What the heck — Let’s turn on some Gregorian Chant and open up a can of worms.

Yesterday in Sydney, Pope Benedict XVI gave a big speech during which he said that Roman Catholics need to care more for the environment, since the planet’s resources were being “squandered” by human beings’ “insatiable consumption.” Here are the money quotes from His Holiness:

“God’s creation is one and it is good. The concerns for non-violence, sustainable development, justice and peace, and care for our environment are of vital importance for humanity …

“Perhaps reluctantly, we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth - erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world’s mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption.”

I’m focusing on the words “sustainable development” and “insatiable consumption.” Aren’t these just a teensy bit related to population growth? And isn’t the Roman Catholic Church’s planet-wide opposition to birth control one of the big reasons why the human species keeps getting more and more numerous?

(In 1970 the world’s population was 3.69 billion, and 654 million of them were Roman Catholic. By 2005, those numbers were 6.49 million and 1.12 billion. Carry the one, divide by the square root of pi… and Roman Catholics were responsible for about one-sixth of global population growth during those years.)

The Church seems pretty pleased with itself, noting that between 2000 and 2006 alone, more than 28 million new Catholics were added in Africa alone — the very place where the “no condom” rules are making it hardest to keep population numbers stabilized.  So much for “sustainable development.”

So what do you think? Should the Pope be lecturing the faithful about bending over backwards to preserve God’s creation while denying them the tools to avoid creating too many little destroyers? Or should I just shut up?

I’ll let someone else touch the abortion third-rail. I’m just thinking about population numbers.

Full disclosure: I was brought up in the Roman Catholic church (13 years of Catholic school, complete with priests and nuns), but I’m no longer quite so … how should I say it? … sectarian.

Bonus question: Is it sinful for the Popemobile to run on fossil fuels? (…especially since those fuels are literally the remains of dinosaurs whose existence is incompatible with a literal reading of the Bible…) And what about that 20-hour flight from Rome to Sydney? Happy Friday!