The Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson following the COP21 UN Climate Change meeting in Paris have pointed out that “birth control” would necessarily bring about a positive resolution to the impact of climate change.
Cardinal Turkson, who, as president of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, said this in defense and implementation of the pope’s environment encyclical Laudato si’, he said:
“This has been talked about, and the Holy Father on his trip back from the Philippines also invited people to some form of birth control, because the Church has never been against birth control and people spacing out births and all of that. So yes, it can offer a solution.”
A lot of talks and comments have been rising ever since the cardinal made these statements.
But Cardinal Turkson in an interview with BBC expressed that to English speaking regions, “Birth-Control” simply implies the use of artificial contraception. So he admitted to be careful of his choice of words. He said:
“Ordinarily, in a Church document, the expression they would have used is ‘responsible parenthood.’ That’s the expression that’s normally used,”
“But in responding to a question that contained the expression ‘birth control,’ my intention was to present the Church as not inimical or opposed to the idea of spacing births,” he said. “The issue the Church has always had with this is method, how you do it? But the pope used the unfortunate expression of ‘breeding like rabbits.’”
As regards to his interview with the BBC, the reference to ‘birth control’ is actually a way of formulating the Church’s traditional teaching on responsible parenthood,” he repeated.
