Steven W. Mosher: An Atheist Who Became A Catholic - The Journey Home (5-2-2005)

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program in which I have the great privilege of introducing two young men and women who because of their great love for Jesus Christ were drawn home to the Catholic Church now sometimes their journey home doesn't begin with a love for Jesus Christ sometimes they have no faith in God whatsoever but God through his love for them starts opening their heart because of the situations that they're in to the truth of the gospel and the truth of the church and in some ways that's like our guest tonight now this is open line first Monday so before I even introduce our guest tonight I'm going to give you the phone number because your questions and comments are the essential part of tonight's program we try and include more phone calls and emails than an irregular journey home program so as soon as we get calls that fit our guests and some of the topics we're talking about we'll take a phone call an email so the the number inside North America is one eight hundred to two one nine four six all outside North America to all five to seven one to nine eight all or you can send an email at journey home at ewtn.com our guest tonight is Steven Moser and he's been on the journey home program before he was on was about four or five degrees not four years four years he shared his complete journey there he is the founder president a population Research Institute was it right the founder has founded Paul Marx I'm the president yeah that's right well first let me greet did the journey home thank you good to have you back glad to have you back and as I mentioned you just before the program intellectually I I couldn't stand up to what you were dealing with and a such important issue which sadly far too many people don't know enough about either and we live our lives in ignorance and sadly buying into ideas that are out there that are false if not only shaped our lives but as you're going to tell us it was shaped an entire civilization in different ways around the world so what I'd like to do in the open line program is first give you a chance to give a five six some minute summary of your journey that you gave us a couple years ago and then we'll get into some questions and then some phone calls and emails all right well my story begins back in China I was the first American social scientist allowed to go to China back in 1979 when 1979 the bamboo curtain had just lifted and for the first time we were allowed to go in and see what the Communists had wrought in 30 years of ruling that country and I was coming from secular humanist background I've been at Stanford University and you know everybody at Stanford whether they're majoring in biology or mechanical engineering gets a minor in secular humanism I mean these these these elite institutions our places where it's hard to preserve one's Christian faith if one goes there with Christian faith and that's probably he said it's across the board institutions like that at least in our country here I think so there the high temples of secular humanism so I went to China with the typical secular humanist view that China was terribly overpopulated and that the best thing the Chinese people could do would be to reduce their number and also that abortion was okay it was a woman's choice a woman's right what was this this was 1979 China had just opened up to the west and I got to China in the middle of the beginning of the one-child policy now everybody's heard about the one-child policy every Chinese couple in the cities even today is limited to one child when the government says they can conceive and bear that one child in the countryside some couples are allowed to but the one-child policy is still is still in place 26 years after it began when I was in the village at the beginning of the one-child policy the authorities came into the village and rounded up all of the women who were pregnant and they determined whether or not that was the first pregnancy in which case they let them go or whether it was a second or a third or fourth or higher order pregnancy those women they told to get abortions the ones who refused were locked up arrested taken away from their homes and families and subjected to grueling grueling morning tonight propaganda sessions until they they gave in I went with them during this process and remember I'm I'm a supporter of a woman's right to choose these women were being denied any right to choose anything they were simply being told to get abortions and I went with them I remember it - the abort or II when the procedure was being done now a lot of these women were in the second trimester pregnancy the third trimester of pregnancy we're talking about women who are past the point of quickening who are carrying viable unborn children seven eight even nine months pregnant and I was there when those abortions were done and Marcus you cannot be in a room where a late-term abortion is done and not know what it means what happens is the baby is killed and the mother is wounded physically and spiritually and at that moment I became pro-life because at that moment I knew for certain what an abortion was and I couldn't countenance it I mean it was as if I was standing on the temple of the moon in the days of the Aztecs and watching human sacrifice or in Carthage and the Roman days and watching them throw babies to the end of the temple of Baal this was the killing of a living human being and it was wrong well I'd be getting there one of your things I noticed that you did you witness her - you talked to Chinese doctors who you know basically said that they were allowed to kill the infant as long as just a foot was left in the womb that's right they said I said is it legal to kill babies up to the point of birth and they said oh yes as long as the baby still is in the birth canal as long as it has one foot in the womb so to speak it's legal to to take the baby's life at that point all right and you'd also it may have been legal in China but it was certainly morally wrong and some of the reducing injections using injections into babies already born into the soft spot the fontanel directly into the brain killing babies after birth infanticide was also a part of the program so I saw this and this was a great evil now I'd never come face to face with great evil before I mean we live in a very comfortable cosseted society materially we're very blessed although sometimes it seems like a curse as we were talking about but here was evil in its purest form and you know if you confront evil like that you either have to conclude the universe as mad there's no rhyme or reason to anything or you have to conclude that there must be a countervailing good there must be a god there must be something to balance this evil and I didn't want to live in an insane asylum and so I began to seek God and that was the first step in the journey becoming pro-life and becoming agnostic not knowing where to find God but at least becoming a seeker the second stage was came about through the intervention of a wonderful Benedictine monk father Paul Mark's father marks is 85 years old this year 20 almost 25 years ago he called me and he said you know I would like you to come and speak at one of my conferences he said I can't afford to pay you but you can come and you'll make some friends and you can bring your books and sell some books best off right had you know the the secular humanists weren't listening they liked the