Did he really say that?

How does he get this stuff out of his mouth? Pope Francis, I mean. In a recent audience in St. Peter’s Square, he declared that couples who choose not to have children are "selfish." He went on to pontificate that, “A society with a greedy generation, that doesn’t want to surround itself with children, that considers them above all worrisome, a weight, a risk, is a depressed society.” He seemed oblivious to the fact he was describing his own institution.

That is not to say he himself is selfish. He may have a few children scattered about. Quite a few popes have had, legally and otherwise. But if he has, he certainly isn't surrounding himself with them.

Last year, in a similar vein, he warned against a “culture of wellbeing” where couples opt for nice holidays and second homes in the countryside rather than children. “It might be better, more comfortable, to have a dog, two cats, and the love goes to the two cats and the dog,” he said. “Then, in the end, this marriage comes to old age in solitude, with the bitterness of loneliness.” Does he have no compassion, one wonders, for his fellow priests, for all those bishops and cardinals, ending their lives in bitter loneliness? Should his conscience not demand he allow them to couple, offering them the gifts of children and happiness in their declining years?

But no, this is not for the men of the cloth. Not for them the worry, the weight, the risk. The Church has always imposed those burdens primarily on women. It has fashioned its doctrine to coerce Catholic women into maximizing their production of little soldiers for the army of the faithful, and coercing their husbands into supporting them. Pope Francis, we can be confident, will not volunteer his brothers to do their share. Selfishness, it seems, is reserved for the clergy.