The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) seized upon 12 October 1999—the date world population was to reach 6 billion—to once again raise the tired specter of overpopulation. Joined by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, it sought to scare Washington into spending more money on family planning programs, both at home and abroad.
The most significant aspects of the birth of Baby Six Billion were deliberately left unmentioned: World population will never double again. If there is any population crisis in the developed world, it is one of looming depopulation.
Take the growing labor shortage in the United States. Early in November, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan released a report stating that American productivity and market competitiveness were being threatened by an ever-tightening labor force. How did he propose to address the problem? One suggestion was to increase imports, thus moving American jobs offshore. A second was to expand the workforce, which is problematic in a time of record-low unemployment unless the age of retirement were to be raised. Greenspan’s preferred option was to increase immigration. What the report didn’t say was this: America’s birthrate has been below replacement since about 1970. There are simply too few young people coming into the workforce to fill available jobs. Another way of putting this is that America’s population growth rate is too low to sustain its current rate of economic growth, which will in turn increasingly affect its competitiveness on the world market.
According to the Census Bureau, the present U.S. rate of natural increase is only about one half of one percent annually and is dropping rapidly. By 2030, barring either a significant increase in the birthrate or a massive increase in immigration, the U.S. population will be in absolute decline.
The problems this will cause are already apparent in the Northeast. A report issued jointly last week by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University and the non-profit organization Mass INC underscores the social and economic impact of falling birthrates. Entitled The Changing Workforce: Immigrants and the New Economy in Massachusetts, the report highlights Massachusetts’ falling birthrates and its increasing dependence upon foreign immigration for sustaining both its population and the growth and success of its economy.
The study placed Massachusetts as one of the five U.S. states most dependent on foreign immigration—a dependence resulting from a combination of falling birthrates and domestic out-migration. This dependence on immigration for sustaining economic productivity extends throughout the entire Northeast Corridor. New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, and Massachusetts make up the five states most dependent on immigration to generate labor force growth. If not for foreign immigration, the current labor force of the entire New England region would be 200,000 workers less than it was in 1990.
“Many New Englanders have voluntarily adopted a one-child policy, justifying their selfishness by an appeal to the myth of overpopulation,” said Steven W. Mosher, president of Public Research Institute, a population policy watchdog organization. “Having chosen fewer children, they will either admit more immigrants or watch creeping economic stagnation infect the entire region. ‘Give me your tired huddled masses yearning to breath free’ will be in effect rewritten to say ‘Give me your tired huddled masses . . . to fill our emptying classrooms, take our vacant jobs, and support us in our old age.’”
The prison cell in which St. Thomas More was incarcerated for 14 months before his execution was finally opened to the public January 10. Though the small room in the Tower of London has traditionally been believed to be the scene of the martyr’s last months, Tower historian Geoffrey Parnell told Catholic World News there wasn’t “a shred of evidence” to support the claim, although it is known More was held in the Tower.
The lawyer More became a favorite of King Henry VIII and rose to the position of Lord Chancellor, in those days the highest office in England. He fell afoul of the King’s wrath when he refused to agree to Henry’s divorce from his first wife and marriage to Anne Boleyn. More was beheaded on Tower Green in July 1535. The cell has previously been inaccessible to the public and the new entrance has been built as part of London’s millennium celebrations.
Catholics who have asked to celebrate Mass there on St. Thomas More’s feast day have been refused permission so far by Queen Elizabeth.
On December 8, 1955, the European Ministers’ delegates adopted the European flag designed by Arsene Heitz. The decision was taken following the 1950 European Council’s (one of the predecessors of today’s European Union) convocation of a competition to design the flag of the newborn European Community. Among many other artists, Heitz presented several designs, and one was chosen: twelve stars on a blue background.
Recently Heitz, who today is an octogenarian artist in Strasbourg, revealed to a French magazine the reason for his inspiration. At that time he was reading the history of the Blessed Virgin’s apparitions in Paris’s Rue du Bac (known today as the Virgin of the Miraculous Medal). According to the artist, he thought of the twelve stars in a circle on a blue background, exactly the way it is represented in traditional iconography of this image of the Immaculate Conception.
