My article in today’s Headline Bistro:
The Internet is abuzz this week with reports from the U.S. Census Bureau that one-fourth of all U.S. counties are dying. The reasons given are an aging population, an increase of only 9.7% in the U.S. population over the past ten years (the lowest decennial increase since the great depression), and migration to more affluent counties in the midst of a protracted economic slump. Demographers call this “natural decrease.” The etiology, in fact, may not be so natural at all.
In the same decade that “natural decrease” has taken place, Catholic bishops have been closing Catholic schools all over the nation, much to the consternation of the laity. So what’s behind the trend?
First and foremost, we are simply not reproducing as previous generations have done. A smaller population has led to increasing demands for higher salaries, as there is less competition in the domestic labor pool, leading companies to relocate manufacturing overseas where populations are large and the cost of living is low. This has a domino effect throughout the economy.
The fact that we have an aging population and are not producing enough workers to support them in their retirement years is an economic disaster. We are beginning to see this played out in state economies that cannot sustain current civil servant salary, retirement and benefits packages, which are far more generous and comprehensive than those in the private sector.
The Church is not immune from the chaos of what many in the pro-life movement call an impending demographic winter. Parishes and schools are closing at a steady and alarming rate, and it makes perfect sense.
I recall my very large parish, St. Michael’s, in 1960s Brooklyn when I was a child. Every Mass was packed on Sundays. Three priests were on hand to distribute communion. By the early 1970s, the church was half-filled. Today when I visit, it’s one-third filled, and with not so many Masses as we had when I was a child.
The schools and churches were built to accommodate the sizeable immigrant Catholic Church, with their sizeable families, including the Baby Boom generation. In my community, families of four and five children were the norm, and families of seven or more children were not at all uncommon. Logic then dictates that if many families no longer go to church or are active in their faith, and if those who do are only having two children, then we simply do not need the infrastructure built to accommodate an active Catholic populace 50-60% larger than we have today.
Sealing the fate of the Catholic schools and parishes has been the precipitous decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Churches cannot function without priests, and a lay staff of teachers has a higher cost of living than the previous communities of religious.
Underlying all of this has been the overwhelming rejection of the Magisterial teaching articulated in Humanae Vitae. Eighty percent of Catholics simply disregard the Church’s teaching about the use of birth control and the obligation to accept children willingly and lovingly from God. Many who decry the parish and school closings are those who also decry Humanae Vitae, and do not see the connection.
It isn’t rocket science.
If we do not produce a sizeable population of workers, there will be nobody to support us in our age and infirmity. If we do not produce sizeable Catholic families and encourage priesthood and religious life as vocations for our children, our institutional infrastructure will collapse. If we do not encourage our children to live marriage as a sacramental vocation, with all that is required of it, our Church will contract like our dying counties.
The “natural decrease” is largely the result of artificial contraception.
These contractions and the suffering and inconveniences they bring are signs to us that perhaps Humanae Vitae was indeed a relevant document. They also highlight for us some of the blessings that come from openness to large families. If we are wise, if we teach our children well, these contractions can be reversed.
The signs of spring are beginning to emerge in the Church. Vocations to more traditional religious orders are on the rise, along with an uptick in the numbers of seminarians. With a protracted downturn in the economy, many are reconsidering the treadmill of pursuit of material acquisitions and discovering the simpler joys of family life.
We certainly have a long way to go in reclaiming lost ground, but there is a sense that a newness is upon the Church. This includes a fresh look at Humanae Vitae through less rebellious and more sober eyes.
Coming Home 
What you fail to miss is in Humane Vitae many people see the Church saying it is acceptable to “Space Children” according to their conscience.
MOST Catholics today have no clue what a well formed conscience is. They just assume they need a good reason, like “Children must go to college and I can’t afford any more children”.
This goes along with the wholesale destruction of the Mass after VII. Where you will see growth in the church is in the Traditional communities. There you will still see families that have 5-10 children and that regularly attend Mass.
Here is a good test for you. At your next Mass stop 10 people after Mass and ask them a few questions. Tell them you are doing research. Ask if they believe the host is truely the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of God. See how many Yes’s you get.
That should tell you how healthy the parish is.
As to the simple demographics problem. That is easy. People are materialists today. They care more about themselves than each other or society. It is why the Islamic countries will win in the end. The simple reason is they will outbreed us.
Even among those of us who live according to the teachings articulated in Humanae Vitae, many of us were suckered into believing that the world is overpopulated and we should therefore limit (by natural means, of course) the number of children we bring into the world. My wife and I had stopped after two children (even though we wanted more), until we realized that the west has exactly the opposite problem, ie. total fertility rates that are well below replacement levels. Then we allowed ourselves to think about having another child, even though we were in our 40’s. After much reflection and prayer, we decided to go for it, and we have been blessed with a third child. I am quite certain that we would have had more children while we were younger, if we had had a proper understanding of demographic trends early on in our marriage, instead of believing the overpopulation myth.
Matt: the demographics problem is not quite as simple as you make it out to be. Countries with higher fertility rates also have higher mortality rates, ie. there is a tendency for them to balance out. Muslims who move to the west also tend to adopt the low fertility of the west after a couple of generations. The same goes for conservative Catholic immigrants. So, it is not at all clear who will “win” in the end.
