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In a culture that celebrates licentiousness one can no longer be counter cultural by using illegal drugs, having children out-of-wedlock or viewing pornography. As America arguably lurches toward a post-Christian future, being counter cultural is as easy as questioning the judgment of those who lavish "love" upon cats and dogs instead of persons, be they children, friends or even neighbors.

Treating animals as if they were children is not new, of course, we learn in Plutarch's Lives that Caesar observed this very thing in his day. We're told that upon seeing foreigners in Rome playing with monkeys and puppies, Caesar asked "whether the women in their country were not used to bear children: by that prince-like reprimand gravely reflecting upon persons who spend and lavish upon brute beasts the affection and kindness which nature has implanted in us to be bestowed on those of our own kind."

In a kind of odd coupling, the Catholic Church (which certainly has had its disagreements with Roman emperors) echoes the essence of Caesar's critique in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly. It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them that should as a priority go to relief of human misery. One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affectation due only to persons."

In my pedestrian observations here in suburban California, I would say that for young couples, dogs are in, while children are out. A new study by the Center for Strategic & International Studies suggests that what Pope John Paul II called the "Culture of Death" is now catching up to us in the most of the industrialized world. Countries like Japan and Italy are now in what demographers call a Death Spiral where the fertility rate has dropped below 2.0. In the case of Japan, it appears that Japanese women are simply refusing to have children, which for a homogeneous country with no immigration to speak of - is clearly a vote against the future (much of this has been chronicled with flare by Canadian writer Mark Steyn in this book American Alone).

It's clear that 30-plus years of abortion and birth control, coupled with an increasing selfishness among people who prefer exotic vacations, big homes and "freedom" to the serious demands of being parents and raising the next generation - we've been left with too few children in the first-world. In this climate it seems quite fitting that animals with their rather narrow set of needs and short lives (not to mention their disposability: one can always drop a dog off at the Animal Rescue League when he causes trouble) should be preferred to the self-sacrificing, long term project of parenthood.

These developments, however, didn't sneak up on the Catholic Church, which was blessed with a prophet of sorts in Pope Paul VI, who in his 1968 encyclical letter Humanae Vitae declared that birth control was intrinsically evil and that Catholics were obligated to stay clear of it in all its manifestations. Pope Paul VI - several years before Roe vs. Wade - made the connection that birth control ultimately leads to the objectifying of women and a decline in general morality. The Pope states: "Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires."

One certainly doesn't need to be Catholic to sense that when members of a civilization lose hope, they will generally stop sacrificing for the future and live for the present. It's worth noting that most of the babies being born today in Europe are from Muslim parents. It’s said that the most popular boy’s name in Belgium and Holland these days is Mohammad.

Those who are most associated with the culture of death - groups like Planned Parenthood, the A.C.L.U., Moveon.org, elements of the Democratic Party, the U.N., Hollywood, etc. claim to cherish human rights, education, science, technology, tolerance, separation of church and state, equal rights, etc. It would probably come as a shock to these groups that these values are largely the result of Western Culture; the products of Athens and Jerusalem so to speak. It is the inheritance of Christian European civilization (built on the classical learning of Greece and Rome) which we have until now enjoyed abundantly. If the culture of death continues in all its forms: the attack on marriage, population control, the destruction of embryos, abortion and the like, than those populations with high fertility rates will certainly assume cultural control in the years to come.

It's anyone guess if an Islamic Europe, for example, will be a hotbed of individual liberty, technological development and international trade - but this is what the western world appears to be betting on. I do have a suspicion, however, that Muslims thank God for the children that He sends them, and that they give them more consideration, attention and love than the mangy dog lounging under the date palm outside.

(I'd like to acknowledge that many of the ideas of this essay come from the fine book by Dinesh D'Souza entitled The Enemy at Home)

Labels: Demographics

# posted by Ryan F. Lucey @ 6:32 AM