In Overcoming Overpopulation: The Rise and Fall of
American Political Will, Stephen D. Mumford describes the work of
Vatican activists in undermining efforts to implement any population growth
control policy by the US government and how Catholic bishops issued their Pastoral
Plan for Pro-Life Activities just six days before President Ford made the
NSSM 200 report public policy. He shows the plan as a frank and superbly detailed
blueprint of the bishops' strategy for infiltrating and manipulating the
American democratic process at the national, state, and local levels. This
report details the three-pronged attack, one devoted to each of the three
branches of our federal government: legislative, judicial, and administrative.
The purpose is to kill the political will of the United States to overcome the
overpopulation problem. From: Free Inquiry,
Spring 1994
Overcoming Overpopulation:
The Rise and Fall of American Political Will
by Stephen D. Mumford
The 1960s saw a rapidly increasing American
public awareness of the world population problem. The invention of the
contraceptive pill in 1960 stimulated broad public debate on birth control and
the need for it. When Pope John XXIII created the Commission on Population and
Birth Control in the mid 1960s, he gave hope that the church was about to
change its position on birth control. After all, why study the issue if the
church was not in a position to change its teaching? In 1968, Paul Ehrlich
published his book The Population Bomb, the most successful book of this
kind.1 That same year, the journal Science published one of
its most controversial articles, Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the
Commons,” which sparked much
discussion of the overpopulation threat.2
“The Rockefeller Commission Report and the NSSM 200 response are arguably the most important documents on overpopulation ever written. Our country and the world would be very different today if the recommendations in these documents had been implemented.”
Mainstream religious
denominations called for a bold response to the problem. For example, the
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1965 urged “the government of the United States to be ready
to assist countries who request help in the development of programs of
voluntary planned parenthood as a practical and humane means of control ling
fertility and population growth.” By
1971, it recognized that “the assumption
that couples have the freedom to have as many children as they can support
should be challenged. We can no longer justify bringing into existence as many
children as we desire. Our corporate responsibility to each other prohibits
this.” And in 1972, the
Presbyterians called on governments “to
take such actions as will stabilize population size.
We who are motivated by the urgency of overpopulation . . . would preserve the species by responding in faith: Do not multiply--the earth is filled!”3
This cry for action made it
safe for American politicians to call for programs to deal with the problem of
population growth. As a result, in 1969 President Richard Nixon sent a rare
Special Message to Congress, and Congress, in an equally rare move, voted to
endorse the message. The message set forth a far-reaching commitment to limit
population growth, and put in motion a broad range of government activities,
both domestic and international. These activities included: (1) the creation of
the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future; (2) increased
research on birth-control methods of all types and the sociology of population
growth; (3) expanded programs to train more people in the population and family
planning fields, both in this country and abroad; (4) expanded research on the
effects of population growth on our environment and on the world’s food supply; and (5) increased domestic
family planning assistance, aimed at providing adequate family planning
services to all who want but cannot afford them. This was the beginning of the
peak of American political will to deal with the problem.
Design for a Population Policy and Resistance to It
The twenty-four-member
Commission on Population Growth and the American Future was chaired by John D.
Rockefeller 3rd. It ordered more than one hundred research projects which
collected and analyzed data for the formulation of a comprehensive U.S.
population policy.
After two years of intense
study, the Rockefeller Commission made over seventy recommendations. They
include: passage of a Population Education Act to help school systems establish
well-planned population education programs; sex education to be widely
available, especially through the schools; passage of the Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA); contraception available for all, including minors, at
government expense if need be; abortion for all who want it, at government
expense if necessary; vastly expanded research in many areas related to
population growth control; and the elimination of employment of illegal
aliens.4
On May 5, 1972, at a
ceremony to submit formally the Commission’s findings and conclusions, President Nixon publicly renounced the
report.5 This was six months before he faced reelection, and he was
feeling intense political heat from one particularly powerful special interest
group. During the two years that followed, it became clear that there would be
no further response to the Commission’s
recommendations. Thus in May 1973 a group of pioneer population activists asked
Ambassador Adolph Schmidt to speak with his friend, Commission Chairman John D.
