Though a bewildering plethora of personal choices are part of most modern lives. and opinions, theories, economics—both good and bad—all command attention and response, beneath them all, allegiance to God and his Divine Providence requires a moral decision in keeping with his abiding principles. It is the proposition of this essay that to the question, "What should I do with my life?", we ought readily to respond, "First, welcome children!" It is an assertion that applies to persons of all vocations and walks of life, married or celibate and provides a totally coherent option that matches the challenge that even the most and least important of us will experience. This is particularly salient in a period and society which is so outrageously and increasingly dominated by anti-natalist principles. This results in the fact that we are now faced with a vast and certain collapse of world population beginning in mid-century—only 35 years away—and the almost total collapse of fertility rates. Slow at first, by 2100 world population will be vastly reduced and consist mostly of old people. A reversal must happen, or mankind might not even survive. Population Control, a book by Steve Mosher, is an important reading for all serious persons. It is just one source which outlines impending events, but even the UN, a world leader in anti-population activity, paints much the same picture.

Under these circumstances, it seems to me particularly distressing that the currently prevailing educational efforts in the Church on the topic of NFP seem to fail to promote its worthy common usage among Catholic couples. Even episcopal advertisements for educational programs about NFP are devoid of reasons for its use.¹ Were it not so, and were Catholic sexual morality more clearly and consistently preached, our statistically based presence in modern societies would hopefully be entirely different. As regards births, abortions, contraception, infidelity and divorce there is no clear current difference between Catholics and the people among whom they live.

Recognizing the Problem

No one would doubt that some Catholics are well instructed in the ends of marriage and the conditions necessary to morally employ NFP, and no one should assert that periodic continence is wrong in the circumstances of many people's lives. Certainly, I do not so assert in this essay. Nevertheless, having repeatedly witnessed highly defensive sensitivity among persons who have been involved in NFP education programs, it provokes a perplexed response in my mind as I see, hear and read how many of those educators seem to react to the need to have serious reasons for the practice of NFP. Their defensive reaction may be a tip-off to underlying contradictions and seems to reflect a gap between a truly Catholic perspective and a general perception of many people who see in NFP a way to achieve the very same objective as with artificial contraception. Similarly, phraseologies like "approved by the Church," "responsible parenthood," "promotes unity and harmony," etc., which are common, seem to me to be either taken out of context, simply false and, even more troubling, destructive of a Catholic understanding of both the Sacrament of Marriage and the overarching purpose and character of our Faith in Jesus Christ and His Church. A much more important Catholic issue is at stake than a response to "the pill" or aid to childless couples, and it is being ignored.

Issues associated with ethics and theology are generally examined today through the prisms of modern science, as Cardinal Ratzinger observes in his comments about Auguste Comte in the first pages of Chapter One of his little book, Faith and the Future, Ignatius Press, in English, 2008. (First published in German, 1970.) The future Pope notes with sardonic understanding, speaking about the evolution of modern thought. "Gradually, the positivist form of thinking would come to be applied to all departments of reality. Finally, even the most complicated and least comprehensible department, the ultimate, longest defended citadel of theology, would be successfully subjected to positivist scientific analysis and exposition. Moral phenomena and man himself—his essential human nature—would become subject matter for the positive sciences. Here, too the mystery of the theologians would little by little have to lose ground to the advance of positivist thinking. In the end, it would be possible to develop even a 'social physics', no less exact than the physics that charts the inanimate world. In the process, the realm of the priest would ultimately vanish, and questions about the nature of reality would be handed over totally to the competence of scholars." He concludes, "It seems incontrovertible that today, the mentality described by Comte is that of a very large section of human society. The question about God (i.e. what He wants) no longer finds any place in human thought."

Persons intending to speak about Catholic family life do so today in the context of Economics, Demographics, Sociology, History, Politics, Positive Law, Agronomy, legal precedent, Climatology, Actuarial statistics and probably many other scientific specialties. The "realm of the priest (God's representative)" in public discourse has largely disappeared, as they themselves join in with pseudo "Malthusian" argumentation. Unwittingly, not only have the priests abandoned their own realm of expertise, the spiritual life, but they effectively add weight to the argumentation of anti-life forces by engaging those forces on their own chosen battleground (their sciences, however dismal), rather than the sciences of the Spirit and Faith. In these latter, the Cardinal Virtues are the God-chosen battleground of our Christian battle.

