Catholicism—birth control and birth rates (part II)
Continuing my argument against Steven. I broke down his position into three premises:
- That low birth rate is the main cause of our civilizational suicide
- That the Catholic stance against birth control is the cure
- That this cure must work
I list below total fertility rates for three typical Catholic countries as well as three typical Protestant countries in Europe.
Poland 1.26
Italy 1.29
Spain 1.29
Finland 1.73
Denmark 1.74
Norway 1.78
I have excluded countries which are mixed Catholic/Protestant, such a Germany or the Netherlands. I have excluded Catholic countries with low adherence to Catholicism, such as the Czech Republic. I have excluded countries with too high proportion of Muslims or foreign-born residents (especially from the Third World), such as France, the U.K and Sweden.
Even with a longer list of countries in each category we will see the same pattern. It will only make the analysis more complex. So let's start with the two tables above.
In the Protestant/Secular countries the birth rates are healthy and unproblematic. Even though it would be preferable to get them up a few notches so that they come above the replacement level of 2.1. The birth rates of the typical Catholic countries, however, are so low that they will become a threat to the national survival if they continue. With a constant fertility rate of 1.75 a country will still have 2/3 of its population intact after 100 years. With a fertility rate of 1.3 the population will have dropped as much already after 50 years, and will be less than 30% of the original size after 100 years. I supply my Excel calculations below:
| Total fertility rate | #people per generation cohort | Total population at a given time | Percentage of original population | Years elapsed |
| 2 | ||||
| 2 | ||||
| 2 | 6 | 100,00% | 0 | |
| 1,75 | 1,75 | 5,75 | 95,83% | 25 |
| 1,75 | 1,53125 | 5,28125 | 88,02% | 50 |
| 1,75 | 1,339844 | 4,621094 | 77,02% | 75 |
| 1,75 | 1,172363 | 4,043457 | 67,39% | 100 |
| 2 | ||||
| 2 | ||||
| 2 | 6 | 100,00% | 0 | |
| 1,3 | 1,3 | 5,3 | 88,33% | 25 |
| 1,3 | 0,845 | 4,145 | 69,08% | 50 |
| 1,3 | 0,54925 | 2,69425 | 44,90% | 75 |
| 1,3 | 0,357013 | 1,751263 | 29,19% | 100 |
The conclusion is that if Catholicism is going to save Europe by increasing birth rates it's doing a completely crappy job. Considering how much these countries have in common otherwise, one even has to raise the question whether Catholicism--with its "courageous" stance against birth control--could be the explaining factor in extremely low birth rates of European Catholic countries.
So even if Steven's premise #1 would have been true (which it wasn't, it was way misguided), the "courageous" Catholic stance against birth control isn't the cure, because the cure doesn't work in Europe. And before I get back to why, let's just give Steven's argument a last chance: doesn't a ban on birth control really have any effect or making people breed more? Yes, it does! In the Third World.
The Catholic policy against using condoms encourage people in Africa to breed more. There it works. It's a kind of a race between Catholicism and Islam. So if we want the European population to be less than 7% and the African population to be over 20% in 2050, this is exactly what the Catholic policy--that Steven is so very proud of--is achieving. I fail to see how this is saving Europe, though. And this addresses premise #2: a stance from the Catholic church against birth control is not the cure, instead it does the opposite and adds to the injury.
In 1950 58% of the Catholic adherents lived in the West.
Today only 35% live in the West.
Catholicism has become a Third World concernment. So how can the Catholic Church be expected to work for the interest of European civilization? On all points investigated it does the very opposite of the interest of people of European decent. And it's completely logical. The Catholic Church has become an NGO for the interests of Third World people, lobbying for mass immigration from the Third World into the West, embracing Islam, and boosting the population growth in Africa. Like any other super-national super-organization, the Catholic Church cares only about itself as an organization and its success by growth, and not the least about Europe.