Rockefeller 3rd. At their June 1973 meeting in New York City, Schmidt noted the
disappointment he shared with colleagues because no program resulted from the
Commission’s recommendations. What
had gone wrong? Rockefeller responded: “The
greatest difficulty has been the very active opposition by the Roman Catholic
Church through its various agencies in the United States.”6
A similar evaluation became public last summer when one Rockefeller Commission
member, Congressman James Scheuer (D-NY), spoke out for the first time on what
had happened:
Our exuberance was short-lived. Then-president Richard Nixon promptly ignored our final report. The reasons were obvious the fear of attacks from the far right and from the Roman Catholic Church because of our positions on family planning and abortion. With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that this obstruction was but the first of many similar actions to come from high places.7
It is tragic that Americans
have been kept in the dark about this undemocratic and un-American intervention
by the Vatican. No doubt, both Catholic and non-Catholic Americans would have
strongly rejected such interference had they been aware of it. The quality of
life for all Americans has been diminished by this unconstitutional
manipulation of American policy, undertaken for the purposes of protecting
papal interests.
Nixon Again Moves Boldly
Despite the intense opposition of the Catholic hierarchy
to the Rockefeller Commission Report, President Nixon’s assessment of the gravity of the overpopulation
problem and his desire to deal with it evidently were unchanged. On April 24,
1974, in the single most important act of his presidency regarding the
population crisis, Mr. Nixon directed that a comprehensive new study be
undertaken to determine the “Implications
of World Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.”
I can only speculate on his
thinking, but one can assume that President Nixon knew he would encounter the
same intense Vatican opposition he had following the Rockefeller Commission
Report. However, with his reelection safely behind him, perhaps he felt that if
a definitive study of the national and global security implications of
overpopulation showed that the very security of the United States was seriously
threatened, it would generate public demand for action. This might serve to
overcome the continued opposition of the Vatican. Why else would he have asked
for this study, given his earlier experience with the Catholic church?
NSSM 200
In
National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200,8 National Security Advisor Henry
Kissinger, acting for the president, directed the secretaries of defense and
agriculture, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the deputy
secretary of state, and the administrator of the Agency for Inter national
Development (AID), to under take jointly “a
study of the impact of the world population growth on U.S. security and
overseas interests.” The report on
this study was completed December 10, 1974, and circulated to the designated
secretaries and agency heads for their review and comments.9
Revisions of the study
continued until July 1975. On November 26, 1975, the 227-page report and its
recommendations were endorsed by then-president Gerald Ford in National
Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 314.
“The President has reviewed the
inter agency response to NSSM 200,”
wrote the new national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft. “He believes that United States leadership is
essential to combat population growth, to implement the [UN] World Population
Plan of Action, and to advance United States security and overseas interests.
The President endorses the policy recommendations contained in the Executive
Summary of the NSSM 200 response.”° To this day, the policy set forth in NSDM 314
has not been officially rescinded.
The NSSM 200 Report: Concerns and Recommendations
The NSSM 200 response details how and why world
population growth gravely threatens United States and global security, and
provides a blueprint for U.S. response to this burgeoning problem. The strategy
is complex, raising difficult questions. Some suggested policies are
necessarily bold. For these reasons, the report’s authors urged that it be classified for five years to prepare the
American public for full acceptance of the goals proposed.
The NSSM 200 report states: “There is a major risk of severe damage [from
continued rapid population growth] to world economic, political, and
ecological, systems and, as these systems begin to fail, to our humanitarian
values.” “World population growth is widely recognized
within the government as a current danger of the highest magnitude calling for
urgent measures.”2 “[I]t is of the utmost urgency that governments
now recognize the facts and implications of population growth, determine the
ultimate population sizes that make sense for their countries and start
vigorous programs at once to achieve their desired goals.”3
The NSSM 200 report includes
the following recommendations:
▪ The United States
should provide world leadership in population growth control.14
▪ The United States
should seek to attain population stability by 2000.15 This would have required
a one-child family policy for the United States, thanks to the phenomenon of
demographic momentum,16 a requirement the authors well understood. (This
recommendation came two years before the Chinese adopted their one-child family
policy.)