I find it particularly revealing that man can find the center of his most telling response to marital ethics and theology in a simple consideration about the Cardinal Virtues : Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. Each can be offended against by excess or deficiency, except for Justice. When we act with Justice, giving to each his due, there is no fault of excess. The virtue is practiced and made our own. We find however, when we examine ourselves, that an excess of Justice has another name. It is generosity.

In light of the above, I believe that there are three evident assumptions that should establish the parameters of our thinking: 1) Analogously to Our Lord's human nature being subsumed into his Divine nature, our humanity should aspire to respond mightily to our Christian vocation and condition as children of God, rather than just living as 'nice', naturally good people who act like everyone else with nothing but a watered down vision of life; 2) God favors generosity with life; 3) God's innate option for life requires "grave" or "serious" reasons for us to deliberately choose another path.

Background

Replacement is the only (qualified) natural fertility-expectation from a married couple. I do not doubt, however, that the end of the Covenant of Marriage is and must be at the service of our supernatural life, as expressed by its very existence as a Sacrament in the Church. Therefore, the issue in Christian marriage is simply this: generous parenthood in imitation of God the Father, through the mutual love and support of the spouses, all tending to cooperate with salvation for ourselves and the great family from which we have come and toward which we tend...

It seems to me that this needs to be emphasized in any instruction about sexuality. Taken in context, generosity, particularly in married life, always has been taught by the Universal Church but, perhaps in an effort to stay contiguous and interactive with degraded societal behavior, rather than standing aloof, Catholic education on this subject has appeared to present NFP as an alternative to contraception, and it has never even come close to publicly, adequately and consistently presenting the required human, moral and religious justification necessary for individual couples to veer off from God's general plan of life for the human race.³ As prima facie evidence of the general failure to give a truly Catholic catechesis on this aspect of marital life, we need look no further than consideration of the fact that Catholics are statistically indistinguishable on abortion and contraception from the people among whom they live. Repeated national polls have established this beyond doubt.

Conceding the present Catholic statistical situation , it should be important to examine the use of the key word "responsible" as used in the teaching of Pope John Paul II. Nowhere does the Pope suggest that this word, in any sense, mandates limitation of pregnancies, even for those who are poor or badly situated economically, or excludes the Christian responsibility for generosity. The word "responsible," in the usage of JP II, quite simply means that we should examine ourselves regarding the issue of generosity in our response to God's Holy Will and never, wily-nilly, elect to limit births for arbitrary, self-seeking reasons. The late Holy Father was a foremost advocate of our individual free will, not as a theoretical thing but as something we need to apply and be "responsible" for. So used, there is an implied blame for its misuse. Having or avoiding children is not an indifferent choice. It is close to the very purpose of mankind's life on Earth, and the social reality of communal salvation (Spe Salvi, 14).

The Popes have used the words "grave" or "serious" with regard to the reasons we might need in order to use NFP, but "how-to" instruction, isolated even briefly from this context, must be very close to the rationale of the irreligious segment of our population. Without a valid motivation, NFP shares in the perspective of those who reject their fertility, and who have failed to consider the essential Christian virtue of generosity, particularly as a response to and in imitation of, our incredibly generous Creator. Pro-creative generosity, dealing as it does with the most elemental impulses of our God-given nature, must be great enough to thrust Catholics into a great trust in Providence, or risk being a Faith without Faith, one that risks little for the sake of the Kingdom – something that is required of everyone. Faith, Hope and Charity reside in this expression of a generous response to God as nowhere else.

The Current Adoption of NFP As An Element of Marital Theology

It seems to me that an early consideration in any examination of NFP suggests that the physiology of either timed conceptions, conception avoidance, or achieving conception in spite of problems, is essentially a matter to be dealt with by a faithful medical professional. Of great importance is also the role of lactation and nursing which deserves a major place in any properly motivated instruction about spacing children when considered necessary. I think that if it is to be examined and explained under the auspices of the Church, it should be explained as an element of natural religion and physiology, i.e. natural phenomena of which we can take note.

