[Suntzu]

AIDS will help a little in Africa.

[Stormsmith]

The quality in European life(first world) is very high, their access to medicine is why their Pop is declining. Make the same everywhere else and their Pop will also decline, also their would be less immigration. How to do this: Communism.

The population in Japan is also declining, yet none of these countries are communist.

Declining population is more likely to positively correlate to health care (universal), free to low cost birth control, access to safe abortion, education, and well paying employment for women.

[Know It All]

Aid may be helping the life expectancy in developing countries a bit, but it's more just the spread of medical knowledge. You don't "solve an issue" with a method you expect to shorten life expectancy, unless you're a callous, heartless bastard.

I am looking at a world problem from a logical point of view. In the grand scheme of things human beings serve no more purpose on the planet than a spider, slug or rat. This may indeed sound callous, but after being taught about contraception, and having no food to feed yourself or your offspring, why have children. This is what many African people do. Even the most primitive animals have the intelligence not to do this, so I am sorry, they get no sympathy from me.

[Pants-of-dog]

These threads always turn into rants about how black people are stupid for having kids.

Grow up.

[Stormsmith]

People, especially I some African countries were stricken with Aids until a recent pope finally lifted a ban on using condoms. See, condoms prevent pregnancies as well as orphans who can't feed themselves

[quetzalcoatl]

The world currently produced enough goods and food for over 10 billion people, with many of it going to waste unfortunatly but nevertheless we have more than enough to handle population.
And with the advancement of technology specially artificial environments and 3d printing, population growths becomes no longer a problem.
It used to be a problem with older technologies but not now.

Perhaps, but I suspect we have only delayed a reckoning. We are rapidly approaching a limit to the amount of food we can squeeze from a hectare, and water is a continuing issue. Dwindling arable land and unpredictable climate make predictions worthless, despite technology. At some point, food prices will start to rise, and after that national food hoarding becomes inevitable.

Once food hoarding sets in, third world nations will face a massive population die-off.

[Suntzu]

These threads always turn into rants about how black people are stupid for having kids.

Grow up.

Black people are not stupid for having kids, stupid people have kids they can't feed or clothe.

[Pants-of-dog]

And racist people use this as way to call black people stupid.

Population is not the problem. The environmental impact of people is the problem, and that is not the fault of people from the developing world.

[Zagadka]

Maybe if the idiot religious sects could stop preventing birth control availability...

[quetzalcoatl]

...that is not the fault of people from the developing world.

True, but they will bear most of the price.

[Donna]

People, especially I some African countries were stricken with Aids until a recent pope finally lifted a ban on using condoms.

Wait, what? I think you may have read some fake news. The ban on contraceptives goes back to a 50 year-old encyclical, "lifting the ban" is simply not possible for a single pope to accomplish.

[Cookie Monster]

At the point of writing this the world population is approaching 7.5 billion. There have been 150,000 births today, and it's only 9.08 am in the UK. It's not even mid February and there have been just under 16.5 million births. The population growth so far this year is over 9.4 million. To every two people that die three are born. Scary, isn't it, and if you don't believe me, watch the this clock, http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/.

The world population is growing, however the world population growth is decreasing. The world population as such is not much of an issue as it will eventually solve itself. Of course there is an overpopulation issue, but this is more in relation issues concerning pollution, environmental degradation, climate change, decreasing biodiversity, resource management, etc.

[Suntzu]

A massive die off is natures way of dealing with over population.

[Zagadka]

There are mostly three balances to overpopulation of an environment: famine, disease, and war. Eventually they will level things out.

The problem we have now is that technology makes the capacity far more fluid and more unpredictable.

[Suntzu]

What is interesting is that starving men have no sex drive. Starving women don't ovulate. It appear that only children starve in Africa.

[david.findley]

a proper Fascist state, (like China, for example,) has a one-child policy that not only forces negative growth, but acts as eugenics at the same time.

Only highly developed western civilizations also meet a negative growth, ..but 1) it may still trend towards idiocracy and 2) liberals decide to flood the country with 3rd world immigrants .. so...

yay china.

[Pants-of-dog]

There are mostly three balances to overpopulation of an environment: famine, disease, and war. Eventually they will level things out.

The problem we have now is that technology makes the capacity far more fluid and more unpredictable.

And now we also have the capability of moving to a different continent when we have to deal with famine, disease, and war.

[Zagadka]

Right, migration is the other one, I forgot.

[Stormsmith]

Wait, what? I think you may have read some fake news. The ban on contraceptives goes back to a 50 year-old encyclical, "lifting the ban" is simply not possible for a single pope to accomplish.

Sorry, this isn't fake News, but I did get it wrong.

Some years ago there was a discussion on aids and condoms. The pops, Benedict, gave a confused statement saying it was more wrong to cause harm to another, as in the case of male prostitutes, in which case using a condom would be okay. Course pregnancy isn't an issue, but he made another claim that anyone could get condoms. Papers conflate the situation and reported a turn around in the papal position but the church later denied it. Bear in mind, there is a provision in the CC allowing people to "over ride" the papal decision if they are acting on the merit of conscious.

But this seems to be position on the virus, Zika:

Pope Francis told reporters Thursday that using artificial contraception may be morally acceptable in fighting the Zika virus, but called abortion another situation entirely, akin to “what the Mafia does.”

[Donna]

Sorry, this isn't fake News, but I did get it wrong.

Some years ago there was a discussion on aids and condoms. The pops, Benedict, gave a confused statement saying it was more wrong to cause harm to another, as in the case of male prostitutes, in which case using a condom would be okay. Course pregnancy isn't an issue, but he made another claim that anyone could get condoms. Papers conflate the situation and reported a turn around in the papal position but the church later denied it. Bear in mind, there is a provision in the CC allowing people to "over ride" the papal decision if they are acting on the merit of conscious.

But this seems to be position on the virus, Zika:

You do realize that papal encyclicals carry more authority than the personal statements of the incumbent pope? In fact, the latter don't really account for anything at all in the structure of the Magisterium (i.e. the Church's teaching authority on matters of faith and morals). Pope Francis makes confused statements on a very regular basis and may even be senile (the last two popes were decrepit while occupying the office), so it's important to remember that the essence of the Petrine faculty is not blind papalotry.

Bottom line, an emphatic no, Catholics who are striving toward holiness cannot take contraceptives and have recreational sex.