▪ The United States
should have as goals (1) making family planning information, education, and
means available to all people of the developing world by 1980,17 and (2)
achieving a two-child family in the developing countries by 2000.18
▪ The United States
should provide whatever funds necessary to achieve these goals.’9
Political Will Peaks
President
Ford’s approval of the policy
recommendations of the NSSM 200 response in his Decision Memorandum 314
represented the high point of American political will to deal with the
population problem. Then it plummeted. Like the Rockefeller Com mission Report,
the NSSM 200 response - a definitive study by the most powerful departments in
our government, those with virtually all our intelligence-gathering capability
- identified a grave threat to United States and global security. But none of
its recommendations was ever implemented.
Dire Predictions Come True
The Rockefeller Commission Report and the NSSM
200 response are arguably the most important documents on overpopulation ever
written. Our country and the world would be very different today if the
recommendations in these documents had been implemented. For example, had
illegal immigration been controlled and legal immigration adjusted in 1971, as
the Rockefeller Commission Report urged, the U.S. population would have peaked
at 243 million in 2035. Instead, in 1992 our population stood at 255 million,
and it will not peak until it reaches 383 million in 2050--assuming there is no more immigration after
1992.20 The lives of all Americans will be significantly affected as we attempt
to accommodate this additional 128 million people. And this number can explode
if we do not deal with excessive immigration.
In 1974, the NSSM 200 report
predicted that growing scarcities of resources would lead to ever-increasing
dislocations and conflicts all over the globe that would diminish security for
everyone everywhere. The January 31, 1993, issue of the New York Times contains
an op-ed piece by Thomas Homer-Dixon, titled “Destruction and Death,”
which documents that the predictions are already coming true. This article
examines case-studies of violent conflicts attributed to overpopulation by
researchers from four continents: brutal ethnic conflicts caused by the
migration of millions from Bangladesh to India; persistent conflict in the
Philippines driven by the desperate poverty caused by overpopulation; conflict
between Israelis and Palestinians caused by severe shortages of ground water in
the Jordan River basin; violence in urban squatter settlements in South Africa
fueled by migration forced by destruction of ecologically sensitive territories;
conflict in the Senegal River Basin spurred by expanding population in Senegal
and Mauritania; growth of the violent Maoist Shining Path in Peru stimulated by
similar factors; and social strife in Haiti--with the resultant exodus of boat people--caused by the irreversible clear-cutting of
forests and loss of soil. There are many other examples.
Implementation Halted
These examples reveal the consequences of our
failure to implement the policy recommendations of the NSSM 200 report. This
implementation was blocked by the swift action of the Vatican. The Catholic
church had to take this action for the same reason it had to block the
Rockefeller Commission recommendations: the NSSM 200 response forthrightly
opposes Rome on population strategy, family planning, and abortion.
During 1976, Catholic
activists worked diligently to undermine population growth control efforts. Dr.
R. T. Ravenholt directed the global population program of the U.S. Agency for
International Development in the Department of State from 1966 to 1979. On
March 4, 1991, he addressed the Washington State Chapter of Zero Population
Growth (ZPG)21 and described how this was accomplished. (Copies of the
Ravenholt report are available from the Center for Research on Population and
Security, P.O. Box 13067, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, (919) 933-7491, for
$3.00 each.) [See R. T. Ravenholt’s
article in this issue of FREE INQUIRY, and the article by Roland Van Liew in
the Spring 1992 issue.--Ed.]
Vatican/Laymen Disagreement
It is obvious that the Vatican is seriously out
of sync with American lay Catholic thinking on family planning and abortion.