So why doesn't Catholicism work in Europe? Because the low birth rates in Europe has nothing to do with birth control or abortions. It has all to do with the Europeans being over-taxed in combination with feminism. It's too expensive and too stressful to have many kids, and the mother is not home to take care of them anyway. But in order to please the Catholics and the liberals we import loads of Third World people into our countries, and then pay them to have loads of children. As German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn said:
[T]ake the Tunisian example. A woman in Tunisia has 1.7 children. In France she may have six because the French government pays her to have them. Of course, the money was never intended to benefit Tunisian women in particular, but French women will not touch this money, whereas the Tunisian women are only too happy to.
So, finally, why then do the Protestant countries breed more than the Catholics? My explanation is that the Catholics in Europe are more hurt by the egalitarian modern ideals, imposed upon us, than the places from where it originates, America and Scandinavia, and where there has always been a more equal relation between men and women traditionally. Italian/Spanish men who never really cut the umbilical cord to their mother, are no longer attractive to modern independent Italian/Spanish women. Relations do not last, the women consider the men childish and irresponsible. If the Catholic Church ought to say anything brave in this kind of situation, it would be to say to the women to stay home in the kitchen. Its babbling about birth control only gives effect in Africa (where the women are already staying put in the kitchen, or the kind). Anyway, the situation for Catholic Europe is bound to have improved already within a generation. The new generation of boys will have adapted, or the egalitarian paradigm will be gone.
More:
Catholicism—Vatican II embracing Islam
Catholicism—the open borders lobby
Catholicism—birth control and birth rates (part I)
Catholicism—birth control and birth rates (part II)
Catholicism—anecdotal conservatism
2 comments:
Just to be clear: When I talk about saving us from civilizational suicide I talk about saving European civilization. This higher, well-organized civilization of beautiful art and respect for the individual is intimately tied to the survival of ethnic Europeans
I can see what's well-organized, but what's so beautiful? Is it the fast food? The 50% of kids born out of wedlock? The 70% divorce rate? The cities like Paris where women get raped on trains and nobody looks up from his newspaper? Or in Sweden and Norway where men don't even defend their raped women anymore - because EVERYTHING is up to papa Government? Civilization? The weekend drug-ecstasty-booze slaughters of teenagers (the number one cause of death of young people in Italy). Where's the beautiful art? In the botellon bashes of Spanish kids? The graffiti culture? Body piercing?
With one surveillance camera every 14 citizens can the English themselves be the artworks worth watching? The finest in artwork and civilization can be seen precisely in those fields that concern us westerners most, or rather our ONLY true concern: commerce... the best, the biggest and most dazzling, plenty increasingly in systems of franchising where everything, from smiles and attitudes is decided not by people in charge of their lives, but via directives from distant skyscrapers.
Have a nice day! Enjoy your meal.
If you want civilization, culture, community, the answer is in God and Jesus Christ. Then you might get cathedrals... and even carnivals. Today you'll have massified man and lentless Berlin love parades where there's no love whatsoever, or Gay Pride, manifestations of despair, so desperate for recognition and legalization of sin that they transvestites insist on parading themselves in front of any place or symbol that might still contain a shred of sacredness.
Civilization? Do you mean kids given for adoption to mom-and-mom, dad-and-dad couples? Rock and Roll stars (the new moral leaders) throwing mega-concerts to forage foreign dictators? Millions upon millions feeling boundless love for a baby polar beer in a Berlin zoo (when most don't even know who their own next door neighbors are)?
Our societies stink to high heaven. Goodness has come to mean strong beliefs in "right" and distant causes... nothing at all to do with personal righteousness. Oh the blessings of western culture! French students who go on rampages because high-paying, non-firable jobs are not available. Millions in the piazzas because a non-socialist government needs to tweak pensions a decimal or two.
Why are ex-Catholic countries particularly hard hit? Because first of all, though on average economically poorer, they were always culturally richer. One didn't need the state (always considered a necessary evil), one had family and extended family and the social services provided by the church (especially nuns who are no more).