The prime Catholic message must be to preach a generous life; to be counter-cultural, especially in a society which denigrates life; to inspire both our fellow religionists and our culture with the glorious happiness and purposefulness of living for others, all in response to the Person who saved us. Preaching NFP as a kind of "legal" alternative to contraception is to preach a deficiency, a half-truth. I think it would be best presented as a kind of "backwater" of natural theology, provided by our understanding Creator and given as a kind of relief valve for times of serious distress and need. Thus understood, He seems to beg for our loving trust in his Providence, but refuses to condemn us in our human distress. To use NFP otherwise is to adopt the world's perspective that we should arbitrate with God over our own lives. "When I get my degree," "When we have more time and money," "This far and no further," "This part of my life is for me," "I need to enjoy myself and relax" and a hundred other expressions reflect this attitude.

An education in sexuality can best be taught in the context of family life, but, an authentic Catholic sexual life should not be an education in avoiding pregnancy or disease, or some psychological or economic problem. Such an education, would be a perversion of Catholic life and tear at the heart of Western civilization, particularly when it results in sterile marriages from their beginning, marriages which, in a true sense, have never even been consummated. I have even heard that NFP instructors have advised their charges that they should practice NFP for the first year just "to get to get to know each other". Such instructors should logically be the first witnesses at the likely ensuing annulment proceedings, but not in defense of the bond.

Catastrophic Worldwide Consequences of Avoiding the Purpose of Marriage

It is no secret that projections indicate the Russian people, for example, could be reduced to a population of 112 mm by the year 2050.⁴ It was around 200 million in 1990. Contraception, abortion, materialism, alcoholism, a plunging birth-rate, and despair are irreversibly destroying their country. Having killed or rejected so many children, their economy lacks any engine of sustainability, and that result is spreading throughout the world. A secularly emancipated and emasculated Europe is beginning to realize it has a catastrophic future dominated by a fecund Islam. Italy is down to a 1.2 birth rate, and its Government is considering minor bribery to induce its women to increase births by trying to get them to cut back on the widespread practice of abortion. ^{5, 6} Despite Mexican immigrants, our own USA has a good chance for being a collapsing and unintelligible society by the middle of this century, having completely lost its essential roots in the "West," to say nothing of its economy. Authentic Western society, as a living reality and as a glory of the Catholic Church, is on the edge of disaster. Its deterioration cannot be the Will of God. It is the result of sin, apostasy and a deliberate, self-centered withdrawal from the generous sharing of life. Even the U.N.'s anti-natalist population predictors admit that the world will drop by many billions of persons between 2050 and 2100, and it presents no basis for expecting a leveling-off or a stable population thereafter. Those that are left, after what has been called the "White Pestilence" has subsided somewhat, will still be dominated by the reproductively over-age. The future at that point will be a grave question. This is not alarmist propaganda. The Actuarial and Demographic sciences support these predictions. "How ominous are the current fertility figures? Very ominous." ⁷

The Only Solution

Today, there is only one explicit norm of behavior that dominates general society: "What do I want?". It is totally in opposition to Christian life and it simply confirms, in the minds of the young Catholic couple, an incoherent norm of behavior: "How do I do what I want without seeming to sin?" Such a minimalist perspective should hardly win the hearts of a serious Christian. Rather, "What does God want from me in a spirit of generous response to His great sacrifice for me?" - that is the question deserving of attention, just as continence (a topic not often if ever reflected on or even spoken of today) should occupy a place of honor and preeminence in the spiritual life of married couples if pregnancy must be avoided. I have felt deep support for my perspective by reflecting on St. Paul in his letter to Romans, VIII, 12/17 (and elsewhere). He begins this paragraph with these words: "Thus, brethren, nature has no longer any claim upon us, that we should live a life of nature (that is, our fallen nature). If you live a life of nature, you are marked out for death. If you mortify the ways of nature through the power of the Spirit, you will have life." He does not condemn "nature," but rather urges us to a much higher standard when responding to God in its use. A little further on, he tells us that nature has been preempted by the hope we look forward to.

