Today's extreme search is "Catholic urine"

Google news search for "catholic urine"

As you might expect the usual suspects are going into their silly happy dance over a report appearing in L'Osservatore Romano that found a connection between the urine of female consumers of oral contraceptives.

One source gave it the absurd headline:
Fairfax Digital (Australia): Pill link to infertile men: Pope

The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report.

A more local account is from Fox which quotes AFP which quotes L'Osservatore Romano which doesn't have online text.

The contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said Saturday.

The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report.

"We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said, without elaborating further.

"We are faced with a clear anti-environmental effect which demands more explanation on the part of the manufacturers," added Castellvi.

I don't think they are referring to a direct ingestion on the urine but to the urine going through the sewers and then somehow remaining biologically active in the next loop through the food chain.

I don't think that that's a significant source. The real mother lode of estrogen is in additives they give to animals to fatten them or accelerate growth. I think the greens generally own that issue.

The bigger problem is not impotence or instability but a whole set of cultural signals and economic disincentives given to women not to marry and to raise children.

It's not an exclusively Catholic concern but natural law issue that a family is not only the incubator for children but for the whole continuity of the society from which the mother and father originate, hope for the future, and economic security for the people living beyond the years where they can work.

The future, as always, belongs to families.

Consider Italy, it ranks 204 out of 220 countries (and other regions) with 1.3 children born to each woman of child-bearing age. In other words, today there is 1 grandchild for every 3 grandparents -- in two generations, there will be only 1 Italian for every 4 Italians now of child-bearing age. Self-genocide.

Update

Clearly, the science behind oral contraceptives causing male fertility is not rock solid but rather wild speculation. I think it was imprudent for LOR to print it -- if only to stop the anti-Catholics from again using the Vatican a pinata as examiner.com does here:

Those Roman Catholics are at it again. It seems they will stop at nothing to stop the production and use of contraceptives.