Javier Paredes, professor of contemporary history at the University of Alcála in Spain, told the Zenit news agency, “Heitz listens to God in his interior; in other words, he prays with his heart and his head. He says he is profoundly religious and devoted to the Virgin, to whom he never misses praying a daily Rosary, together with his wife.”
Paredes said that “neither the stars nor the blue of the flag are particularly religious symbols, thus respecting the conscience of all Europeans, regardless of their beliefs.” Indeed, he recalls that “when Paul M. G. Levy, first director of the press and information service of the European Council, had to explain to the members of the Economic Community the meaning of the design, he interpreted the number of twelve stars as a ‘figure of plentitude,’ given that in the 1950s there were not twelve members in that Council, nor in the European Community.”
“However, in Heitz’s soul the words of the Apocalypse were very present: ‘A great sign appeared in the heavens: a woman clothed with the sun and with the moon at her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.’” In an interesting coincidence, the delegates of the European Ministers officially adopted the design proposed by Heitz on the feast of Our Lady: December 8, 1955.
Said Paredes: “It shouldn’t be difficult for us to discover in the folds of the Europeans’ flag the smile and affection of Our Mother, the Queen of Europe, ready to lend a hand in that great challenge that St. Peter’s successor has proposed to us: to re-Christianize the Old Continent with the example of our lives and the testimony of our words.”
In December, New Jersey Catholics who thought they were calling a priest about confession found themselves connected instead with an Evangelical Christian in Oceanside, California, who exhorted them to abandon the sacrament.
A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark expressed surprise that people were already calling the 1-877-Y-NOT-CALL number established in August for its “Reconciliation 2000″; program, since it wasn’t scheduled to start until January. But in late December archdiocesan officials received a call California photographer Raul Hogland telling them that people were already calling the number—and it was his. Hogland is member of the North Coast Evangelical Church.
The photographer, 34, who described the mix-up to Reuters news service as “divine intervention,” put a message on his answering machine urging callers to abandon confession and pray directly to Christ. “You have reached Award Winning Photography by Raul. If you would like to leave a confession, confess your sins directly to Jesus Christ. He alone can forgive your sins,” the message says. Hogland he had talked with a few callers and given them advice.
Started in response to declining participation in confession, the New Jersey “Reconciliation 2000” program now has more than 500 priests manning phones 12 hours a day, urging people to return to the Catholic sacrament of penance.
The British Prime Minister’s office has denied rumors that the British government is ready to consider lifting the 300-year-old ban on Catholics ascending the throne or marrying a reigning monarch.
In January Catholic World News reported that Lord Forsyth of Drumlean said, “Lord Fraser [of Carmyllie] and I will be introducing a bill in the House of Lords to amend the Act of Settlement so that it ends the anomaly whereby it is perfectly legal for the monarch to marry a Buddhist, a Hindu, or even a Moonie, but not a Roman Catholic.”
But a Downing Street spokesman said that the ban would remain. And Prime Minister Tony Blair—whose Catholic wife Cherie is expecting their fourth child—confirmed that changing the law would be a hugely complicated process.
“The central point of the Act of Settlement is that the Established Church in England is the Church of England, of which the Sovereign is Supreme Governor,” he said. “Therefore the Act does not prevent members of the Royal Family from becoming or marrying Roman Catholics, but does remove them from the line of succession.”
Speaking of Britain, more people in that country now go to Mass on Sunday than attend Church of England services, according to a report released in January.
Official statistics for the Church of England show that church attendance has fallen below one million for the first time since records began. But 1999 figures published in the new National Catholic Directory show Mass attendance figures as 1,086,268. Both churches show a drop over last year but for Catholics that drop is less substantial.
Father John Danson, editor of the Catholic Directory, told The Universe newspaper, “We have to recognize that only 25 percent of the total estimated Catholic population goes to Mass—there is still 75 percent whose attendance is sporadic.”
The figures quoted in the Catholic Directory are compiled by each parish and are based on average Mass attendance.
Another poll conducted by the Opinion Research Business around the same time found that less then half the population of Britain believes in Jesus Christ—and an astounding 14 percent don’t even know who he is. Twenty-two percent believe that Christ is “just a story.”
Just fewer than 49 percent of people surveyed claimed to belong to any religious group. Only three percent of the population goes to church at Easter or Christmas, and 46 percent said they never went to church at all.
