Father Longenecker has posted an insightful piece on contraception and the current economic trouble which makes a lot of sense to me. It is certainly a part of the picture but I suspect that the demographic consequences of abortion on a massive scale in so many of the most developed countries of the world is more immediately causative. The present crisis has been compared with that of the late 1920s and 1930s, a period which, interestingly, followed on from the vast slaughter of the First World War and the great influenza epidemic which claimed even more victims. By contrast the unparalleded growth in prosperity seen in the last half century , although unequally shared, accompanied and followed the so-called "baby boom". While we have been enjoying unprecedented wealth, however, the culling of the next generation has continued apace.
I suspect that where the population control people have it wrong is in their view of humanity as comprising something like mere passive consumers- a threat to limited resources and to each other. Looked at that way we are all problematic. That, however, is to forget that, made in the image of God, we have something that I like to call "magical" about us- we are, all of us, potential solutions. I heard somewhere that by Malthus's predictions we shouldn't have survived this long but that, thanks to human ingenuity, agricultural yields had increased vastly since his day. We humans can indeed be very clever. Alas, sometimes we fail to see what is staring us in the face- perhaps because we'd rather not see it. "I heard your voice in the garden and hid myself because I was naked."
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I think some or all of us made a pact with the devil: give us a real estate bubble, give us 6 or 8 percent growth in our IRA funds, and we'll let you kill our children.
ReplyDeleteSome countries actually think they can say, 'we need 1.8 population reproduction rate; ladies, get on that.' This place in Oregon that's modeling itself on the Netherlands, wants exactly the same rate of growth, or rather, the same gently sinking rate of growth. I'm presently fighting with a post on that, contrasted to Pius XI's encyclical on marriage.
And yet, forgive me for saying, it must be true that the resources of one earth are limited, and forgive me again for revealing my true self as a complete nutcase, but I think that's why we're destined to take the word of God to outer space. (I'm working on a piece of science fiction right now, about the first bishop of here to Alpha Centauri. That's big. But think how big the entire southwest and northern Mexico was, and yet that was once one diocese! Have you read Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop?)
I came to visit to say I'd answered your comment on Another Eve, and to thank you for your comment, and was pleasantly surprised by this post. I have written something tangentle (sp?) in 'Nancy, take note, babies mean business.' It argues for the unborn strictly on the basis of their value as consumers, and as producers of wealth as well, based on a Swedish study that was calling for subsidization of IVF technology so they analyzed how much each baby contributed to the world, monetarily. But I don't mean to treat babies as mere consumers. And yet I wish somebody would wake up and do so, would realize we're killing our car buyers! But I know it's more than that, of course. (Our over-consumption is because of our killing our offspring, who would otherwise provide a gently rising growth curve, as God intended when he said, Go forth and multiply.)
Thanks for your comments.
ReplyDeleteIt is, as you say, more than that, but isn't it just amazing how an investment in the evil that is abortion blinds people to the glaringly obvious!