With the demise of Catholicism in the Catholic countries and the rise of hedonism, you have countries of great, I would say undoubtedly superior cultural pleasure, combined with higher degrees of religious loathing (up in northern Europe one ignores the Protestant Churches that anyway believe in a very hollow concept of God; in Southern Europe one loathes the Church and fights it precisely because Catholicism is more invasive and demanding).
So Catholic Europe is at a crossroads. For a cosmetic, make-believe solution to the problem, - and I agree with you - they merely need to pass more Scandinavian style pro-family legislation which for the time being, those countries not being so economically virtuous (though vaunting subjectively better cultures) can ill afford.
It's only a matter of time and getting organized. Northern Italy is already headed in that direction and for the first time more babies are being born up North than in the South which until 1995 had a surplus of children. The shift is underway. As can be expected, the Catholic countries are behind in this switch from personal empowerment to massification, welfare and control.
Like commercials lead the masses to the feeding troughs, even here the state will eventually come around to guarantee that enough sperm meet up with enough ripe ovula to create enough zygotes. And the cycle of control and coercion will be complete. Both parents working, lovely day care centers, kids abandoned to teachers and specialists, meals faster and faster, old-timers left to die in proper homes. The Matrix?
Have a nice birth! Have a nice education cycle! Have a nice production cycle! Have a nice death!
Why are the Dutch leaving Holland? Is there not a trend of Britons leaving Great Britain? More leaving than new immigrants coming in? That's a trend too. Is it because of the teachings of the Catholic Church or an indication that life has waxed to new unliveable heights in those economically virtuous countries? Or is it just a preference for sunshine?
While really talking about the Church's COURAGE in risking impopularity over the issue of birth control, I called denatality the number one cause of our civilization suicide, but it's really only the most important symptom of a vast array of wrong values. The focus was on the courage shown in taking a tough - even whoppingly illogical, yet morally prescient stance. You turned it into some sort of anti-Catholic screed about birth control vis-a-vis foreign encroachment. Naturally the issue of immigrants and denatality is quite complicated and variegated. The Muslims themselves will not have so many children as they used to, a great many will become secularized, others perhaps Christianized.
In my opinion the root of the problem, and why I talked about the Catholic Chruch's display of courage, despite the inevitable beating, is in man's very approach to life, now despiritualized and mono-themed, with societies only capable (and bent on) never-ending economic expansion. The notion that progress is something that can be counted like money, that more and faster (and better organized) is always better. This combined with undeniable denatality, (both cause and effect) is at the crux of the issue. It's what keeps birthrates low and the need for foreigners high. A healthy society shouldn't need such limitless expansion in its demand for goods and services, shouldn't work so hard, shouldn't be losing all its manual labor skills, shouldn't be spending so little quality time with its children, shouldn't be so hyper-legislated, hyper-regulated, shouldn't be so shoddy and careless with its history, old-timers.
The stats you show only tell part of the story. And it is only logical that the Catholic countries (ex-Catholic to be exact) should be hit harder. They show Denatality as a clear indicator of something bigger and more important which is the real cause of foreign encroachment: our make-believe wealth riding a runaway train straight to hell. The truth is we've never been poorer.
And the Atheists/Rationalist/Barbarian culture is little else than a society of Haram / Halal / Tolerated, with the Koran being law codes, also abrogated, also full of contradictions (let there be no compulsion, Fight them); with the past also an age of ignorance; with a credo also without any recognized leader... with fatalism also the rising attitude.
Steven,
When I talk about saving European civilization, I'm not talking about the current incarnation of it, which should be very clear from the articles of my blog. I completely agree with Lawrence Auster that we need to turn around 180 degrees from that. I use the concept of European civilization as an umbrella concept for what is generally referred to as the Roman/Greek civilization and the Western civilization. And in spite of how things are today, under the surface we have the many layers of history with us. When I look around I see Roman cultural DNA in so many places. This is one reason why I do not refer to it as the Western civilization, the civilization you describe as flawed in such a vivid language. Flaws that I have traced back to the Christian ethics, which is the most typical feature of Western civilization.