Despite vast evidence to the contrary, there are those who regard the world as already vastly over-populated, perhaps because of the visual perception created by large urban populations where we have come to live, especially over the last half century. This ideology has assured the world of its coming nightmare. There are also those of us who think we are not the judge of what God meant when He said "Fill the Earth," but who have an underlying sense that God meant something much greater than we have so far surmised. At the present time we have ceded the battleground to God's enemies and now find ourselves embroiled in discussions and arguments about methods to limit life and how to accomplish such things as "sustainability" and "reproductive health" (part of the rhetoric of Planned Parenthood, and that of Cardinal Renato Martino e.g., the Vatican's former representative at the UN)⁸. They seem to quake in fear that we have already reproduced too much, rather than why and how we should follow God's plan of filling the earth. While we cannot expect the Godless to talk about God's Will, it appears the Church itself must do a much better job of presenting a positive view of life, particularly among its adherents.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is my impression and opinion that ambiguity, timidity and, worst of all, explicit disagreement with Church teaching dominates the thinking of many persons engaged in marriage preparation, bishops, priests, teachers and students. The minimalist view presented under the label of NFP, (which I would contend is better called "Not For Propagation"), has tended to jeopardize the spiritual lives of countless "Catholic" couples, at the deepest Christian level, by presenting a muted, truncated or distorted vision of the Church's complete view of marriage. It seems to me there is no way a healthy Church can exist in countries so affected without a serious and pervasive change. The light of God's Providence and generous family life, provided through our corporate Catholic memory, and which had existed and permeated our culture in the West for so many centuries, has nearly been extinguished in the gloom of a new ethic of self-fulfillment. A kind of Catholic rejection of conception is leading the way, rather than a generous life, and hope in a Provident God which is made real in the ancient practice of continence within marriage when prompted by the circumstances of life.⁹

I have found in extracts of Cardinal Newman's sermon "Ventures of Faith" a particularly poignant and apt (composite) quotation. I offer it as a summary of what I have been trying to say:

No one among us knows for sure
    That he himself will persevere.
Yet each and every one among us, for just a chance,
    Must make a venture, without a sure return.

It's a venture strange with nothing in it of
    Anxious fear and risk, danger or uncertainty.
Faith, the essence of a Christian's life, lies
    In ceding, on His word alone, what we have for what we have not.

Generous hearts speak sincerely and self-assured, but with ignorance,
    Of what they will do for Christ and, for their sincerity,
They are taken at their word as a just reward.
    They have yet to learn how serious that word truly is.

"They say unto Him, We are able" and
    The vow is recorded in heaven.¹⁰

End Notes and References:

¹ An example is presented in the News Release of the Couple to Couple League of Arkansas published July 26, 2008, by Malea Hargett, Editor

Natural family planning now updated for younger couples
Sympto-Thermal Method courses led by nine Arkansas couples

It concludes:

"Research has proven that the method is 99 percent effective and less than 5 percent of couples who practice NFP get divorced.

"You develop certain virtues that are good for marriage, like patience, understanding, communication. You don't take your spouse for granted. You have God's blessing because you are following his rules, not the world's rules for sexuality." (The question might more properly be asked, how many NFP couples have more children than the prevailing birthrate? This question and the bold type is added to emphasize the perspective of the News Release.)

² This approach to the Ends of Marriage places both children and the mutual love and support of the partners into a single end which sublimates both to our supernatural Life. The obvious purpose of our bodily organs cannot be ignored, and we need to recognize that, if the desirable love and support of the partners was of "equal" status to reproduction, most marriages of history, certainly before the Romantic period in which we live, would be invalid. I cannot conceive a Sacrament to be in any way essentially dependent on emotional factors. In marriage, one person effectively says to the other, "I will be exclusively faithful to you for the rest of my natural life, and have children only with you". These three goods (bona) of marriage, i.e. exclusivity, fidelity and children (see St. Augustine), could properly be expanded, it seems to me, to include "common life". This latter is representative of the mutual support and affection that is present either from the beginning of the union, or develops as life goes on. In any event, all four "bona" are devoid of emotion and represent the essence of wedlock.

