Rational Catholicism

An elderly celibate calling himself by the mediaeval title Archbishop of Westminster has resurrected the fine Catholic tradition of pro-overpopulationism, apparently in the hope that "religion should play a larger part in British politics" (Guardian). It looks as if the present theocratic plunge into corporate fundamentalism, with its attendant Christian virtues of widespread poverty, growing ignorance and general dismantling of the world and the flesh, is not quite unworldly enough for God's representative in Westminster.

Nevertheless, the Archbishop is to be commended for his hard-headed realism in the matter of family planning. In these great times, which are potentially more interesting for the human race than any that have gone before, the Catholic attitude towards abortion is clearly the only sensible one, and it is a shameful reflection on the shortcomings of our leaders that the best proposal Michael Howard could come up with was a mere four weeks off the legal time limit. The short-sightedness and lack of realism underlying Howard's weaselly compromise may yet prove catastrophic in their consequences. The idea that parents can best look after their children by keeping their families small is, in these great times, so patently false as to be ludicrous.

Think of the problems involved. Smaller families mean that there is more to go round - more parental attention and more money, which means, if one is especially unlucky, more affection, better health care, better education, and less competition within the family for physical and emotional resources. It is obvious why this sort of scenario appeals to our base and materialistic instincts; but given the kind of world we are trying to create, it is equally obvious that this sort of scenario is neither practicable nor humane.

Global warming is well advanced and probably irreversible even if we cared to try doing anything much about it. Scientists have predicted that, in less than half a century, perhaps half the world's land species will have become extinct. The Pentagon has produced reports noting that, even before we have taken the last fossil fuels out of the ground and added them to the pollution in our lungs, a new cycle of wars will have begun in order to secure water and other luxuries of a similar nature.

Quite obviously, in the face of such a future, it is both foolish and cruel to raise children who will grow up expecting adequate nutrition and humane treatment from their neighbours. By contrast, children from families of fifteen or twenty, who have to scream for every scrap of attention and fight their siblings for every scrap of food, will obviously grow up with a much healthier perspective on the world as they find it, and also with the social skills necessary to cope.

It should also be clear that, in the event of a global holocaust resulting from a pandemic or a nuclear war, those families best equipped to survive will be those with the largest number and the most widely scattered members. A close, mutually dependent relationship among three or four people will more than likely result in the whole family unit being wiped out in a single bombing or as a result of a single member being infected by disease. A family which has dispersed itself, and whose members are not in personal contact owing to mutual hatred or disgust, is obviously in a far better position to preserve at least a portion of its genetic inheritance.

In his affirmation of the Catholic stand on abortion, the Archbishop of Westminster has shown genuine concern for the well-being of the human race, as well as an unexpectedly firm grasp of the theory of natural selection and the facts of corporate ecology. The Archbishop has obviously realised, as have regrettably few among our politicians, the basic and fundamental truth that a people's survival in the face of a crisis depends to a large extent on how well it takes care of its young.