For example, a recent study by Catholic priest Andrew Greeley of the National
Opinion Research Center found that only seven percent of U.S. Catholics support
the Vatican position on abortion.22 In fact, U.S. Catholics exhibit the same
family planning behavior as non-Catholics. There is a good reason for this. The
security-survival interests of Catholic Americans are pitted against the
security-survival interests of the papacy. For many reasons--including economic, medical, and social reasons--family planning, abortion services, good sex
education, population education, and the advancement of women’s rights, enhance the security of the lay person
and his/her family and improve their odds of survival. But family planning,
abortion, etc., seriously undermine the security of the papacy and threaten its
very survival because they undermine papal authority.
Vatican Claims Self-Protection
The Vatican claims the right to protect itself
against harmful laws--even when
democratically legislated! The central difficulty here, of course, is that the
Vatican considers “harmful” to itself and its authority what lay Catholics
consider beneficial to themselves and their families. In a letter sent to all
American bishops by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the
most powerful Vatican office, Cardinal Ratzinger reminded the bishops that “the church has the responsibility to protect
herself from the application of harmful laws.” This letter was kept secret from the fifty-five million American
Catholics until a brief notice by Peter Steinfels appeared in the New York
Times on July 10, 1992. The actual text was published on July 15, 1992.23
The church’s assertion of “responsibility” implies a
“right” as well. The Vatican exercised the “right”
to protect herself from what it considered harmful laws when it blocked U.S.
adoption of the Rockefeller Commission recommendations and implementation of
the NSSM 200 policies approved by President Ford. “To protect herself,” the church moved quickly and efficiently to kill
the two most important initiatives to control population growth in American
history.
The Threat to Papal Power
When our government legalized contraception and
abortion, it pitted civil authority against papal authority. The Vatican
demands supremacy over civil governments in matters of faith and morals, but
our government has rejected this concept. Thus, while the church is saying that
family planning and abortion are evil and grave sins, our government is saying
they are good and should be used. While many Catholic countries in Latin
America have abortion rates two to four times as high as the U.S. rate, the
bishops there ignore abortions. Why? They are illegal abortions, not legal
ones, and thus do not threaten papal authority! So the bishops take no
significant actions to halt abortions in Latin America. But legal abortions in
the United States, because their legalization established their morality, do
undermine papal authority.
In Papal Power: A Study of Vatican Control
over Lay Catholic Elites, published by the University of California Press
in 1980, Jean-Guy Vaillancourt, associate professor of sociology at the
University of Montreal, closely examined the sources and evolution of papal
power. He found that papal authority is vital to the maintenance of papal
power. However, the relationship between the two is circular. Less authority
means less power, which means even less authority. Thus, the very survival of
the Vatican is threatened by programs of population growth control.
This threat to papal authority
was recognized decades ago by the Papal Commission on Population and Birth
Control. The commission, which met from 1964 to 1966, consisted of fifteen
cardinals and bishops, and sixty-four lay experts representing a variety of
disciplines. According to commission member Thomas Burch, Pope Paul VI assigned
the commission the task of finding a way of changing the church’s position on birth control without destroying
the pope’s authority.24 But the
commission was unable to do this. Finally, after studying the dilemma, the
laymen voted sixty to four, and the clerics nine to six, to change the church’s teaching on birth control, even though it would
mean a loss of papal authority, because it was the right thing to do. However,
Pope Paul VI accepted the minority recommendation, and in 1968 issued the
encyclical Humanae Vitae, which banned contraception. But because two
newspapers had, without authorization, published the full texts of the
commission’s reports in 1967, the
world knew that a substantial majority of the commission had recommended
liberalization on birth control.25 And in 1985, Thomas Burch revealed to the
world the real assignment of the com mission. Thus it was clear that Humanae
Vitae was an admission that the church cannot change its position on birth
control without undermining papal authority--an unacceptable sacrifice.
