It's all got to do with "too few babies"...

Could it possibly be that the current global economic mess, for the most part, is attributable to artificial means of birth control and abortion?

"Omigosh, no!" the secularists and anti-life forces cry out.  "That's all so medieval...not even unenlightened.  We must control population growth."

Yet, the President of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, thinks this is the case.  At a symposium focusing upon the family held at the Italian Parliament, the IOR President spoke bluntly: "If the six of us speakers here today were the government, we would have resolved the economic problem immediately, because we would know where to point: the family."

Tedeschi then outlined five "No's" to illustrate his point":

1. No economic growth: "In the last 30 years children were not born, and the number of inhabitants that we had in Italy in 1980 has remained unchanged; hence how can the GDP grow when it grows only when there is more consumption?"
2. No savings: "One of the phenomena of our days is that the banks have no liquidity, the reason is that there has been no saving for more than 25 years.  In 1975-'80 the rate of savings accumulation of Italian families was 27%; today it is 4.5%! Of 100 lire earned, 27 were put in the bank, they entered the cycle of investments and brokerage. Today all that is earned is consumed, there are no resources for financial markets."
3. No marriage: "How is it that today there is no possibility of getting married before 32 years of age? Because a young couple cannot afford to purchase a house, due to the fact that, even if they are professionals, they earn half of what was earned 30 years ago, due to an increase in tax rates from 25% to 50%."
4. No elderly: "Children are not born and the population ages and is of pensionable age. Economically this means an increase in fixed costs. Society has no more money to look after the elderly and as a result is studying the so-called sudden death."
5. No work: "To be able to consume, we have moved the most important work to Asia. Half of what was first produced in the Western world, today is imported because it costs less. By moving production, jobs have also moved. Hence, there is no longer work and 70%-80% are employed in the service sector."

Considering the negative effects caused when "births are interrupted and the family and children are ignored in the Western world," as Tedeschi notes, the "contraceptive mentality"---which Blessed John Paul II discussed frequently---is certainly one factor if not the factor contributing to the economic malaise of Western world.

This is all retrospective analysis, however.

It didn't have to be this way prospectively, The Motley Monk would argue.

Inspired by the Holy Spirit

All that unbiased individuals would have had to do---as early as 1968---is to read Humanae vitae.  Agree with its contents or not, Pope Paul VI had the courage to overrule his advisers due to his fear that unleashing the power of the contraceptive mentality in the Roman Catholic Church would promote neither the truth nor the common good globally.  He wrote:

Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source. "Human life is sacred—all men must recognize that fact," Our predecessor Pope John XXIII recalled. "From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God." (13)

For "enlightened" secularists and anti-life forces, God is not the Author of creation and it was very easy for them to mock and belittle Humanae vitae and its author as well.

"I am mistress of my body."

In retrospect, however, Pope Paul VI appears to have read the "signs of the times" accurately, if not prophetically.  The failure to heed his warnings may be one of the primary causes if not the cause of the current global economic malaise.


Let the discussion begin...



To read a report on the symposium held at the Italian Parliament, click on the following link:
www.zenit.org/article-34150?l=english

To read Humanae vitae, click on the following link:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html