indian Jesuit priest, Fr. Bimal Kerketta of Ranchi Province is one of the 35 Jesuits of various nationalities working in Egypt.  Last week, in the first of a 2-part interview,  Fr. Kerketta, who arrived in Egypt in 2002, narrated the hard way he learnt Arabic and spoke about the Jesuits’ educational and social development programmes such as women’s literacy, care of handicapped youth, agriculture, animal husbandry, the greening of desert land and students’ exchange programme with European universities.  Today, Fr. Kerketta begins the final part of this interview explaining that the government does support the Jesuits’ efforts, though not financially. 

Listen:   

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Washington D.C., Oct 27, 2016 / 03:31 am (CNA).- Travis Rieder and his wife Sadiye have one child.

She wanted a big family, but he’s a philosopher who studies climate change with the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. One child of their own was all the world could environmentally afford, they decided.

In his college classes, Rieder asks his students to consider how old their children will be by 2036, when he expects dangerous climate change to be a reality. Do they want to raise a family in the midst of that crisis?

Many scientists concur that the earth is currently in a warming phase - and that if the earth’s average temperatures rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius, the effects would be disastrous.

The 2015 Paris Agreement, signed by nearly 200 countries within the United Nations, aims to address just that. Signatory countries agreed to work to keep the global temperature from increasing by two degrees through lowering their greenhouse gas emissions, and to work together on adapting to the effects of climate change that are already a reality.

But reproductive solutions, such as the ones proposed by Rieder, are wildly controversial for the ethical and moral questions they raise.

Penalizing parents

In his new book “Toward a Small Family Ethic,” Rieder and two of his peers advocate for limited family size because of what they believe is an impending climate change catastrophe.

They suggest a “carrots for the poor, sticks for the rich” population control policy, which they insist is not like China’s harsh one-child policy.

For poor developing nations, they suggest paying women to fill their birth control and widespread media campaigns about smaller families and family planning. For wealthier nations, they suggest a type of “child tax”, which would penalize new parents with a progressive tax based on income that would increase with each new child.

“(C)hildren, in a kind of cold way of looking at it, are an externality,” Rieder recently told NPR. “We as parents, we as family members, we get the good. And the world, the community, pays the cost.”

While it might sound strange, the idea that climate change and overpopulation morally necessitate couples to limit their family size (or to have no children at all) is not new.

Since the 1960s, some scientists have been advocating for smaller families for various reasons – overpopulation, climate cooling, the development of Africa – and now, global warming and climate change.

And while the idea isn’t new, neither are the moral and ethical concerns associated with asking parents to limit their family size for the sake of the planet.

Should Catholics limit their family size?

Ultimately, Catholics ethicists said, while environmental concerns can certainly factor into lifestyle choices, those who would ask people to completely forego children simply due to their carbon footprint are approaching the topic from the wrong perspective, not realizing the immeasurable worth and dignity of every human person.

“The proposals (on limited family size)...need to be assessed with a perspective as to the very nature of the human person, marital relationships, and society,” Dr. Marie T. Hilliard told CNA.

Hilliard serves as the director of bioethics and public policy The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), a center designed specifically to answer the moral bioethical dilemmas that Catholics face in the modern world.

What’s problematic about the policies proposed by Rieder and other scientists is that they ask married couples to frustrate one of the purposes of their sexuality, Hilliard said.

“(T)he procreative end of marriage must be respective. Couples cannot enter into a valid marriage with the intent of frustrating that critical end, and one of the purposes of marriage,” she said. If couples are not open to the possibility of a child, “it frustrates at least one of the two critical ends of marriage: procreation and the wellbeing of the spouses.”  

Dr. Christian Brugger is a Catholic moral theologian and professor with St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver. He clarified that while the Church asks couples to be open to life, it does not ask that they practice “unlimited procreation.”

“The Catholic Church has never held – and has many times denied – that responsible parenthood means ‘unlimited procreation’ or the encouragement of blind leaps into the grave responsibilities of child raising,” he said.

“It does mean respecting marriage, respecting the moral principles in the transmission of human life, respecting developing human life from conception to natural death, and promoting and defending a social order manifestly dedicated to the common good.”

Considering the common good can include considering the environment, as well as a host of other factors that pertain to the flourishing of the human person, when couples are considering parenting another child, Brugger said.

But he cautioned Catholics against the moral conclusions of scientists whose views on life and human sexuality differ greatly from Church teaching.

“Catholics should not make decisions about family size based upon the urgings of these activists,” he said.  

“Why? Because they hold radically different values about human life, marriage, sex, procreation, and family, and therefore their moral conclusions about the transmission of human life are untrustworthy.”  

