In his latest interview with a secular newspaper, Pope Francis has praised Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on contraception, saying his predecessor’s “genius proved prophetic.”
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Published in Italian in Corriere della Sera and in Spanish in La Nacion, the Holy Father tells journalist Ferruccio de Bortoli that Paul VI had "the courage to go against the majority, to defend the moral discipline, to exercise a cultural brake, and to oppose present and future Neo-Malthusianism.”Neo-Malthusianism refers to those who generally share the same views of the Anglican minister Thomas Malthus who advocated population control in the belief it would safeguard resources for current and future populations.The Holy Father also stresses that Paul VI “recommended that confessors should be very merciful, and be attentive to the concrete situations” concerning this area. He ruled out any change of doctrine on this issue, saying that instead “it is a matter of going into the issue in depth and bringing it about that the pastoral practice takes account of situations and of what is possible for persons”.
All this talk of changing doctrine is bunk. The Pope Francis works with doctrine, not against it.
