The collapse of Christian values has led to a corresponding crash in the birth rate, and it poses a really serious danger to our entire society. This is the warming from Héctor Aguer, Archbishop Emeritus of La Plata, Argentina.
The cleric has made his remarks after the release of an alarming report on the plummeting birth rate in Argentina.
'Our country, already sparsely populated, runs the risk of almost becoming a semi-desert if this trend continues. According to official figures revealed by the national health authorities, in 2023 there were only 460,902 births, the lowest figure in the last 50 years. This implies a reduction of 7 percent with respect to 2022, and of more than 40 percent with respect to 2014. The fertility rate in 2023 was 1.33, well below the replacement rate of 2.1, which is the number of children needed to keep the population stable.
'These are concrete numbers, not “reports.” This is the result of decades of plundering, not “winning,” as it was called by the ruling parties of the time. Governments of apparently different political persuasions, yet all of them functional to anti-natalist globalism, abandoned Juan Bautista Alberdi’s “to govern is to populate” for the alleged “empowerment” of abortion, divorce, the destruction of marriage and the family, the praise of promiscuity, and any other anti-Christian – and therefore anti-human – agenda going around.
'Christian tradition has always presented the family model, which in the modern world has been substantially changed to the point of being unrecognizable. The drop in the meaning of marriage via divorce has led to the denaturalization of the roles of men and women. According to this perspective, children are not a natural consequence and pets take their place. Culture – or rather, utilization – has replaced nature.