Posted on 10/17/2001 12:06:45 PM PDT by ex-snook
The collapsing birthrate in the developed world
By John F. Kobler
A few years ago one of our Passionist retreat house directors told me he was thinking of using “The Culture of Death” as the theme for the forthcoming year’s retreat talks. However sympathetic I was to this important theme of John Paul II, I told him frankly he didn’t have the horses! At that time I did not think the generality of preachers had a realistic grasp of the complexities of this problem nor a comprehension of the entrenched cultural opposition to the Church’s teachings on sexual morality. I am happy to say that the situation is now changing. A large segment of the secular culture is becoming aware of a serious demographic crisis, especially in the developed world. I would like to list some of the new data and insights reinforcing this changing outlook.
Peter F. Drucker, as you know, is the leading management theorist in the U. S. One of his latest books is Management Challenges for the 21st Century (NY: HarperBusiness, 1999). His second chapter (pp. 44-50) starts out: “The most important single new certainty — if only because there is no precedent for it in all of history — is the collapsing birthrate in the developed world.” Drucker lists the general figures for Western and Central Europe (e. g., the mostly Catholic countries of Portugal, Spain, Southern France, and Italy), and Japan. All of these nations are drifting toward collective suicide by the end of the 21st century. Italy is the nation at present most given to contraceptive practices!
In his book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1996), Samuel P. Huntington offers some comparative population growth figures between Christianity and Islam (pp. 65-66) and concludes:
In the long run, however, Mohammed wins out. Christianity spreads primarily by conversion. Islam by conversion and reproduction. The percentage of Christians in the world peaked at about 30 percent in the 1980s, leveled off, is now declining, and will probably approximate about 25 percent of the world population by 2025. As a result of their extremely high rates of population growth (see chapter 5), the proportion of Muslims in the world will continue to increase dramatically, amounting to 20 percent of the world’s population about the turn of the century, surpassing the number of Christians some years later, and probably accounting for about 30 percent of the world’s population by 2025.
It is good to recall that Islam today is going through a great religious resurgence of a virulent anti-Western nature, and in some areas of a violent anti-Catholic nature. In chapter 12, “The West, Civilizations, and Civilization,” Huntington has some sobering and instructive observations on the need for “Renewal of the West” and the problems posed by multi-culturalism in the United States.
I am aware that the above sources are contested on occasion. Therefore, I recommend an even more authoritative source: Replacement Migration: Is it A Solution to Declining and Aging Populations?, published by the Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Secretariat (ESA/P/WP.160, 21 March 2000, English only). This lengthy brochure (pp. viii, 143) studies the dwindling populations of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America, Europe, and the European Union. In a quite clinical and antiseptic way this study sums up the explosive challenges facing this collapsing birthrate (p. 95):
The new challenges being brought about by declining and aging populations will require objective, thorough and comprehensive reassessments of many established economic, social and political policies and programs. Such reassessments will need to incorporate a long-term perspective. Critical issues to be addressed in those reassessments would include:
In the light of the above demographic facts I believe that since 1968 Catholic theologians and moralists who have endorsed contraception have done a distinct disservice to the magisterium of the Church and the moral fibber of Catholics in general. More and more it is becoming evident that such theologians are isolating themselves from grassroots Catholic concerns and are largely talking to themselves in their university enclaves. A fine article by William Dean may be found in Criterion, a publication of The Divinity School of The University of Chicago, vol. 39:1 (Winter, 2000) 24-29, under the title, “The Voluntary Decline of Public Theologians.” Dean’s remarks aimed primarily at Protestant theologians apply in large part to the liberal elite of Catholic university theologians and moralists in the U. S.:
. . . the academic public intellectuals continued to comply with the university mindset and with their disciplinary colleagues around the country. What did it cost them when they glorified Mao Tse Tung or Che Guevera and allowed the university curriculum to be driven first by the counterculture and then by academic fashions? They did not need to depend on the public for their jobs or reputations, as the neoconservatives did. In fact, their jobs usually became safer and their reputations stronger when they shocked the public and belittled its patriotism. So, naturally, they felt little public pressure to reconsider their fundamental assumptions.
I know of only one Catholic demographer, Michel Schooyans, Professor of the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, who has grappled with the theme of “A World in Crisis,” and pointed out the present-day context and implications of the collapsing birthrate in the Western world. I became interested in Schooyans’ works because the crisis of the modern world is the larger context within which I view the pastoral rethinking of Vatican II. I must admit that, while I may have appreciated the philosophical antecedents of these problems, their concrete expression in Communism and Nazism, and Third World poverty problems, Schooyans opened my mind to the Totalitarian Trend of our Liberal Culture. Schooyans’ vision of the modern world is shaped by a deep Catholic faith and a profound scholarship. His ideas would give depth to any preacher of renewal today.
Three of Schooyans’ books have been translated into English: i. e., The Totalitarian Trend of Liberalism, The Gospel Confronting World Disorder, and The Demographic Crash: From Fatalism to Hope (forthcoming). All three books have been translated by Fr. John H. Miller, C.S.C, S.T.D., editor of the Social Justice Review in St. Louis. The books may be obtained from the Central Bureau, CCVA, 3835 Westminster Place, St. Louis, MO 63108. One of the outstanding qualities of Schooyans’ books is his familiarity with the data provided by international organizations (e. g., the UN) and governmental sources (e. g., U. S.). He also displays a profound acquaintance with the social encyclicals of the Holy See.
