In this March 23, 2009 file photo, St. Peter's Basilica is seen behind a hand of a demonstrator holding a condom, on the edge of the Vatican's St. Peter's Square, in Rome.Alessandra Tarantino/The Associated Press
Pope Francis is firmly upholding church teaching banning contraception, but said Monday that Catholics don't have to breed "like rabbits" – an analogy that irked Germany's rabbit breeders.
Speaking to reporters en route home from the Philippines, Francis said Catholics should practice "responsible parenting," adding that there are plenty of church-approved ways to regulate births. But he said most importantly, no outside institution should impose its views on regulating family size, blasting what he called the "ideological colonization" of the developing world.
African bishops, in particular, have long complained about how progressive, Western ideas about birth control and gay rights are increasingly being imposed on the developing world by groups, institutions or individual nations, often as a condition for development aid.
On the trip, Francis gave his strongest defence yet of the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which enshrined the church's opposition to artificial birth control. He warned against "insidious attacks" against the family — a reference to gay marriage proposals — echoing language often used by overwhelmingly conservative U.S. bishops. And he insisted that "openness to life is a condition of the sacrament of matrimony."
At the same time, however, he said it's not true that to be a good Catholic "you have to be like rabbits." On the contrary, he said "responsible parenthood" requires that couples regulate the births of their children, as church teaching allows. He cited the case of a woman he met who was pregnant with her eighth child after seven Cesarean sections.
"That is an irresponsibility!" he said. The woman might argue that she should trust in God. "But God gives you methods to be responsible," he said.
But Erwin Leowsky, president of the central council of German rabbit breeders, didn't appreciate the Pope's analogy, telling news agency dpa on Tuesday that only rabbits which live in the wild are sexually overactive. He said those in captivity have tamer reproductive habits.
Leowsky says he feels the Pope should allow Catholics to use contraception rather than resorting to misleading clichés about rabbits.