From the Friars: Peak Humanity
Love is fruitful, creative, life giving. God is Love whose oneness is a Communion of Persons, like a family. This is the root reason why the Church has always insisted that the physical union between a husband and wife must be open to life. If we intentionally put obstacles to conception in the marriage act, then it will no longer mirror the mutual self-gift of the Divine Persons.
The 1960’s began with U.S. Government approval of the birth control pill. Sadly, most Catholics jumped on this band wagon and are still on it. There was great pressure on the Pope to change the Church’s teaching. In 1968 St. Paul VI published Humanae Vitae which explained why he could do no such thing. That same year, which was packed with significant events – like the Detroit Tigers winning the World Series- also saw publication of the book The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich. This alarmist account predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970’s due to overpopulation.
But population growth peaked in that very year of 1968 and has since been decreasing. Today panic is beginning to set in over the coming “demographic winter,” the actual decline of population. Japan and Italy, for example, are already shrinking steadily in number. The number of people on the planet will soon reach “Peak Humanity” and then begin to go down. This will cause much economic and social strain, including increased pressure to euthanize the elderly and disabled.
I visited China in 1989 and saw billboard images of happy one child families. It was illegal at that time to have more than one baby, and abortions were at times by force. Now the communists are pushing for more children, mainly for economic and political power reasons. The same is happening in other developed countries.
This week we remember the tragedy of Roe vs. Wade, legal child killing, the inevitable fruit of the contraceptive mentality. Let us pray for a renewed recognition of and obedience to God’s beautiful design for human love, patterned after His own Life. Pride and self-centered manipulation always lead to a culture of death.
May Our Blessed Mother and St. Joseph help us show the world the joy of Trinitarian love.
–Fr. Peter