Contraception and Over-population

Contraception and Over-Population

This is a topic where worldly wisdom gets everything dead wrong. It all seems so obvious, doesn’t it: the world is a place of limited resources, the population cannot continue to expand indefinitely, people cannot afford too many children, women have a right not to be enslaved to the nursery, etc etc. But there is “Another Side” that we would bring to your attention.

It is easy to get carried through life without examining our basic assumptions: “As long as I do no harm to others, and do a small bit of good along the way, what could possibly be wrong with that?”

Contraception is exactly the kind of issue where this kind of thinking hits the barrier. Issues of our eternal destiny come to be of very major practical importance, and make a difference to our everyday life.

What are we? Are we nothing but highly-evolved apes? At death, do we scatter into dust and nothing else? Well, if you truly believe that, we cannot pick up God and place Him on your lap; but remember that, if it were true, you would always be an animal — and you would die alone.

God the Father sent His Son to teach us otherwise, and He left the Church to teach all nations and all centuries. At present, the Church is going through a most painful phase. But remember — our not-so-distant forebears risked sudden death at the Mass Rocks out of love, not fear.

There is a Mystery about the world: in theology, it is called the Mystery of Predestination, Grace and Freewill. †Predestin-ation means that God already knows what is going to happen in the future. He has already worked out the whole course of history. As part of this divine Plan He knows exactly who He is going to call into existence. Before we were conceived and born, God had us in His mind. There were other possible people, whom God thought of as possibilities, who will not, in fact, ever be created. But His Plan also includes †Freewill: our own gift from God. We are not simply machines or robots. At the Last Judgment, He will say to the good souls, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”. †Grace is the special help from God that enables us to do His Will. These three things are all true, but we cannot see exactly how they all fit together.

Now in the conception of children, we act out or live through these mysteries. On the day two people are married, God knows exactly how many children He is going to send the couple, and He has all the necessary Graces reserved for the family, so that they will be enabled to do His will in the world and attain eternal life with Him hereafter. He has provided the means by which new people are conceived and reared. Now if we refuse to co-operate with His plan and His laws, through artificial contraception, we are throwing the potential gift of eternal souls back in His Face while selfishly retaining the pleasure that was really meant as the reward of faithful love, not an isolated thing. Even murder is not as bad as this, because at least the murder victim has the chance of going to Heaven if they have lived in His Grace. But how shall we repay it if a soul destined by God for eternal life is, through our fault, never born forever?

What about the limited resources of the planet? The problem is that God knows how long the World will last, but we do not. He did tell us that the Last Day will come upon a day when it is not expected. We must use the gifts of the world wisely and without useless waste, but contraception is telling God, “I know how You have ordained for new people to come into the world, but....we have thought up a better way!”

We are incessantly being warned that the world is over-populated. Yet vast areas of the world are empty. Our technology could make them habitable. The real over-population is in the slums of cities. If the political will was there, population could be spread more sanely, with cities of manageable size surrounded by areas of farming to feed the cities.

It is not so often noticed that a large population leads to a higher standard of living for all, other things being equal. If the population is too thinly scattered, infrastructure such as roads and water pipes have too few people to pay for their maintenance. One of the real reasons for the famines in Ethiopia (the other reasons being war and government mismanagement) is that the population in the North is too small to support a sufficient infrastructure.

A large population also throws up a large number of gifted individuals who can develop the national culture and work for the general good. A small isolated tribe has very little chance of developing, because there must be a ‘critical number’ of gifted individuals to make progress possible.

When birth control (which really means no birth and no control) first became common several decades ago, the pro-lifers tried to warn of the consequences of reducing the birthrate too steeply: It would lead to a generation in which there were too many old people needing care and too few young people to produce the wealth to look after them. Even then, it was warned that contraception and abortion “now” would lead straight to euthanasia “then”. All the countries of Europe are now involved in massive immigration for the workforce, leading to millions of displaced persons and threatening the very identity of ancient nations, because the parents have refused to bring their own children into the world.

What will we answer at the Last Judgment if we have practised birth control and God asks us, “Where are your children?”

And finally, we are not going to explain the following sentence, but listen to old-timers who have earned their grey hairs: Contraception takes the romance out of love and marriage.

The Other Side