The Vatican believes, probably
correctly, that if the solutions to the population problem are applied, the
dominance of Vatican power will soon cease. Thus, it is in no position to
compromise with the-United States. The Vatican simply cannot accommodate U.S.
security interests.
The Bishops’
Pastoral Plan
On November 20, 1975, the American Catholic
bishops issued their Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities. This was
just six days before President Ford made the NSSM 200 report public policy. The
success of that plan is confirmed in an excellent article that recently
appeared in Time, which I will discuss later.
The plan is a frank and
superbly detailed blueprint of the bishops’ strategy for infiltrating and manipulating the American democratic
process at the national, state, and local levels. The purpose is to kill the
political will of the United States to overcome the overpopulation problem.
Abortion was the issue chosen to galvanize the movement, as proposed by Jesuit
priest Virgil Blum in a 1971 America magazine article.26 The plan
details a three-pronged attack, one devoted to each of the three branches of
our federal government: legislative, judicial, and administrative.
As the Time article
shows, with the election of the anti-abortion team of Ronald Reagan and George
Bush in 1980, the Vatican seized control of the administrative branch of our
government in the area of population and family planning policy. These two men
appointed five Supreme Court justices and 70 percent of all sitting judges in
the federal court system. All were anti abortion, another goal of the bishops’ plan. The third branch has been more difficult
for the bishops, though they did achieve sufficient influence in Congress that
pro-choice congressmen could not override a presidential veto. So long as the
bishops controlled the White House, this was sufficient for their purposes.
Even in the Carter years, the bishops were highly successful in undermining
federal government population growth control efforts.27
The bishops enjoyed
considerable success at the state level as well. In 1987, I conducted a study
to determine if the bishops had accomplished the goal they set in their plan
with regard to the North Carolina legislature.28 A University of North Carolina
statewide poll had established that 79 percent of the state’s Democratic voters and 78 percent of the
Republican voters were pro-abortion rights. When I examined the voting behavior
of the legislators on abortion legislation, I found that 78 percent of the
Democratic legislators voted pro on abortion legislation, just as would be
predicted if the legislators accurately reflected the Democratic voters of the
state. However, only 8 percent of the Republican legislators did, rather than
the approximately 78 percent one would predict given Republican voter attitudes
across the state. This was exactly the goal set by the bishops. In North Carolina,
the bishops had succeeded in making the Republican party theirs.
The plan also called for the
creation of a broad-based popular movement. This emerged between 1976 and 1980,
and became known as the “New Right
Movement.” Catholics were key
players in the movement and its leadership. The creation and control of the
movement by the bishops is well-documented.29 There is a mountain of evidence
that they enjoyed great success in killing American political will.
Time Magazine Says It Like It Is
The headline on the cover of the February 24,
1992, issue of Time magazine was: “HOLY ALLIANCE: How Reagan and the Pope Conspired To Assist Poland’s Solidarity Movement and Hasten the Demise of
Communism.” The article, written by prize-winning journalist
Carl Bernstein, contains the most significant revelations since the adoption of
the Pastoral Plan in 1975. Bernstein reports, “The Catholic Team: The key administration players were all devout
Roman Catholics--CIA chief William
Casey, [Richard] Allen [Reagan’s
first national security advisor], [William] Clark [Reagan’s second national security advisor], [Alexander]
Haig [secretary of state], [Vernon] Walters [ambassador at large], and William
Wilson, Reagan’s first ambassador to
the Vatican. They regarded the U.S.-Vatican relationship as a holy alliance:
the moral force of the pope and the teachings of their church combined with . .
. their notion of American democracy.”