I would like to conclude by drawing attention to two issues deriving from the widespread contraceptive practices in the world today. Schooyans points out that much of the radical feminist movement is a modern version of the Marxist theme of class warfare. Lastly, Lionel Tiger, the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University, has a powerful book, The Decline of Males (NY: Golden Books, 1999). Tiger attributes the massive changes in society between men and women to effective contraception, the cause of today’s “gender wars.”
I close in a lighter vein: due to the decline of males on campus a number of colleges have designated their male applicants as the new candidates for affirmative action!
the japanese are racists and don't allow much immigration. the few minorities they do have suffer.
demographers in the u.s. have been aware of this trend since at least 1965, when the u.s. congress changed immigration law to favor 3rd world immigrants.
since then there has been a defacto policy of allowing people to cross the borders, enjoyed by both political parties. the dems like the new voters and the pubs like the cheap labor.
I think your 20 million figure is low however.
For some great Catholic activism on abortion check out www.excommunication.net!!!
Keep up the good work!
Good one. Maybe the third worlders don't have to worry about environmental worship. They just have rocks and sand to be concerned with. The environment nazis (or communists) sold zero population growth. After all more children pollute the world.
Are we all saying that a free person in this country must subjugate their goals and dreams for their life, in order to fulfill a duty, one that is not their choice, but instead imposed upon them by a fearful society?
Maybe we should have some street enforcers, like the Taliban, and any woman not pregnant gets beaten?
Amazingly, fat becomes fashionable again ...
Poppy Bush is a MAJOR fan of zero population growth. Do some historical research on the man. This was one of the major causes for the Bush family's falling out with the Vatican.
D'oh !! Whut?
The Jesuits and the Passionists are orders inside the Catholic Church--There are many more, i.e, The Franciscans-An order founded by St. Francis of Assisi, or the Dominicans [a teaching order] founded by St. Dominic.
The passionists focus their prayer and meditate on the sufferings and passion of Christ as one of their rules. They are my favorite order of Priests. :)
Well maybe we will just join the 3rd world then. But I think that Europe is also bringing in 3rd world immigrants. I don't know why Japan does not like immigration but Israel doesn't have wide open borders either. Both might have their own reasons.
Subjugate their goals? Why should a tiny human being [with as much worth as you] be violently murdered so that you can be free to have sex without consequence? Have a little mercy on those who can't defend themselves. Responsibility is key though--You might have to put the life of the child *above* yourself and your own needs.
Repeal the income tax, payroll tax, and laws banning polygamy. Then enforce the right to life of the unborn.
I hope you don't think those guys that landed on Normandy beach were nuts to sacrifice not only their future but their lives for something other than 'me'.
One could write a very interesting article about the soaring death rate in the undeveloped world. War (civil, tribal), AIDS, starvation, Ebola, etc., etc.. Do they perhaps balance out?
So, I ask you -- are you proposing that women have a duty? Something that usurps their freedoms in this society? Something that trumps their free will, their freedom of choice, their inalienable right of the pursuit of happiness?
The "developing" world can procreate to their hearts' content -- their water will only go so far. And that always is the limiting factor -- water, food, agriculture.
The question we must ask ourselves is this: will the "developed" world continue to support the "developing" world's population explosions, when their own land and water cannot support it?
Try to get your head out of your individual autonomy, "everything revolves around womyn's rights" balloon for just a few minutes, 'kay?
Fact: Men can't become mothers. Agree?
Fact: A society in which the average woman has less than 2 children in her lifetime is destined for extinction in the long term, unless that fertility rate increases. Agree?
Sorry if you feel like that's some kind of affront to your delicate personal dignity and right to self-fulfillment. It seems like pretty basic biology and math to me.
If women are free to go to college, have professions, and not marry if they choose, you are going to see an inevitable lowering of the birth rate (as well as the marriage rate.) This isn't just "affluenza" (cute phrase!) but the perpetuation of a cycle.
More educated mothers have more educated children; to achieve this they either home school (meaning life on one income), or they live in an affluent enough area with good public schools, or they pay tuition for private schools. People who do NOT care about their kids' education have many children AND put them into poor school situations (i.e. they don't homeschool them; don't live in more expensive areas w/ better schools; don't pay private school tuitions.)
With the exception of homeschooling, many educated mothers trying to obtain better education for their children are working to either pay higher mortgages (since housing prices are directly tied to school quality) or working to pay tuition.
Since homeschoolers are probably no more than 2% of families, even if homeschoolers all had 5-7 kids (which they mostly don't), it would not make a sizeable dent in the birth dearth.
I would never force anyone to be a mother, nor condemn anyone who didn't want that responsibility provided that they are not using abortion as a means of birth control for their sexually lassaiz faire practices.
The question we must ask ourselves is this: will the "developed" world continue to support the "developing" world's population explosions, when their own land and water cannot support it?
What the real question is [IMHO] is will we be able to survive the eclipse of the three pagan cultures who will be overshadowing us in the next 50 years. Mandarin China, Hindu India, and Islam--none of which are friendly to the west because it is based upon Judeo-Christianity.
While we've been aborting our children by the millions, these cultures have experienced a population explosion. We need to turn back to the nuclear family if we hope to survive. But no--I wouldn't *force* you to do something you don't want to.
Bring back some rights for fathers, and perhaps men might start thinking of starting families again. But as long as our courts are headed by female judges who live to shaft fathers, don't be surprised if more and more men decide to not become fathers.
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