³ See the Press Release issued by the Diocese of Phoenix, AZ.

Natural Family Planning becomes part of Phoenix Diocese, Published: June 20, 2008 by Bishop Thomas Olmsted at www.diocesephoenix.org/mfrl/MFL/nfp.html.

It is not only devoid of the "why," it also touts, "NFP is based on advanced science, and has been demonstrated to be 99 percent effective in avoiding pregnancy when a couple understands their fertility and practices the method correctly."

⁴ The UN's medium variant projection. S. Mosher, Population Control, p.9.

⁵ Three out of four Europeans will have disappeared by the end of the 21^st Century and the population, including Russia, will number only 207 million. By then the population decline will be irreversible, with surviving Europeans averaging more than 60 years. S. Mosher, Population Control, p.8. Population Control is a resource worthy of reading by every serious person, particularly clergy, politicians, married couples, and all who are concerned about life on Earth.

⁶ "In demographic terms, Europe is vanishing." Premier Jacques Chirac in 1984. "Soon our countries will be empty". "Falling Population Alarms Europe," The Washington Times, 2 Dec. 1987, pp.1, 8, at 8.

⁷ Robert Marcellus, A Foundering Civilization, The Human Life Review, Winter 2002.

⁸ Archbishop Renato Martino, 94-09-07 Statement of the Holy See, UN Population Div.

⁹ "Continence" and "generosity," it seems, are two words no longer common in Catholic marital preparation, They seem like tow centers of gravity spinning around each other in the lived Catholic marital experience, and which contain within themselves the essential virtuous elements of spiritual growth. A relevant comment of Pope Benedict to Brazilian Bishops, Sept 2009: "....if the Church fights only a rear-guard action against the forces of secularism, justifying Catholic faith and practice only in secular terms—apologies rather than apologetics, as it were—rising generations will not even understand the nature of the conflict, and the struggle will be lost." The transcendence of our Faith seems already to have been lost in the context of Catholic marriage ethics in re. NFP.

¹⁰ Cf. Cardinal John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, A Selection, Longmans Green, & Co. 1900. pp. 20,22.

Accompanied by an increasing sense of dismay among those who look objectively and quite scientifically at the published population forecasts, even those of the United Nations which has an undeniable anti-natalist bias, our world is soon to begin an almost unimaginable descent in population that will either mean a reversion to distant historic times or even the near extinction of the human race.  This is no longer in debate, and it is documented extensively in “Population Control”, Steven Mosher, Transaction Publishers, 2008.  That book documents the present situation in world population and is worthy of intense attention. Mosher is President of the Population Research Institute.

Doomsday scenarios are not unknown to modern populations: comets striking the Earth that wipe out the Sun's rays; earthquakes on the New Madras Fault killing untold millions; droughts that are cyclical and may destroy our food supply; pollution of our oceans with PCBs will cause world-wide cancer; the melting of the Polar ice cap will flood whole countries; the Ozone shield , etc., etc. - all of which are merely in the realm of possibility at some time in the future.  Population is quite different.  We can actually count heads, know life-spans, know fertility rates, and know child- bearing years.  We now know with certainty that pent-up billions of old people will die and that the world's population will begin to decline in 2050.  Old people alone, having swollen out of all normal proportion because of reduced fertility among the young, will cause the population to drop by many billions.  The future will depend on a radical positive change in the overall world fertility rate.  Will our grandchildren and great grandchildren bear more than replacement levels, in an environment of great economic distress and a collapse of the presently existing political structures and support systems?  A continuing-to-collapse world population to 2 or 3 billion people by the year 2100 is all we can presently expect.   Information available through the UNFPA and independent sources confirm this forecast.

History tells us that population collapse has occurred from time to time.  The Greeks alone have had this phenomenon at least twice.  People stopped having babies in a relatively affluent society.  They were replaced over time by other fertile people from surrounding areas.  Today the situation is actually taking place globally and simultaneously.  Anti-natalist influences in worldwide societies have provided several social, cultural, and economic forces which have radically changed things: Divorce, facilitated by the absence of children, made possible by contraception and abortion, late marriages if any at all, further influenced by affluence and a pervasive culture of “individualism”, all exacerbated by the influence of a growing life-expectancy made possible by modern medicine.

