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Stephen D Mumford DrPH (NAC Chair)
President,
The Center for Research on Population and Security
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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Free Inquiry, Winter 2000/01, Vol 21, No 1. |
| The following article is from the Council for Secular Humanism Free Inquiry, Winter 2000/01 Vol 21, No 1. |
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Contents
The anti-abortion movement in the United States was created in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade in 1973, which legalized abortion. However, it really owes its origin to a group of men in Rome
103 years earlier. This was 1870, the year of Vatican Council I, a conclave of
great importance in recent church history. Why is this so?
Hans Küng, the renowned Swiss Catholic theologian, best
summed up the problem accounting for its creation when he said, “It is not
possible to solve the problem of contraception until we solve the problem of
infallibility.”[1] In his book, How the Pope Became
Infallible, Catholic historian Bernhard Hasler describes in great detail what Küng
meant: For more than a millennium, the Vatican had possessed temporal power that
ensured its survival. With the loss of the Papal States in 1870, it appeared all
but certain that a strong papacy would simply disappear. The Vatican urgently
needed a new source of power.
A group of conservative and influential leaders, including
Pope Pius IX, came up with a brilliant idea for a new source: an infallible
pope. What is infallibility? According to Catholic dogma, when the pope
formulates a doctrine, he is simply transmitting this dogma on God’s behalf.
Therefore, the teaching cannot possibly be in error.
Roman Catholics could be certain that the teachings of the
pope and of God were one and the same, and, if strictly followed, one’s
entrance into heaven was guaranteed. Communicants found this concept very
attractive and were eager to behave in any manner required of them. Such an
arrangement placed enormous control over individuals into the hands of the
Vatican, extending across national borders and even to the other side of the
world. It could no longer control the laity by means of its governance, as it
had in the Papal States which would later become Italy. But the Holy See could
exercise control directly by adopting a policy of psychological coercion founded
on a new doctrine – that of papal infallibility.
Protection at all Costs
Papal infallibility was a brilliant concept – and it worked
for a century. But at its introduction in 1870, the Catholic intelligentsia
recognized that, at some point in the future, this principle would lead to the
self-destruction of the institution. Times were certain to change and in
unpredictable ways, but the Church would be locked on an inexorable
course – teachings that could not be changed without destroying the principle of
infallibility itself. These distinguished scholars foresaw that one day,
encumbered by its unchangeable teachings, the Church would find itself down a
blind alley from which there would be no escape and faced with inevitable
self-destruction as a result of a grave loss of credibility. The blind alley
turned out to be the issue of birth control – contraception and abortion.
Since the 1968 adoption of the papal encyclical, Humanae
Vitae, there has been a hemorrhage in the Church’s credibility. Humanae Vitae
ruled out any change of the Church’s position on birth control for all time.
The proponents of papal infallibility could not imagine the
population explosion of the last half of this century. Just as critics had
predicted, institutional self-destruction is now well underway. But, as it
stands now, the Church cannot change its position on birth control without
undermining all of its dogma.
The following are only three among scores of findings to
indicate how the Vatican is destroying itself:
1. In 1965 there were 42,000 young men in American
seminaries studying for the priesthood. Today there are fewer than 6,000, even
though the number of Catholics in this country has nearly doubled.
2. The average age of nuns in the United States is 65
years. Only 3% are under age 40, while 35% are older than 70.
3. One-half of all American priests quit the priesthood
before reaching retirement age.
Self-destruction as a result of loss of credibility is
underway but progressing slowly. The pope remains hopeful that he can turn this
around. He is convinced that, if he changes the Church’s position on birth
control and destroys the principle of infallibility, self-destruction will be
very swift. We know that this matter was the focus of his attention for several
years in the 1960s.
The Threats of Legalized Birth Control and Abortion
In 1964, Pope Paul VI created the Papal Commission on
Population and Birth Control. It was a two-part commission and met from 1964 to
1966. One part consisted of 64 lay persons, the other, of 15 clerics, including
the future Pope John Paul II, then a Polish cardinal. Pope Paul gave the
Commission only one mission – to determine how the Church could change its
position on birth control without undermining papal authority. After two years
of study, the Commission concluded that it was not possible to make this change
without undermining papal authority, but that the Church should make the change
anyway because it was the right thing to do! The lay members voted 60 to 4 for
change, and the clerics, 9 to 6 for change.[2] Pope
Paul did not act immediately. A minority report was prepared, co-authored by the
man who is now Pope John Paul II. In this report he stated:
If it should be declared that contraception is not evil
in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had
been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti
Connubii was promulgated), in 1951 (Pius XlI’s address to the midwives), and
in 1958 (the address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year
the pope died). It should likewise have to be admitted that for a half century
the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the
Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error.
This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with
extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding,
under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The
fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now be
declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which
popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved.[3]
In this and other texts, the pope took the position that a
change on the birth control issue would destroy the principle of papal
infallibility, and that infallibility was the fundamental principle of the
Church upon which all else rests. A change on birth control would immediately
raise questions about other possible errors popes have made in matters of
divorce, homosexuality, confession, parochial schooling, etc. that are
fundamental to Roman Catholicism.
The security and survival of the papacy itself is on the
line. The Church insists on being the sole arbiter of what is moral. Civil law
legalizes contraception and abortion. Governments are thereby challenging the
prerogative of the pope to be the ultimate authority on matters of morality.
Most Americans look to democratic process to determine morality. In the simplest
analysis, the Church cannot coexist with such an arrangement, which in its view,
threatens its very survival as a world political power.
For this reason, the Vatican was forced to interfere in the
democratic process in the United States by lobbying for the passage of numerous
anti-abortion laws designed to protect its interests. There is a plethora of
documentation to support these findings, relating mainly to Vatican and U.S.
National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ sources, some of which I will discuss
later.
Only legal abortion and legal family planning threaten the
Church. It has shown very little interest in illegal abortion. For example, in
Latin America, where abortion is illegal, abortion rates are two or three times
as high as those seen in the United States. However, abortion is essentially
ignored by the bishops there.
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