Bernstein makes clear what the
cadre of devout Catholics in the Reagan administration did to protect the
papacy from the NSSM 200 report. He quotes our ambassador to the Vatican,
William Wilson, who reveals that during the Reagan administration, papal policy
on birth control and abortion replaced the policy set forth by the NSSM 200
response. In a section of his article headed “The U.S. and the Vatican on Birth Control,” Bernstein writes:
In response to concerns of the Vatican, the Reagan Administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with the church’s teachings on birth control. According to William Wilson, the president’s first ambassador to the Vatican, the State Department reluctantly agreed to an outright ban on the use of any U.S. aid funds by either countries or international health organizations for the promotion of abortions. As a result of this position, announced at the World Conference on Population in Mexico City in 1984, the U.S. withdrew funding from, among others, two of the world’s largest family planning organizations: the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities.
“American policy was changed as a result of the Vatican’s not agreeing with our policy,” Wilson explains.
Presidents Reagan and Bush were the most pro-Catholic
presidents in American history. The bishops had seized control of the
Republican party just as they had set out to do. In November 1992, traditional
Republicans realized they had been taken. Outgoing Republican National
Committee Chair man Richard Bond told the members of the committee on January
29, 1993, that it was time for the Republican Party to abandon the papal
position on abortion. Bond said that the party should not be governed by “zealotry masquerading as principle. “30
So, there are reasons for
hope. The bishops have suffered some major set backs in recent years. The
publication of the Time article, the surfacing of the NSSM 200 report,
and the loss of George Bush were serious setbacks We can expect the bishops to
suffer further reverses in the Clinton years.
Here are the key points I have
offered:
▪ Papal security-survival is pitted against U.S.
security-survival. Right now, U.S. security interests are losing out.
▪ The Vatican has recognized it cannot coexist
with American democracy when democracy passes laws gravely undermining papal
authority.
▪ There is a code of
silence that inhibits open discussion of the issues I have presented. This code
has been successfully imposed by the Vatican. At the present time these issues
are undiscussed even among population specialists. There will be no success in
dealing with overpopulation until this silence is broken and the Catholic
church is successfully neutralized on this issue.
I hope each of you will help
break this code of silence, so that American political will can be reborn to
deal with the population problem.
Notes
1. Paul R. Erlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968).
2. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1234-1248.
3. R. Beck, “Religions and the Environment: Commitment High until U.S. Population Issues Raised,” The Social Contract 3 (1993): 76-89.
4. President’s Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, Population and the American Future (Washington, D.C., 1972).
5. Richard M. Nixon, “Statement about the Report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, May 5, 1972,” in Public Papers of the Presidents: Richard M. Nixon, (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1974), 576 577.
6. Adolph W. Schmidt, letter to author, August 28. 1992.
7. James Scheuer, “A Disappointing Out come: United States and World Population Trends since the Rockefeller Commission,” The Social Contract vol. 2, no. 4 (1992): 203-206.
8. National Security Council, National Security Study Memorandum 200 (Washington, D.C., April 24, 1975).
9. National Security Council, NSSM 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (Washington, D.C., December 10, 1974).
10. National Security Council, National Security Decision Memorandum 314 (Washing ton, D.C., November 26, 1975).
11. National Security Council, NSSM 200: Implications.
12. Ibid., 194.
13. Ibid., 15.
14. Ibid., 14.
15. Ibid., 15.
16. “Demographic momentum” refers to the growth that occurs in a population with a disproportionate number of individuals in their child bearing years or younger, even with a two-child family. A population becomes stable only when the median age equals half the life expectancy.
17. National Security Council, NSSM 200: Implications, 130.
18. Ibid., 14.
19. Ibid., 24.
20. Beck, “Religions and the Environment.”
21. R. T. Ravenholt, Pronatalist Zealotry and Population Pressure Conflicts: How Catholics Seized Control of US. Family Planning Programs (Research Triangle Park, N.C.: Center for Research on Population and Security, 1991).
22. Andrew M. Greeley, “Who Are the Catholic Conservatives?” America 165, no. 7 (1991): 158-162.
23. P. Likoudiss, “Vatican Letter Calls on Bishops to Oppose Homosexual Rights Laws,” The Wanderer, July 30, 1992, 1.
24. A. Jones, “Vatican, International Agencies Hone Family, Population Positions,” Conscience 5, no. 3 (May/June 1984), 7. First published in National Catholic Reporter.
