A Christmas Card
from Mary
Does Contraception Minimize the Incidence of Abortion?
Secularism, Culture of Death Hothouse
What Religious
Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
Secularism, Culture of Death Hothouse
A common thread in most environmental programs rooted in secularism is a contempt and disdain for the world’s human population. Leaders of the Green and environmental movements hate humanity. They are obsessed with population growth and pursue anything that can reduce it—disease, poverty, famine, or lack of energy.
One example is the use of the Endangered Species Act which advocates for obscure species at the expense of projects that benefit the human species. It has impoverished farmers in Oregon and California.
Secularists also blame humanity for global warming or global cooling (whichever occurs first). White House science czar John Holdren predicted 1 billion people will die in “carbon-dioxide induced famines” in a new coming ice age in 2020. In a textbook co-authored with population alarmist Paul Ehrlich he predicted that human emissions of carbon dioxide would produce a climate catastrophe in which global warming would cause global cooling. According to Holdren’s theory some localities will become colder as warmer atmosphere drives the climatic engine faster, causing streams of frigid air to move more rapidly away from the poles. It would be interesting to have scientific peer evaluation of that theory. The truth is there is nothing humans can do to affect the world’s climate. CO2s are a natural part of the world and, far from being pollutants or the engine of global warming (or cooling—our alarmists are not sure which), they are essential for plant life.
They are sure of two things: (1) global warming or cooling would have hazardous effects on food production and (2) the cause of climate change is uncontrolled population increases. They are terrified of the patter of little carbon footprints. Their message in effect has been, “OK, you reproducers out there, if the climate goes crazy it is your fault.” They recommended government mandated “green” abortions and forced sterilization and say that laws of this sort could be supported by the Constitution. Not only is the Constitution of the secularists “living and breathing” it is becoming downright nasty.
Secularists say it is all right to kill fetuses because they are not persons but only blueprints for persons. This contradicts modern embryology that holds that fetuses are developing human beings who need only time and nutrition to achieve maturity and independence. So, all right, the secularists may have bad science, but at least they cut down on the CO2 exhaling population.
The health care bill passed in the House of Representatives does not provide federal funds for abortion thanks to the Stupak-Pitts amendment. It remains to be seen if the secularists let the amendment survive the reconciliation of the House and Senate bills. To call killing young, innocent human beings health care for women is quite a stretch. It may do more for them than a week at the gym, but the side effects on the fetus are not pretty. Apparently there is nothing that empowers women more than having someone slice up and extract their unborn babies.
In 1798 a British clergyman named Thomas Malthus decided that the human race was doomed unless it stopped breeding. For Malthus the pie was only so big. He called for a reduction of the people who want to share it. He projected that if population growth remained unchecked the humans would be out of food by 1890. You probably noticed that 1890 has come and gone and the human race is still not extinct. Human beings do not reproduce to some exponential infinity. Fertility rates drop naturally when mortality rates fall. Historically food production has always risen to meet the needs of a growing world population by consistent technological advances in farming. The Christian solution to greater numbers who need to share in the pie: make a bigger pie.
There is someone who looked at the problem of feeding growing populations and, instead of advocating population suppression, made a bigger pie. A real American hero almost unknown in his own country although he won a Nobel peace prize, Norman Borlaug, conducted plant experiments that have produced a Green Revolution. His modified plants changed Mexico from an importer of wheat to an exporter. In the mid-1960s India and Pakistan were saddled with subsistence cultivation of rice. In 1965 Borlaug and his assistants from Mexico sowed the area’s first crop of Borlaug’s high-yield grain. Ironically in 1968 Paul Ehrlich published “The Population Bomb” and stated that starvation was inevitable and considered it a fantasy that India would ever be able to feed itself. Within three years of Borlaug’s arrival Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production and within six years India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals. He next turned his attention to Africa with the same results he had achieved elsewhere. Borlaug deserves credit for defusing the “Population Bomb.” (A side note of local interest: Borlaug spent some years teaching at Texas A. and M. after he had “retired.”)
The environmental elites were not congratulatory because Borlaug’s farming methods employed genetically modified plants and used pesticides and fertilizer. But absent high-yield agriculture the world would by now be deforested. The 1950 global grain output of 692 million tons and the 2006 output of 2.3 billion tons came from roughly the same acreage. Also where high-yield farming has been introduced, population growth slows because education becomes more important to family success than muscle power.
In spite of science and history secularists never tire of repeating the failed Malthusian argument as an article of faith. The overpopulation theory should have died with Malthus (and indeed Malthus disavowed it before he died), but it lives on in spite of all facts to the contrary. The secular solution to human problems is to eliminate humans.
We see the same anti-human bias of secularists with respect to the use of DDT. Secularists accepted the junk science that DDT caused thinning of the egg shells of birds. The eggs would break under the weight of the bird trying to hatch them and soon there would be no birds. The assertion is totally false—bird populations have thrived in areas where DDT has been employed—but it was a pretext for banning DDT. Better that humans in the millions die of malaria than that the “Silent Spring” erroneously predicted by environmentalist Rachel Carson become reality. Indeed some secularists look upon deaths caused by malaria as a good thing because it decreases the population. Malaria is as good a way as any to get rid of the surplus.
According to the secularist elitists not only are you reproducers overachieving but your product is defective. Elitist Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed that the purpose of Roe v. Wade was to limit “the growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” She did not specify but perhaps she had in mind bitter people who cling to their guns and their Bibles. Secularist icon Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was more specific. She considered non-Aryans “a great biological menace to the future of civilization” She seemed to have a special problem with blacks. Blacks who constitute 12 percent of the population account for 32 percent of all abortions. That may be related to the PP abortion clinics located conveniently in inner-city neighborhoods. Hatred of humans appears to be an indispensable part of the secularist faith.
Altogether different is the Christian view on new human beings. They are unique images and likenesses of God and are welcome as gifts from God. Humans are not a plague on the planet but its ultimate resource. They are the ones who are charged to “fill the earth and subdue it.”
Printed November, 2009
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St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