To speak openly about these things is to immediately draw down almost universal derision, except perhaps from an element in society which finds impending disaster in everything from Holy Scripture to Aliens from foreign worlds.  What is suggested here seems different.  It is supported by well-established scientific and mathematical facts.  The population plunge beginning around 2005 is irrefutable.  The only possible alteration in the final outcome may be caused by the seemingly unlikely increase in the fertility rate of baby girls yet to be born, the very persons so commonly rejected by abortion and infanticide in numerous societies.

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, recently spoke of 500 million Europeans without any caveats relating to population trends.  A decade ago, the President of France spoke about the demise of Europe.  Clearly, there is a denial of reality in some elements of society.  Demographers know for certain that two out of three Europeans will have disappeared by the end of this Century.  Japan and Russia are already in an advanced state of collapse.  Russia is losing one to two million citizens a year.  Japan is closing schools all over the country for the same reason.  China continues its rejection of more than one child, and its society leans heavily to the male, as does the Indian.

The problem facing humanity is so immense, pervasive and profound that despair is easily the winning emotion for those who lack a belief in our Father God.  How God will draw good out of the situation is far beyond our imagining, but an end to the present world and a transition into the glorious world to come, the one which He has promised to those who love Him, is not so easily dismissible.

Who can deny it? Our Western civilization, and now virtually the rest of the world, in a great and monstrous act of sycophancy, seems intent on destroying the human race. Demographers tell us with certainty that in a mere 40 years, the world's population will begin a collapse, slow at first, and then in a great horrifying plunge, called by some of them "The White Pestilence" ("White" being more relevant to our hair than our ethnicity). These easily forecast effects will be even more severe than the unpredicted historical outbursts of the Black Plague. World population will go from 9 billion to 3 billion or less by the year 2100. At that time, the fertility rate will be between a diminishing 1.85 (the U.N.'s unsubstantiated hope) and the more realistic 1.2 of a disappearing population. There is no new governmental fertility program that can be fashioned which can escape this outcome. The present generation of more religiously dedicated younger people can only mitigate the effect of the "end game" for their grandchildren by having babies now and passing on the True Faith. (Steve Mosher's recent book "Population Control" is a great reference that needs study by every serious person.) The children of today's elderly will experience the beginnings of this great human drama; their grandchildren will see the plunge; their great grandchildren will know the end results. It would be crass to assert that the "White Pestilence", just over today's time-horizon should be the great motivator for Catholics to respond to their marital vocation, but today certainly is a time to recognize the awful results of the world's manifest growing rejection of life, particularly for the last 50 to 100 years. Only the great ideal of a full-fledged Catholic Faith, lived with youthful ebullience, can serve God's Will.

Today, the Church's reply to this great impending event of the 21st century has been limited to a rhetorical rejection of abortion and a wimpish finger-shaking at contraception and divorce. Even the Vatican's representative at the UN talks of "Sustainable Development" and other such euphemisms employed by Planned Parenthood and the UNFPA. Instead, it must give a resounding vocational call to generosity in family life, however belated. Bland "Oh my!" type observations that Catholics are no longer different from the people among whom they live is not merely to observe the obvious, it is to leave them in the midst of the foul swamp where they have wandered to die. But how will they confront their mistaken ways and march back to the dry land if they have an uncertain bugler? Protestant Randall Terry of Project Rescue has the right message, "Throw away your contraceptives and have the Children God wants you to have."

Most Catholics (54% in the last US National election) no longer even believe that aiding and abetting the continuation of abortion is utterly incompatible with continued membership in the Church, or its overwhelming importance vis a vis every other public question in our National life. Surely, if one gives a fair reading to the intent of Canon Law and the Catechism, regardless of the evasions employed by both the pro-aborts and the pastoral Episcopacy, this is incontestable. Without any sense of rancor, or desire for punishment or vengeance (incomprehensible sentiments in any Catholic, regardless of who might accuse them, even a Bishop), a recognition of apostasy, heresy, and grave public sin must have public consequences on the practical level. The Eucharist itself is being publicly abused. Bishops disgrace themselves and cause scandal when they discount the expressed and manifest mind of the Pope and Canon Law about pro-abortion public figures receiving Holy Communion. They "waffle" on the question and forget that the law is a teacher, but unenforced law is a nightmare.