Another reason for using the concept of European civilization is to explicitly include the Orthodox countries. And to put less emphasis on America and more on the continent of origin of this family of civilizations, as well as more focus on European ethnicity as a key feature for making such civilizations possible. So yes I could have used the concept in plural, but I prefer the singular, in order to stress what's common in this family of civilizations. And no I'm not "hoping for miracles from ueber-macht America" as you put it. To the contrary, my concept European civilization embodies the gradual detachment from America as the empire, which will become necessary for the survival of Europe. Once again I invite you to read the articles of my blog so that you can get an idea of what my position is.
I understand that it must have hurt for a Catholic when I wrote that only America can save Christianity. But this was merely a way of giving them the benefit of the doubt (together with giving Christianity the benefit of the doubt). Your overreaction that this would make me into someone crazily pro-American, reminds me of the Swedish guy who wrote here a while ago, who didn't think I was sufficiently anti-Israel etc., and therefore considered me as too pro-Semitic (a word he loved to use) for his taste. Your description of me as someone "hoping for miracles from ueber-macht America" is so confused that it is funny. But it is merely a reflection of your own hurt feelings as a Catholic to what I wrote, in combination with your sentiment that I'm not sufficiently anti-American.
I find it funny how people get confused by my position, since it does not conform to the simplified dichotomized thinking that people are used to encounter. But it's my thinking that is clear and the simplified dichotomization that is confused. The most illustrative example of this comes from Americans I have met in Internet discussions. When I challenge the very core of what is American pride (as an empire-in-denial), I end up being accused of representing: i) the old monarchies, ii) Marxism, and iii) fascism; all at the same time and by the very same person. I have concluded that for common Americans they're all seen, emotionally, as the very same thing, i.e. bad Europe. Three different heads of the very same monster. Out of the three I represent the "old monarchies", which is, of course, considered the worst by common Americans.
You talk a lot about how brave the Catholic Church is. About it's "COURAGE in risking impopularity". But that is not at all true. The Catholic Church has caved in and excused themselves for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the colonization of Latin America. All three things that I defend, but where the cowardly Vatican itself has caved in and made pitiful excuses. To having continued to defend these things would have been something, but the Vatican lost its substance when it caved in, and now it only charades as brave upon miniature issues, such as birth control, which will only impress their most zealous fan club members.
This led to bad Karma, and next the Vatican embraced Islam, and from then on the karma became even worse. If I'm going to paint a picture of how disgusting Vatican II and its Lumen Gentium and Nostra Atate is to me, I will say that embracing Islam in this way is like go finding a rotten goat and hugging it in your bed every night. It's so sick that it makes me want to vomit. I can understand that these passages are completely shameful to Catholics and that this is why the never want to discuss them. But it means that since Vatican II, Catholics can no longer talk intelligently about their own religion. This put Catholics in the same category as liberals. Caught in their net, deprived of the intellectual means to get out of it. This is a horrible betrayal of the Catholics and Catholicism by the Vatican.
Unfortunately political hierarchy beats theological substance in Catholicism. Therefore a Vatican committee can sit in the '60s and throw away 1600 years of tradition, and nobody will protest. As a Catholic you submit to the hierarchy, period. Theological substance is secondary an apparently can easily be thrown away. While I defend the Catholic Church of the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the colonization of Latin America. And of course the Catholicism found in the Catholic Encyclopaedia, the 1908 edition where it writes about Islam:
"In matters political, Islam is a system of despotism at home and aggression abroad. . . . The rights of non-Moslem subjects are of the vaguest and most limited kind, and a religious war is a sacred duty whenever there is a chance of success against the ‘Infidel.’ Medieval and modern Mohammedan, especially Turkish, persecutions of both Jews and Christians are perhaps the best illustration of this fanatical religious and political spirit."
Not the Catholicism of John Paul II kissing the Koran, or Pope Benedict humiliating himself in Turkey -- Turkish hosts scold conciliatory Pope.
This makes me a better defender of Catholicism than you are, Steven, on substantive and traditional issues. While you are the better anecdotal Catholic, and better at throwing away 1600 years of tradition.
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