Under Unlawful Birth Control Methods, paragraph 14, it states that "it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (18)—in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general" (Supreme Pontiff Paul VI). He is talking about using "the pill", plan B, a condom, or getting an abortion and saying that because that child is a natural thing, it could be so precious that it must be brought into the world. For instance, let's say we lived in a world in which the richest 20% of people account for 3/4 of the world's income- we do- having a consistently growing population would be justified by the romanticized birth of one baby.
I found the above diagram from globalissues.org. If we were to take the Church's views on birth control as something other than irony, that would mean the allowance of our 7billion person population to grow, as well as the amount of people living in poverty with nothing to keep them from dying. Michel Foucault might put this under his term Biopolitical. The church Biopowerful Subject, demanding a mass population to continue to live, and maintain population growth- regardless of the unlivable conditions we are haunted by already. The church thus, takes control of the human body; it defies for us what sex is, what is should be, and how we should have it. Anything contrary, no matter the circumstances, would be to go against the natural law which keeps us within what Bordo would call our Docile Bodies.
This picture looks at procreation with a strong sense of feeling. The image represents procreation as a romantic, cheerful, and all around 'good thing'.
This Image shows children literally starving to death, dying in the desert. What becomes clear is the Church's Romanticizing about procreation, and disregard to the masses of people dying right under our noses.What Birth Control methods allow us humans to do, is take control of the overpopulated planet. We have taken control over human sexuality. To allow the church to remain in domination of very bodies, we give up the rights to genitalia, while at the same time, allowing our resources to be controlled by the rich, and kept away from the massive populations with nothing but their own deaths.
I like your spin on overpopulation vs birth-control. As we begin fighting over more scarce resources as other nations develop, I think we will begin realizing what a true problem is on our hands. As you have said, for the most part, almost all the consumption of goods occurs in developed nations. When the poorer countries begin rising in economic strength, they will begin using resources in much the same ways as our country has in the past. Power will likely come from dirty sources, since coal and fossil fuels are cheap. Unless, we go in country to help build their industries and utility companies, we cannot simply say, no you cannot pollute our country.
ReplyDeleteAs this problem grows, I wonder how the church spin on responsible procreation will take into effect that we may very well be past the planet's carrying capacity, we might just not know it as of yet. Will the attitude be that, developed countries are simply maintaining their populations and since developed offspring tend to contribute more to society, we will be encouraged to continue as we were. However, there could be a shift in culture that makes it the norm to only have one child or two, depending on the goals of population. I do not see the church implementing policies that we cannot have children, I think it will be a very hot topic of conversation in politics in the next 50 years or so.
I think there's another part to this story of overpopulation in which birth control is not necessarily the deciding factor in population growth in developing countries. In addition to the chances of children surviving in developing countries being lower, children in developing countries do not make as large an impact on the natural resources as in developed countries which allows for more population growth.
ReplyDeleteWhat Steve calls Jacob's spin is really two incompatible world views, one relative (Jacobs) and one absolute. Natural Law is---well--LAW as the Pope sees it. No exceptions.
ReplyDeleteHmnmnmn?