Vincent Nichols to be appointed cardinal the Roman Catholic church. Many people will be saying so what? Of course it is of little consequence if you are a) non-Catholic or b) nonreligious. Note I don’t use the terms atheist (non-believer) or agnostic (doesn’t know either way). The appointment is given 3rd billing in the BBC news index, so it is obviously important; is it?

Well no actually, in the great scheme of things, to non-Catholics it doesn’t, he will be one of 19 new cardinals appointed, and every one is a potential Pope. This is the rub, we could see a British pope, if the current one, Francis dies. The last British Pope was Adrian in 1154, quite some time ago, and since Vincent is quite young at 68 he is very much a possible contender. So you may ask, what has got to do with the price of milk? Well quite a bit really; the Catholic church still sticks to the ‘no contraception’ rule and in my opinion this policy has caused the world population explosion. The millions of Catholics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and to a lesser extent Europe use absolutely no contraception and as a consequence have far more children than their more considerate neighbours.

Another aspect the Catholic church is against is abortion, which the Pope has reiterated today. That is too wide-ranging a subject to discuss widely here, but it adds to the overall feeling that the church doesn’t want to do anything about the world’s population. That is not something I agree with. The world is rapidly approaching 7 billion souls, and we are rapidly running out of resources (and space) to cater to all. What in the Catholic church’s thinking is wrong with trying to limit the number of people on the planet? In their perfect doctrine, the world’s resources and food supplies don’t figure in their quest to populate the world even more. God will provide. No he won’t, unless there is a divine intervention, and that’s about as likely as a renouncement of contraception by the Catholic church.

They should get with the programme and allow contraception, but then they would be the same as any Protestant church, and that would never do. God ‘elp us.