I must say that I really admire those families who have 5-10 children. They are the ones who will save our sorry backsides from demographic oblivion, if there is any chance left for us to be saved at all.
Matt,
“Ask if they believe the host is truely the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of God. See how many Yes’s you get.”
I’m really embarrassed to share this, but just last week I asked my CONFIRMATION class individually whether or not the Eucharist was a symbol or literally the body and blood of Jesus. 100% of them said “symbol.” I have failed as a human being. I wanted to die right then and there. I think the expression on my face literally conveyed death. It was awful.
Bobby,
So, do you recommend them for Confirmation if they persist in their error?
Well, I then corrected them and said it is not merely a symbol, but the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus. None of them then tried to argue or anything like that. I think they just never learned it, but I’m surprised it never had come up in our class to this point. But certainly if anyone would then say otherwise, that would be major cause for concern as to whether or not they should be confirmed. I think it was simply a matter of ignorance.
Bobby Bambino: In 1995, I was asked by a friend to take her to an Adoration Chapel in Atlanta. I had become a pagan after my divorce, having said a “last prayer'” to God years before : “I am done with ‘organized religion’; I will give you seven years to reveal yourself to me. I promise not to remarry until those seven years are over. I will also try to find out what part I played in the divorce, and correct it before I ruin any more lives, and make my life miserable again.”
As a pagan, I “connected” with God in His “Cathedrals not made with human hands.” I fasted and prayed in those sacred places, opening my heart and saying, “What are you trying to tell me?” I had been given two “words from the ‘Spirit World”: “Be worthy of your suffering”, and “Think good thoughts.”
When I entered the little Chapel on Peachtree Street, I fell to my knees, opened my heart, and asked “The Question.” Without going into specific detail, I was given to know Jesus was truly present in the Blessed Sacrament ( I had no prior knowledge of the teaching and belief of the True Presence). I became a “Catholic by Desire” that night.
I was received into the Faith and confirmed on July 13, 1997, the 80th anniversary of the day the visionary children of Fatima were shown a vision of hell and were told by Our Lady that “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”
Your efforts as a Catechist are not wasted; God’s “economy” uses your faith to reveal Himself to others, whether they are known by you or not. Thank you; I am the one you have been praying for, “The one most in need of God’s Mercy.”
And one last thing. The day I walked into that Chapel was, as far as I remember, seven years from the time I gave God the opportunity to reveal Himself. His timing is always perfect, and He never leaves us.
Mark Kimble
Mark, what a beautiful story!
Divorce is a traumatic experience that shakes the foundations of faith of even very devout Christians.
When a heart truly seeks Him he will pour out abundant blessings.
As to Bobby’s statement, I think many children simply do not learn this in First Communion classes because the instructor doesnt’ believe it him/her self.
My daughter is the only student in her class (in a CATHOLIC elementary school) who attends Mass at all. 😦
They gave her the Catholic Leadership award for 2011 graduation class.
Mary Catherine: The Catholic Church in America will survive all the upheavals of society. This I believe with a Catholic faith. The loss of schools and material holdings will continue until all who do not now believe in the True Presence come to believe or leave the Church.
The Church tells us the Truth and gives us Truth Himself in the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, Truly Present in the Most Blessed Sacrament. In return, we are supposed to give Jesus, Sacramentally Present in the Priesthood, the truth about ourselves in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Our society has been changing at a rapid pace over the last half century. It may soon become unrecognizable as the United States of America. Alexis De Touqueville’s early observation that “America is great because she is good, and will cease to be great when she ceases to be good”, seems, to me, to be well-spoken and even prophetic.
Either another “Great Awakening” will occur in America, or America will pass into the “dustbin of history”. This Second Great Awakening will, of necessity, have to be an awakening to the True Presence of Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Awareness of the True Presence was missing at the First Awakening, and atheistic materialism now permeates the thinking of most religions and religious in America.
God teaches the same lesson over and over again, using different ways of teaching that same lesson. When that lesson is learned, He goes on to the next lesson. God’s plans are for good, and they never collapse: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.”; this is God’s Plan.
When good men do nothing, bad men will do anything. When man’s power to destroy himself by mass suicide, either physically or spiritually, has reached it’s peak, I believe God will intervene. Only God Himself knows when that historical moment is reached; only God can read the heart of every human person all at once. Time is just what happens so everything doesn’t happen all at once; God is outside of time.
“Life must be lived forward, but can only be learned backward.” ~ Soren Kirkegard ~
I am no prophet, but it doesn’t take a prophet to read the signs of the times. When Bobby Bambino shared his reaction to the 100% fail response to the question concerning “sign or Reality”, that he felt like a failure as a human being, and that the “awful” expression on his face conveyed death, imagine the response in Heaven.
Having said all the above, there are signs of Springtime, as Dr. Nadal pointed out in his article. When I became “Catholic by Desire” as I was given to know Jesus’ True Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament those many years ago, I immediately went to the Catholic Catechism that I had rejected only days before as “inventions of men”. Now, it all made perfect sense.
Faith is a gift. God will not be outdone in generosity. I pray that you and your family, and all families following God’s Good Will will continue to be generous, not “counting the cost.” Pray as if God will do everything, and act as if you must do everything. Remember, with us Catholics, it’s not “Once saved, always saved” but ” Once you get to Heaven you’re saved !”
Mark Kimble