The Vatican released the booklet “Integral Ecology in the Life of the Family” on Monday, promoting care for creation and human life within the family and warning against certain ideologies that encourage abortion and sterilization as means of controlling population growth:
“There is a trend today to regard population growth as the major threat to humanity. Instead, the focus should be on extreme consumerism, pollution, the throw-away culture and the desire to exercise absolute power over the human body by manipulating it, thanks to recent technological breakthroughs. This is the case wherever there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research; when governments work actively to spread abortion, at times promoting the practice of sterilization and impose ‘strong birth control measures.’”
The 79-page document, elaborated jointly by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, is divided into two sections. The first one provides foundational concepts based on key writings of Pope Francis and other documents of the Church’s Magisterium. The second part contains thematic chapters reflecting seven goals taken from Laudato Si’; each of those includes a general explanation, a list of questions for reflection, and a list of proposed actions.
The booklet is available in English here.