June/July 2002
NATURE NEVER FORGIVES
THE EDITOR
In the 16th century, Martin Luther, an apostate Augustinian monk who detested philosophy and refuted the very notion of logic in theology, split Christendom asunder. Yet he did infinitely more than that. By rejecting human reason ("Reason is contrary to faith") Luther discarded the God-given means by which man discerns what is good and what is evil: he declared war on the natural law.
As a consequence, Luther set in train the elevation of the human will and the autonomous Self as the prime determinants of truth in all human affairs. Through the agency of his intellectual heirs, like the fulminating ideologues of the so-called Enlightenment, whose disdain for reason was surpassed only by their hatred of God and man, Luther's rebellious spirit gradually isolated the soul from any 'mediating' authorities, human or divine, exterior to itself; transforming each man into a spiritual and moral law unto himself.
Gathering force in concert with secularism across the centuries, this Lutheran legacy has finally broken like a tidal wave upon humanity in our own age. The watershed date, of course, was 1968, when dissident clerics rejected the inseparable link between sex and procreation reaffirmed in Humanae Vitae, effecting a blasphemous consecration of Luther's diabolic revolt against reason and the natural moral law. As the Catholic shutters came down with episcopal blessing and clergy stopped preaching on contraception, the dual 'ethic' underlying dissent from Humanae Vitae - sex-as-recreation/fertility-as-commodity - took the West by storm. Nature reacted and a moral sewer opened up. The contraceptive ethic fuelled or spawned abortion, adultery, divorce, feminism, homosexuality, euthanasia, IVF and all manner of ghastly medical, social and bio-genetic spin-offs. Yet across this surreal modern landscape of designer babies, homosexual adoptions, embryo experimentation and the rest, we see looming large on the horizon the most pressing and prosaic of all contraceptive consequences: demographic meltdown.
Birthrates had decreased between the wars but lifted across Europe and America during the postwar "baby boom." They began declining again throughout Europe around 1970-75, in the wake of the Pill-inspired sexual revolution, and eventually fell below the population replacement level of 2.1 [i.e. 3] children per woman, reaching 1.3 or less in Germany, Italy and Spain. Today, without immigration, such Western nations would implode in two generations, losing one-third of their populations by 2050.
Last year Britain's birthrate fell to 1.64, the lowest level on official record. Marketing executive Andy Pollard has even calculated 2006 as "the year Britain dies." He told the Catholic Times that he had first discovered the decrease in young Britons while doing market research on ice cream and the 18-34 market. "We're running out of young people and the number of abortions doesn't explain it," he said. "The major cause is contraception. The vast majority of people don't have children now."
American commentator Patrick Buchanan fleshes out this endgame logic in his new book The Death of the West. In a brief overview of the work, Professor of Jurisprudence Charles Rice notes that Buchanan exposes an undeniable reality: "The First World, including not only Europe and North America but also Japan and Russia, is dying. For example, Muslim Albania is the only one of 47 European nations that has a birthrate that will replenish its population." Writes Buchanan: "At present birthrates, Europe must bring in 169 million immigrants by 2050 if it wishes to keep its population aged 15 to 64 at today's level. But if Europe wishes to keep its present ratio of 4.8 workers for every senior, Europe must bring in 1.4 billion emigrants from Africa and the Middle East. Put another way: either Europe raises taxes and downsizes pensions and health benefits for the elderly, or Europe becomes a Third World continent. There is no third way."
Australian Peter McDonald has explained the demographic writing on the wall in this way: "The problem with low fertility is that it reduces population size not at all ages but only among the young. Low fertility produces an age structure that creates a momentum for future population decline, a situation that must be stopped at some point if the population is to be demographically sustainable. Also, populations with low fertility can fall in size at an extremely rapid rate. The longer low fertility is maintained, the harder it becomes to reverse population decline."
We have reached a stage where even the anti-life United Nations and its amoral fellow-travellers are getting nervous. Last April, breaking its traditional silence on this imminent calamity which will surely blow the European Union apart, the EU commissioner for social affairs told a UN conference on ageing that Europe needs a higher birth rate if it is to avoid economic and social problems. Ms Anna Diamantopoulou described the increase in Europe's number of elderly people as alarming and advocated family-friendly policies. A response, of course, as predictable as it is pathetic. There are 25 major factors which influence fertility, all of which are presently acting to reduce it. Reversing self-destructive birthrates, therefore, is not as easy as dangling financial carrots. Couples have babies for all sorts of reasons, but not for Big Brother. And certainly not where the deadly mix of affluence and a contraceptive ethic hold sway.
At this advanced stage of social collapse the only true "family friendly" policy would be to ditch the contraceptive ethic; to return society to an understanding and appreciation of the natural law. In this regard, lightweight opportunists devoid of political or moral philosophies, like Tony Blair, will occasionally make fashionable noises about natural law. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that they have no idea what it means and, therefore, not the slightest clue how to differentiate a socio-economic symptom from a moral disease. Nor should we seriously expect that the present Western hegemony - the Blairite '60s generation who embraced and stylized contraception - will display any interest whatsoever in addressing societal dysfunction and decay at its contraceptive roots. Indeed, the whole godless contrivance of rationalised sexual misbehaviour we call "modernity" is entirely dependent on preserving a contraceptive mentality. Hence our PC elite busily compounding all the deadly dysfunction by arming the next generation with new wave contraception like the 'contraceptive patch' (trade name "Ortho Evra"). A small piece of adhesive that allows the same hormones found in the Pill to be absorbed through the skin, it is touted as the "safest, simplest and most reliable birth control method yet invented."
On the one hand, the West finally acknowledges its impending demise and is alarmed by the socio-economic consequences. On the other, it further advances and promotes the suicidal contraceptive ethic. The eclipse of reason! Which leads us back to the start and Luther's revolt against the Church, reason and the natural moral law. His rebellion did not so much create as set free the evil that ultimately shaped "modernity" - a euphemism for rationalised lust which perfectly mirrors Luther's own animalistic attitude to sex and his utter contempt for both womanhood and virginity.
"God always forgives, man sometimes forgives, but nature never forgives." As that familiar truism edges towards its implacable denouement in our time, we should finally recall that rebellion against the natural order determines not just the fate of nations in this world, but the destiny of immortal souls in the next: "For man has in his heart a law written by God; to obey it is the very dignity of man, according to it he will be judged."