We can observe that the Church does not routinely announce to non-Catholics that they will be denied the Eucharist when they attend Mass. The Bishop's directive on this topic, though infrequently spoken, appears in many missals in the pew. Non-Catholics know that they should not approach the Eucharist. Similarly, divorced persons, and persons living in some attachment to sin or irregular marriage, do not approach the Eucharist. Heroic persons in such situations simply stay in their place at that time of the Mass, regardless of human respect. If those who aid, abet, promote, legislate, acquiesce to, assist, or commit abortion are not told explicitly that they have excluded themselves from the Church, there will never be comparable behavior on their part, and they will continue to erode respect of the Holy Eucharist.

Cardinal Stafford's recent comments on the occasion of a review of Humanae Vitae were remarkably grave. His insights were certainly not simplistic. They displayed a serious understanding of Salvation History and where we are today as a result of the recent Presidential election and the voting pattern of persons claiming to be Catholic. After positioning the Eucharist squarely in the center of Catholic marriage and all its attendant issues, he quotes from the Encyclical itself, "we are to be true with body and soul". Nevertheless, standing in distinct opposition to this has been the ambiguous "jawboning" of American Bishops. Rightly or wrongly, today they are widely perceived, by Catholics and non-Catholics as well, to be uncertain about their conclusions on abortion since there is no observable public result. The causes of this are probably many, but the "pastoral" tone of their governance and their recent public record of distrustful behavior is prominent in the list. Many Catholics do not believe the Bishops when you say abortion is always and everywhere wrong. Furthermore, it is commonly and reasonably understood that many of the clergy believe contraception is morally permissible, and abortion acceptable when it does not work. Public testimony of mature and faithful priests re-enforces this belief. Further still, the indecent presentation and teaching of NFP, under the auspices of the Church as if it were some new dogma ("99% effective in avoiding conception", Archdiocese of Phoenix, e.g.), has destroyed any concept of self-sacrificing dedication to the fecundity that God expects of a Catholic couple. Few take seriously any more the teaching authority of the Church on abortion. Three vignettes from recent days make this point.

1) Two elderly ladies in my retirement community, on the last day of the prayer campaign to end abortion, just before the election were seated in the Blessed Sacrament chapel saying the Rosary in a soft voice, their heads leaning toward each other. One, a life-long Democrat, had announced in adamant and aggressive tones that she could not wait to vote for Obama. The other, not so clearly political, had indicated that her vote was for McCain because of Obama's stance on abortion. Their contradictory positions and the consequences seemed to go unnoticed in the pious confusion of the Obama supporter.

2) I asked a 90-year-old lady, a friend who had announced her vote for Obama, if she knew what FOCA meant, thinking she did not and might be persuaded to change her vote if she did. "Oh, yes. It means the Freedom of Choice Act to allow abortion." "But abortion means the murder of a child", I said. "Oh Bernie, we have to have some choices, don't we?", was her reply.

3) A retired lawyer, formerly employed in Democrat legislative affairs who has been publicly praised by the Church, baited me to discuss Congresswoman Pelosi's public statements about the Church's theology on abortion. I demurred. He is virtually a next-door neighbor and I did not want to create difficult feelings by speaking too glibly. Instead, I sent him some of the clear explanations that appeared in a Catholic publication and followed it up a few days later with two pieces of Church generated literature that was intended to help people in making a principled vote. His anger came back to me in a note that explicitly threatened friendship with me if I persisted in "preaching" to him (something that I simply had not done). He said he was "proud" to have voted for his political party's choice.

