Ratzinger on the End of Europe

Last year then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote an article called "If Europe Hates Itself" for Communion and Liberation. Here's a key quote:

There is a strange lack of desire for a future. Children, who are the future, are seen as a threat for the present; the idea is that they take something away from our life. They are not felt as a hope, but rather as a limitation of the present. We are forced to make comparisons with the Roman Empire at the time of its decline: it still worked as a great historical framework, but in practice it was already living off those who would dissolve it, since it had no more vital energy.

One of the subjects I've been wrestling with for a while is what the desire not to have children (on the part of individual couples and society as a whole) means in re why people think we are here on this earth. Biologically speaking, the only reason we exist is to have offspring which in turn survive long enough to produce offspring. Personally and spiritually, there is clearly much more to the human person than evolutionary reproductive success. There are circumstances when a person quite rightly chooses that marriage and childbearing are not his or he personal vocation. Nor is the personhood or worth of those unable to have children diminished.

Yet personally opting not to have children despite living in the married state simply because one does not want them seems to involve a redefinition of the human person, and not a good one. I'm not there yet, but Ratzinger's article is definitely good food for thought.