There are now six billion of us living on this planet. Every day there are approximately 220,000 more. If this trend continues, overpopulation and environmental destruction will eventually destroy us.

There is a solution.

Yet, despite the fact that the environmental and social consequences of overpopulation are well documented, the Vatican is still vehemently opposed to all forms of artificial contraceptives. Why? Put quite simply--it's power. For the Vatican to confront the issue birth control, it would mean putting an end to the myth of papal infallibility and relinquishing absolute power over the lives of a billion plus people.

At the UN conference on population and development, it was stated that "the Vatican supports the advancement of women's education and health care" and also admitted that "the Holy See does not support procreation at all costs". Yet, surley, their condemnation of birth control totally contradicts this!

While the Vatican claims to be "pro family" and "pro life", that doesn't seem to stop them supporting often brutal and dictatorial regimes. The Pope supports human rights only when the perpetrator is perceived as atheistic, therefore endangering the status of the church. He won't speak out against human rights abuses when the perpetrator is a right-wing regime, sympathetic to the Vatican's ultra-conservative beliefs. Consider how the Pope condemned UN agencies for providing Kosovo rape victims with "morning after pills", yet seemingly had no concern what so ever for the rape, torture and ethnic cleansing. It's plain and simple hypocrisy.

Pope Benedict addressing crowds in St Peter's Square, a day after Rome staged one of the Live 8 concerts, said he hoped the G8 summit would bring genuine and lasting relief to Africa. Again, pure hypocracy!

Millions of children are suffering from malnutrition, lack of basic health care and lack of education. Many are forced into prostitution and child labour. It's so very wrong that this should be happening in the modern times we live in. This kind of suffering should not be happening; this kind of thing would not be happening if people were educated about birth control and had unrestricted access to it.

Rather than preaching the wrongs of contraceptives and abortion, maybe, just maybe, more people might have a little more respect the Pope if he could just convince us all why it's so damned important to keep women in traditional subservient rolls? Rolls that condemn millions of women to lives of appalling injustices because of cultural and religious beliefs, and creating a vicious cycle of perpetual child bearing, poor health, poverty and misery.


Footnote: In the last ten years attendances at Catholic churches across Australia have dropped by 13%.