By CHRISTOPHER MANION
Humanae Vitae’s text beautifully invokes the natural law to celebrate life, the family, children, and the role of sexual affection in God’s plan for procreation. But Blessed Paul also warns us that, if contraception becomes widespread, governments will eventually use it to destroy the family, and ultimately, the culture. This tyrannical practice has diverse methods, but they all operate under the umbrella brand called “population control.”
Blessed Paul’s warning has often been called “prophetic,” but it is based on Scripture as well as common sense and experience.
Consider Gen. 1, verse 28: “And God blessed them, saying: be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.”
That is a command from our Creator.
Now consider: If Satan heard this — and he did, of course — what would he want to tell Adam and Eve?
Don’t be fruitful, don’t multiply, and don’t replenish the earth.
That is the first commandment of Population Control, the tyrannical policy of countless governments that Blessed Paul warned us against.
Back to Eden. What else would Satan want to tell our first parents?
Don’t subdue the earth, and don’t have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.
Don’t have dominion over them. No, let them have dominion over you.
Here we see in action the endless temptation to rebel against God. And Satan’s been using it ever since.
Disobedience Makes Us Mean
In Gen. 2:20, God puts Adam in charge of creation. The Tree of Knowledge was part of that creation. So was the forbidden fruit.
Consider Gen. 3:6 — “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. . . .”
Notice that, like all of God’s creation, this tree is perfect. It gives perfect food, it is beautiful, and it gives knowledge. There is nothing wrong with that tree.
Now didn’t God just dominion over that tree to Adam and Eve, to do with it as they willed? Even eat that good and beautiful fruit?
No. God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree. There’s nothing wrong with that beautiful, tasty fruit, but there is something wrong — very wrong — in eating it.
Well, Satan told Eve she could eat it — with a special bonus: “ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
Here Satan is tempting Eve to act like God already — even before she eats the fruit, she wants to eat it. God told her not to eat the fruit, but the goddess Eve said yes I can — and she did. And so did Adam.
Now the tree as God made it was perfect. And He made the human body perfect too.
“Male and female He created them.”
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13-14).
We have been given wonderful bodies. But God commands us to use our bodies according to His will. When we defy His will, it doesn’t make us gods at all — it makes us ugly and mean.
And it doesn’t take long. Watch how quickly this original sin turns Adam against his wife:
The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12).
Isn’t that classic? As soon as he’s caught, Adam blames her.
And that’s what contraception does to husband and wife. They’re gods now, they can write their own rules. As soon as pride takes over — as it does in every contraceptive act — it turns husband against wife. Don’t be fruitful, don’t multiply. Let the pill take dominion over you, your marriage, and your family.
Suddenly the man is afraid: “she might get pregnant.” The woman is afraid too — “he might get me pregnant.” And the prospective child? Whose body is gloriously made? That child is the enemy. Unwanted. A mistake. Get rid!
There you have the sexual revolution boiled down to one tiny pill. The pill will make you free.
Creation Turned Upside Down
The desire for dominion lies at the core of population control’s favorite cover story — environmentalism as religion.
Contraception today is an indispensable tool of population control. It turns everything upside down. Man is now god. Children are not only avoidable, they are disposable. After all, too many children might mean that we lose “the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.” And they’re more important than children. Especially brown and black children in the Third World.
What could possibly motivate man to so defy God and demean himself?
The apostle John explains how each aspect of man’s created being can be perverted by sin:
“For everything in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — comes not from the Father but from the world” (1 John 2:16).
Here John tells us about the disorders that plague the fallen soul. First we have the Lust of the flesh — including the carnal appetites. Well, we’re gods now, right? Why not enjoy them when we want to enjoy them?
Then we have the lust of the eyes — including greed and envy. We want what is not ours. We steal what we can and we envy what we can’t steal. These lusts are so powerful that there are four Commandments forbidding them — Six, Seven, Nine, and Ten. These lusts tell you that everybody else is your competition. The more they have, the less you can have. The less they have, the more you can get.
The envious person is desperately unhappy, but he doesn’t want anybody else to be happy either. He’s mean.
Lastly, John introduces Superbia Vitae, the Pride of Life – the sin of Satan: the lust to be as gods. This is the sin not of the body but of the will.
Augustine calls it the libido dominandi — the lust for power, stronger than all other inordinate desires. After all, you can eat, drink, carouse, or satisfy your carnal appetites only so much. Eventually you get worn out. But the lover of power never gets enough power. God is his competition, and God is all-powerful.
St. Augustine says that this love of power is so strong that it is the motivating force of the City of Man, whose ruler is Satan, the Prince of this world.
But what does power lust have to do with population control?
Well, it works right into the population controller’s agenda. Consider: If you go around town telling people not to have babies, or harassing them for having too many children, or telling poor people or brown people or stupid people that they should get sterilized, eventually you’re going to be arrested, right? Maybe even worse. You’re not going to be very popular.
Enter the lust for power.
Normally, we can’t tell other people what to do. But sometimes you really want to. Well, why not have the government tell them? You envy their freedom. Left alone, they will mess up and crowd the beautiful world that you have every right to enjoy without being bothered by them. You can’t stop them — but the government can.
If you do it, it’s illegal. But not if the government does it.
And that’s what governments do today — at home and abroad. Because government has power, governments throughout what was once Christendom are pushing population control.
Unfortunately, our government does too. And last April, at the Humanae Vitae conference at Catholic University, Donald Critchlow, professor of history at Arizona State University, made a startling observation:
Based on his thorough research in the archives of the USCCB, Dr. Critchlow found that America’s bishops have never condemned the billions of dollars that the U.S. government spends on pushing contraception, at home and abroad.
Satan winks.
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