In the vast amount of mostly vacuous commentary printed, spoken, and otherwise on the passing of John Paul II, there’s frequently been mention of the refusal of this pope to accommodate to the modern world. Typically mentioned in the litany of areas in which the Church is in error are birth control, abortion, the ordination of women, a married priesthood, and the teachings on homosexuality.
As a poor but practicing (and reasonably well-informed) Catholic I’d like to suggest gently to these critics that while they may not make the distinction between essence and accident the Church does and, while the Church may change various different practices and accidental features of Church teaching, essential doctrinal issues won’t change. The Church simply isn’t in the business of conforming to the prevailing beliefs (whatever those might be) of the contemporary world. On the contrary the job of the Church is to urge people out of conformity with the contemporary world and into greater conformity to the will of God.
All of this is a digression from the brief point I wanted to make in this post. Perhaps I’ll make some observations on what my hopes for a new pope might be in some other post. But with all this talk of birth control a thought has occurred to me.
I’ve always been skeptical of the position on birth control that Paul VI promulgated in his encyclical Humanae Vitae. I hurry to mention that I understand the Church’s position and I accept it. Eppur si muove.
I do believe that this teaching puts the Church in something of a pickle. There is an incontestable relationship between fertility and poverty. By and large the very poorest countries also have the highest fertility rates. I won’t bother to cite statistics—you can look it up for yourself. But here’s the pickle. Either the Church is advocating poverty and misery (which is inconceivable), or the Church needs to moderate its stance on birth control (which I believe can be done without doctrinal trauma), or the Church needs to advocate other policies (like the education of women) which are closely correlated with reduced fertility. Advocating abstinence by itself is just not enough.
Take the case of China (not to imply that the Catholic Church has any influence there). I just don’t believe that it’s a coincidence that the same year in which China instituted its abominable “One Child Policy” was the year in which it began its meteoric economic growth. Freeing millions of women from the responsibilities of child-bearing and child-rearing meant that they were available to enter the workplace. An enormous proportion of the workers in the new textile and toy and electronics factories in China are women of child-bearing age.
Don’t bother to quote me statistics that show that the “One Child Policy” hasn’t worked. It’s worked in the cities and that’s where the growth is—check out the complaints about the rising disparity of wealth between the people in the cities and the people in the countryside.
By the way the “One Child Policy” has created multiple time bombs for China. You often hear about the disproportionate number of males in the population (allegedly due to female infanticide or abortion for purposes of sex selection). With the rising number of males we can expect more crime and aggression in China.
But those aren’t the only time bombs. As part of the “One Child Policy” the Chinese government has raised the price of educating a child in the countryside (yeah, I didn’t know that public education wasn’t free in China, either). This won’t mean they’ll have fewer children there; it will just mean that the fewer of the children (particularly the girls) will be educated. With the sub-replacement level of reproduction in the cities this could lead to a vicious circle of immigration of the uneducated into the cities looking for jobs that are decreasingly available for those without educations.