A new internet apostolate promotes the Liturgy of the Hours among laypeople: www.liturgyhours.org offers Morning and Evening Prayer with the prayer components preassembled so that inexperienced people can easily follow along. The prayers include all the daily antiphons of the liturgical seasons, and they print in an attractive format.
To use this site, a prayer leader (priest or lay) would visit the Internet, print multiple copies of the prayers, gather with other people, and lead the prayer.
Though the Liturgy of the Hours is fundamental to the life of the Church (CCC 1174–1178, CIC 1173–1175, Sacrosanctum Concilium IV), it is for the most part overlooked by lay people. We would urge our readers to deepen their prayer life by praying Morning and Evening Prayer. In your own community, for example, pray the Liturgy of the Hours before or after Mass; at parish schools, adult education, and pre-Cana classes; at retreats and renewal programs, lay apostolate meetings, at Catholic university organizations, and especially at home with the family.
Jose Saraiva Martins and Edward Nowak—prefect and secretary of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, respectively—presented the Index ac status causarum (Index and Status of Causes [of saints]).
Archbishop Saraiva explained that the Index is the “list of the causes for beatification and canonization, including those that have just started and are still in the diocesan phase, those that are more or less advanced and being examined by the congregation and, finally, those that have completed their iter with the canonization of the Servants of God concerned.” This is the fifteenth edition. The first was published in 1890 and the most recent in 1988. It comprises all the work undertaken by the dicastery from 1588 up to and including 1999.
Speaking of the selection of candidates for sainthood, the prefect affirmed that this “reflects the sensitivity and the spiritual and pastoral needs of the Church, who is the promoter the causes.” Whenever there is a serious and spontaneous rising of “a popular movement, not only of respect but also of admiration and of veneration” towards a Christian, then we must confirm whether, behind this, there truly lies “the finger of God. Verification consists in checking whether the fame of sanctity truly exists and whether it is founded on the heroic exercise of virtue (or) on popular emotion and credulity.”
At the present time, the total number of blesseds is 1,430. The number of saints canonized since the congregation’s foundation in 1588 is 591. John Paul II has proclaimed 940 blesseds and 295 saints.
A new book to be published in March challenges the wisdom of the “rape exception” that is normally inserted into pro-life legislation. David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa, and Amy Sobie sifted through nine years’ worth of testimonies gathered by the Elliot Institute and Fortress International to get a true picture of the effects of abortion on a woman who has suffered the trauma of rape.
The book, entitled Victims and Victors: Speaking Out About Their Pregnancies, Abortions and Children Conceived in Sexual Assault, provides selected testimonies, along with overview chapters and other information to challenge the argument that abortion is necessary or helpful in cases of sexual assault.
“The vast majority of the women (and their children) who responded advanced the view that abortion is NOT a good solution to sexual assault pregnancies,”co-author Sobie explained. “In fact, it often leads to further physical and emotional trauma for the women. Conversely, none of the women who carried to term expressed regret that they had chosen to give birth or a wish that they had chosen abortion instead.”
The International Commission on English (ICEL) is under the gun again. This time a representative of the Holy See has attacked a new English translation of Catholic services and described the body behind it as “inadequate” and in need of significant reform.
The ICEL has spent ten years preparing a translation of the missal, which includes the Mass. It was due in churches across the English-speaking world this year, but Rome has accused the commission of acting with “undue autonomy” and producing translations that are not faithful to the Latin. (To be frank, this is like saying water is wet and the desert is dry, but the weight of such comments coming from Rome cannot be minimized.)
Written last October by Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, the Vatican’s letter of complaint calls for the ICEL’s “reform and revitalization.”
The bishop of Galloway, Ireland, Maurice Taylor, who, as chairman of the ICEL, received the Vatican’s letter of complaint, said, “It is all very upsetting and difficult. The people who work on the commission are not only of a high professional caliber, they also seek to serve the Church.” Representing eleven English-speaking countries, including Britain, America, Australia, India, and South Africa, the commission was set up in 1963 by the bishops to translate into English the liturgy issued by Rome.
Bishop Taylor was to have held a meeting of the commission’s eleven members in London on January 21 before facing the Vatican.