EDITORIAL

We welcome the 7 billionth child

Posted

Last week’s celebration of Halloween saw not only children delighted by tricks and treats, but also the birth of the world’s seventh billion person according the United Nations.

In an effort to cast the birth as part of the scariest day of the year, UN officials echoed the false Malthusian fears of old that another child means only the burden of another mouth to be fed. Sadly, for many the birth of such a child is not a time of cheer and good will but a time of doom and gloom for the world.

Such an attitude illustrates a faulty world view so prevalent at the United Nations that sees human beings as cogs in a machine competing for the consumption of the world’s limited resources not as beings made in the image and likeness of God. In their thinly veiled attempt to frighten people with cries of overpopulation that can only lead to less food for the hungry and widespread famines in the developing world, the United Nations focuses only on this negative world view.

Of course, their focus on the so-called developing world belies their elitist cultural view that only the wealthy and well-off should bring children into the world and somehow the poor and economically disadvantaged should suffer under their population control initiatives of coerced abortions and unlimited contraceptives. Conveniently they ignore the birth rate of the so-called developed nations especially in Western Europe which is continuingly decreasing, so much in fact that Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian Bishops Conference, has suggested that Italy is heading for “demographical suicide.”

While many in the United Nations might bemoan the birth of another child, we rejoice in the knowledge that another child of God has come into our world and welcome the child with all the love and respect they deserve. Perhaps this child will go on to become a wise teacher, great political leader, brilliant research scientist, dedicated medical doctor, an astounding musical composer or even maybe the General Secretary of the United Nations. Whatever the 7th billion child becomes later in life, we know that today and every day of their sacred life he or she is worthy of the respect and dignity that every human being including even an overpaid and overfed United Nations bureaucrat deserves.