“(P)opulation scare-mongering has been going on in a globally organized fashion for 70 years. The issues that population activists use to promote their anti-natalist agendas change over time...But the urgent conclusion is always the same: the world needs less people; couples should stop having children,” he said.

And many worry that legislated policies encouraging and rewarding smaller families could open up a host of ethical and moral problems.

Rebecca Kukla of Georgetown University told NPR that she worries about the stigma such policies would unleash on larger families. She also worried that while a “child tax” might not be high enough to be considered coercive, it would be unfair, and would favor the wealthy.

Hilliard agreed.

“(A) carte blanche imperative to limit family size can lead us to the dangers the (NPR article) cites, as discrimination and bias and government mandates can, and have, ensued,” Hilliard said.

Women in particular would bear the brunt of the resulting stigmas of such policies, Brugger noted.

“(W)omen will and already do suffer the greatest burden from this type of social coercion.  Women have always been the guardians of the transmission of human life.  They share both the godlike privilege of bearing life within them and the most weighty burdens of that privilege.  Anti-natalist demagoguery is always anti-woman, always,” Brugger said.

All things considered, the Catholic Church would never take away the right and responsibility of parents to determine their family size by supporting a policy that would ask families to limit their size because of climate change, he said.  

It’s not people, it’s your lifestyle

William Patenaude is a Catholic ecologist, engineer and longtime employee with Rhode Island's Department of Environmental Management. He frequently blogs about ecology from a Catholic perspective at catholicecology.net.

The idea that we must choose between the planet or people, he told CNA, is a “false choice.” The problem isn’t numbers of people – it’s the amount each person is consuming.

“The US Environmental Protection Agency reports that in 1960 the United States produced some 88 million tons of municipal waste. In 2010 that number climbed to just under 250 million tons—and it may have been higher had a recession not slowed consumption. This jump reflects an almost 184 percent increase in what Americans throw out even though our population increased by only 60 percent,” he wrote in a blog post about the topic.

There is a similar trend in carbon emissions, which increase at a faster rate than the population.

“We can infer from this that individuals (especially in places like the USA) are consuming and wasting more today than we ever have, which gets to what Pope Francis has been telling us about lifestyles, which is consistent with his predecessors,” Patenaude told CNA.

Climate change has been one of the primary concerns of Pope Francis’ pontificate. While not the first Pope to address such issues, his persistence in addressing the environment has brought a new awareness of the urgency of the issue to other Church leaders.

In May 2015, Pope Francis published “Laudato Si,” the first encyclical devoted primarily to care for creation.

In it, the Holy Father wrote that the earth “now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.”

But never does the Pope ask families to have fewer children. Instead, he urges Catholics to address pollution and climate change, to make simple lifestyle changes that better care for “our common home” and to work toward a better human ecology.  

“It seems that voices that urge fewer children aren’t interested in new and temperate lifestyles. In fact, they are implicitly demanding that modern consumption levels be allowed to stay as they are – or even to rise. This seems selfish and gluttonous, and not at all grounded in a concern for life, nature, or the common good,” Patenaude said.

Furthermore, the good of any individual person outweighs the damage of their potential carbon footprint, he said.

“The good and dignity and worth of every human person is superseded by nothing else on this planet. If we don’t affirm that first, we can never hope to be good stewards of creation, because we will never really be able to appreciate all life,” he said.

“On the other hand, one way to affirm the dignity of human life – collectively and individually – is to care for creation. Because as I noted earlier, creation is our physical life-support system, and so to authentically care for it is to care for human life.”

Dan Misleh is the executive director of Catholic Climate Covenant, which was formed in 2006 by the United States Catholic Bishops in order to help implement Church social teaching regarding climate change.

Misleh agreed that while reducing the consumption of fossil fuels is “imperative” to reducing negative effects of climate change like droughts and rising sea levels, that does not mean mandated population engineering and smaller families.

“As for population, places like the U.S., Japan and many European countries have both high carbon emissions and relatively low population growth and birth rates. So there is not a direct correlation between low-birth rates and fewer emissions. In fact, the opposite often seems to be true: countries with the highest birthrates are often the poorest countries with very low per-capita emissions,” he told CNA.

What is needed is a true “ecological conversion,” like Pope Francis called for in Laudato Si, Misleh said.  

“(P)erhaps we Catholics need to view a commitment to a simple lifestyle not as a sacrifice but as an opportunity to live more in keeping with the biblical mandate to both care for and cultivate the earth, to spend more time on relationships than accumulating things, and to step back to appreciate the good things we have rather than all the things we desire.”

 

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