25. F. X. Murphy and J. F. Erhart, “Catholic Perspectives on Population Issues,” Population Bulletin 30, no. 6 (1975): 3-3 1.
26. Virgil C. Blum, “Public Policy Making:
Why the Churches Strike Out,” America 124, no. 9 (1971): 224-228.
27. R. T. Ravenholt, Pronatalist Zealotry.
28. Stephen D. Mumford, The Catholic bishops ‘Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities and Its Implications for Democracy in North Carolina (Research Triangle Park, N.C.: Center for Research on Population and Security, 1987).
29. Stephen D. Mumford, American Democracy and the Vatican:
Population Growth and National Security (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanist Press,
1984); and idem, The Pope and the New
Apocalypse: The Holy War against Family Planning (Research Triangle Park, N.C.: Center ‘for Research on Population and Security, 1986).
30. T. Droleskey, “Zealotry Masquerading as Principle?” The Wanderer, February 18, 1993, 10.
Dr. Stephen D. Mumford is president of the Center
for Research on Population and Security. For more than two decades, his
principal research interest has been the relationship between world population
growth and national and global security.
Vatican Influence on U.S. Immigration Policy
The Vatican affects United States population levels not only through its impact on family planning policies but also through its influence on immigration policy. As a recent study revealed,
No religious group wields more power on behalf of high immigration to the U.S. than the Catholic Church. Thanks to the 1880--1914 and 1970 present Great Waves of immigration consisting primarily of Catholics, the church towers over all other American religious groups. Its fifty-nine million members give it immense financial, institutional, and political clout, even though polls suggest the majority of its members probably don’t agree with its pro-immigration stances.1
A November 8, 1992, National
Catholic Register article confirms this assessment. Father Richard J.
Ryscavage, executive director of the Migration and Refugee Services of the U.S.
Catholic Conference, writes that immigration is the “growing edge of Catholicism in the United States.
We are in the middle of a huge
wave of immigration . . . and most
of them are Catholics. . . . It’s the key to our future and the key to why the
church is going to be very healthy in the twenty-first century.”
Another recent study2 reveals official papal
positions most Americans will find shocking:
▪ The United States does not have an inherent right to limit migration.
▪ Every human has a right to migrate to the United States and take up residence there to seek better living conditions.
▪ The Catholic church rejects the concept of national sovereignty.
▪ All immigrants and their off spring have a right to retain their native languages
▪ Immigration restrictions are im moral.
▪ The Catholic church rejects the U.S. government distinction between political and economic refugees.
The study’s author, David Simcox, quotes a synopsis of the
Catholic position provided by Archbishop Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who
presides over the United States’
largest concentration of illegal aliens: “If
the question is between the right of a nation to control its borders and the
right of a person to emigrate in order to seek
sale haven from hunger or violence (or both), we believe that the first right
must give way to the second” (1987).
For obvious reasons, American
lay Catholics oppose the Vatican’s
stance on unrestricted immigration into the United -States. While this
migration enhances the security-survival interests of the papacy, it undermines
the security-survival interests of the lay Catholic and his or her family for
economic, educational, medical, social, and other reasons. Thus, the same
situation that characterizes American lay Catholic and Vatican relations
regarding family planning and abortion characterizes their relations regarding
immigration.
--Stephen D. Mumford
Notes
1. R. Beck, “Religions and the Environment: Commitment High Until U.S. Population Issues Raised,” The Social Contract 3 (1993): 76-89.
2. D. Simcox, “The Catholic Hierarchy and Immigration: Boundless
Compassion, Limited Responsibility,” The Social Contract 3 (1993): 90-95.
From:
Spring 1994
1994
Council for Democratic
and Secular Humanism
3965 Rensch Road
Buffalo, NY 14228-2713