The situation begs the question: Must not Bishops make it absolutely clear that pro-abortion conduct means a person no longer holds to the Catholic Faith, and that such persons have excommunicated themselves? It seems to me that nothing short of public recognition of this fact, in the case of public figures, will make this point clear and focus the attention of both Catholics and the general public.

Recently, I heard that Venerable John Cardinal Newman once said, "Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion." Rhetorical conclusions seem like all we've had so far.

The Graph presents a period from about 1825 through about 2125. From a relatively stable history through 1900 of less than 2 billion people, the world's population doubles within shorter and shorter periods of time. Using the words of others, the cause was not that 'we have been breeding like rabbits, but that we were not dying like flies'. Health care increased our longevity. Counter-intuitively, but simultaneously, our fertility rate dropped from 6 per child-bearing woman to the present falling rate of 1.54. World population will top-out around 8 billion around the year 2050, and it will be dominated by the elderly. It will then begin a decline that competent demographers already anticipate with certitude. Even the U N's Population division, one of the most prominent promoters of anti-natalist population limits (which they euphemistically justify under the label of "sustainable development"), revels in a drop of many billions of persons in 50 years. The UN Population Division does not provide any support for an end to the drop, other than a vague and unexplained expectation that the fertility rate will somehow settle at 1.85. The persons left between 2100 and 2125 will be dominated, even more completely, by persons beyond child-bearing age as a cumulative result of the disappearing fertility rate. And yet, reality is much graver, as even a casual referral to the Graph reveals. A 1.5 fertility rate in 2050 simply means we will not replace ourselves, and that rate is probably the best we may expect as survivors face the future with less and less optimism and less and less willingness to undertake the burden of child-rearing.

As we move toward 2050, the more and more obvious radical aging of the world's population and the fast-diminishing proportion of young people to support their physical and economic needs will only begin to announce the grimmer consequences yet to follow. Social Security arrangements in all the world's developed economies will become intolerable. Society and governments will likely come adrift. Older persons without family assistance will be put in grave situations as interdependencies will be grievously affected. The dislocations and dilemmas we are already seeing in some countries even today, such as in Russia (a population that is shrinking by nearly 1 million/year and at an increasing rate) and Japan (I recently heard that a most of Japan's work force will be gone in the next 50 years), China, countries of Africa, Latvia, Spain, Italy, France and even the U.S. (despite its immigration of Southern peoples), are only the mildest indication of what is to come in the sudden and uncontrollable collapse of populations world-wide.

We may ask ourselves, is any of this avoidable in any way? Is there any mitigating intervention that is possible? What should be our attitude toward family life and the goals of society's most basic unit, in the light of such a dismal forecast? Most importantly, how does this fit in with our role in fulfilling God's Will in the world, the objectives of His Church, and how we can organize ourselves, as a people on Earth, into a functioning temporal Communion of Saints that permeates society and transforms it, even as it is being punished, cleansed and purified for its awful anti-populist offenses to God? The words of Scripture should resonate in our ears with concern: "When He comes again, will He find Faith on the Earth?"

The key to understanding the Graph is the continuous drop of the fertility rate over the last 50 years which it presents. Nothing in the Graph reveals any mitigation of the collapsing situation, but just as the fertility rate is the cause of the impending situation, any reversal of that rate in today's world would also present the answer to the possibility of a long-term recovery and the softening of the end result. An answer can only be found in children and a return to truly generous family life founded in a serious Human/Christian/Catholic reliance on, and response to an incredibly generous God (while simultaneously knowing that we must expect to share in the purifying consequences of history). Everyone is free and the difficulties parents can anticipate may well seduce even persons with a deep religious sense an into an essentially extinction mentality. The "White Pestilence", which is anticipated in the later part of this Century, will certainly be worse than the unanticipated "Black Death" of the past. The difference between hope and the worst anticipatable outcome will certainly depend on heralding the Christian Gospel by Christians who live it to the full in the hope of Salvation. Christians will have to make a great ‘Venture for Faith’ in a revolution "which has in it a great risk of what we think we have in this world, for what we do not yet have in the life hereafter." (Cdl. Newman in Ventures of Faith). Begin the revolution by reading Mosher's book.

^* Population Control, Steve Mosher, 2008, Transaction Publishers