According to the Vatican, Islam has passed Catholicism as the world religion with the largest number of adherents. The issue, according to monsignor Vittorio Formenti, is that “it is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer.”

He’s not quite saying to Catholic women that they should get back to following church teaching and have large families, or the scary Muslim infidels will overrun them. But somehow I detect a hint hint, knudge knudge here.

I noticed the reader comments in the Turkish online newspaper where I first read this. They were hailing the good news for Muslims and saying they’d better keep up the birth rate.

The reason I often feel like I’m surrounded by lunatics might be that certain forms of lunacy enjoy a reproductive advantage.