Catholic teaching challenges award for Prince Harry, Meghan Markle’s two-child limit

By Katie Yoder

Washington D.C., Jul 20, 2021 / 19:01 pm

An environmental charity recently awarded Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for limiting their family to two children. 

In honor of World Population Day, British charity Population Matters presented the Duke and Duchess of Sussex with a “special award” for “choosing and publicly declaring their intention to limit their family to two.” 

Among other things, the charity congratulated them for “helping to ensure a better future for their children, and providing a role model for other families.” The group called their family size limit an “enlightened decision,” and said the couple’s environmentally-friendly example showed that a “smaller family is also a happy family.” 

The award came after Prince Harry revealed that he wanted two children “maximum!” in a 2019 British Vogue interview.

“I’ve always thought: This place is borrowed,” he said. “And, surely, being as intelligent as we all are, or as evolved as we all are supposed to be, we should be able to leave something better behind for the next generation.”

The royal couple have already reached their self-imposed limit with their two-year-old son Archie and one-month-old Lilabet Diana.

Catholic leaders challenge this idea, as EWTN Pro-Life Weekly reported on July 17. Pope St. John Paul II once stressed that an appreciation of the human person is necessary for interest in others – and the earth.

Catholic leaders suggest that welcoming children and embracing family contributes to the prosperity of the environment. 

“If an appreciation of the value of a human person and of human life is lacking, we will also lose interest in others and in the earth itself,” Pope St. John Paul II taught in his 1990 message celebrating the World Day of Peace.

Adding to the late pontiff’s words, EWTN Pro-Life Weekly host Catherine Hadro said, “the answer is to care for both the environment and human life.”

“We are called to respect the earth our creator made,” she explained. “But we must also respect the human life our creator makes.”

Hadro also said that she would not be alive today if her grandmother had not been open to life. Her mother, she said, was the youngest of 13 children. She said she is also married today because her mother-in-law welcomed 10 children, the youngest of whom is her husband.

“No, not every couple is called to have or will be blessed with a large family,” she said. “But to shut off God’s plan for your family is to shut up the creator Himself.”

Instead of posing a threat to the world and closing doors, children infuse the world with beauty, she said.

“The more people there are, the more love there is and the more opportunities there are for this beautiful planet of ours,” she concluded.

Former Washington, D. C., correspondent Katie Yoder covered pro-life issues, the U.S. Catholic bishops, public policy, and Congress for Catholic News Agency. She previously worked for Townhall.com, National Review, and the Media Research Center.