idea that China was engaging in forced abortion they thought that China had an overpopulation problem and this is precisely what it should be doing father marx disagree first priest i'd ever talked to in my life very soft-spoken I went to meet him went to his conference and I found myself in the middle of a whole host of wonderful pro-life people not you know pro-lifers these are people who are not out for any personal gain they engage in this work a great personal sacrifice often they may be mocked by their friends and colleagues Society doesn't welcome their efforts the unborn babies that that that are saved will never know who interceded for them who was the instrument of their salvation so they do this work with no thought of personal recompense wonderful people kind loving the very opposite of professors at Stanford University one might say and then there was father Marx himself he taught me the Catholic faith he gave me my very first catechism the catechism by father John Hardin wonderful catechism he founded the population Research Institute in 1989 he invited me in 1995 to come and run it so I'm indebted to him for my from my vocation he taught my wife and I natural family planning and so we're indebted to him for our our large family so I'm I'm grateful to Father Marx in in many different ways and and I'd like to say thank you to him tonight I know he's watching it just strikes me when I think about how last week I had a guest on a program dr. Paul shank and he was a Protestant minister and his life changed when a woman came into his office and dropped on his desk in plastic bags fetuses as she had pulled out of a dumpster and from that moment his life was different the trajectory and in your case it's kind of interesting too I mean you'd never dreamed right that by going to China but that confrontation with evil would set you off on a different trajectory that has really been at the time you probably didn't interpret it as God but you look back talk a bit about how that a Hall of God this was the hand this was a hand of God and I think I'm very blessed in a way because I can see the hand of God orchestrating my life in this fashion doors were closed to me you know when I came back and began speaking out against forced abortion I was shunned at Sanford I was asked to leave they refused to give me the PhD that I had earned but other doors opened the door opened by father marks for example the opportunity to do pro-life work the opportunity to meet and marry the saintly woman who's my wife and to have with her a large family and that's the third part of my conversion I mean my my wife as st. Paul says it's a case of the sanctified spouse converting the unsanctified one I was the unsanctified one she was the sanctifying Wahaha and I held on tightly to her skirts and and that's on the only way I've gotten to where I am today and then the children began to come along we have eight children at home all born by cesarean section at the cost of heroic suffering on the part of my wife and each of these children has had a lesson to teach us I mean the children that came into our life and I think the children that come into most people's lives are the instruments that God uses to teach us lessons to teach us patience and charity love to make us ready for his presence in heaven they teach you all the corporal works of mercy they teach you the spiritual works of mercy I like to tell my kids that the only corporal work of mercy I haven't done for them yet is visiting the imprisoned and who knows what future holds you know that our Lord told us that whatever we do for the least of these our brothers and sisters we do for him well for most of us those of us who are married and have children the least of these are the little children who come into our lives naked and we clothe them hungry and we feed them thirsty and we give them drink we already have a phone call or an email ready before we go quickly tell the audience if they want to find out more about your work that you're doing to read about it be inspired by it what should they do well the population Research Institute is a is a worldwide pro-life pro-family organization we have projects in China my first love we've started orphanages there we built churches there we just started a safe house in China for women fleeing forced abortion they can go and find sanctuary there we do work in Latin America Africa they can find us on the web at pop org pio pio org pop is not me I'm a pop but this pop is population and there's a lot of information there anybody who's interested in in the question of whether or not our problem is too many people or too few babies let's talk about that with quickly well yeah I mean we don't need to talk about the myth of overpopulation it's been in the air that we breathe for the last 35 years we've heard about the Population Bomb the Population Bomb never went off it never will birth rates are in freefall worldwide many countries are dying literally dying filling more coffins than cradles each year other countries have below replacement birth rates which means that the population will over time decrease and decrease very quickly and even countries you know we think of Latin America for example as being a land of large families that's not true anymore it was 30 or 40 years ago today the average Latin couple has two children and so Latin America's population is leveling off and we'll begin decreasing Africa has an above replacement birthrate but it has the scourge of AIDS 50 million people in Africa have AIDS and they will all be dead in the next few years it doesn't take long to run its course in Africa because of malaria and typhus and typhoid and other problems but here in the United States well we are better off than any other developed country Japan is averaging 1.3 children Germany about 1.4 Italy 1.1 Spain these are historically unprecedented birth rates they're so low we're averaging about two children and it's come up in in recent what's replacement the replacement rate fertility is about two point one you need the average couple to average two point one children to maintain a steady population right so most countries in the world are below that and all of the developed countries are below that many of the developing countries countries that are still poor are at or below replacement rate fertility and even in countries where the birth rate is still higher than that it is falling falling falling because of the influence of Western culture MTV is everywhere Hollywood is everywhere so we're exporting whether we like it or not the culture of Manhattan and Hollywood even to relatively innocent and untouched corners of the world and we're destroying families and and producing Berenice as a result okay let's take our first call at Frank from Connecticut hello Frank what's your question yep what extent the my Navy a moment is thinking and its journey thank you Frank well this is a brilliant statement Humanae Vitae issued in 1968 it is prophetic in the sense that it predicted as a result of the acceptance of contraception all of the evils that would followed predicted mass sterilization predicted abortion which we got a few years later in the United States it predicted the decline in family life had predicted the rise in divorce rates had predicted the degradation of women that we see in pornography these days so obviously it was an inspired piece of work my favorite story about Humana vitae comes from Bishop brusca wits of Lincoln Nebraska because he was a young priest in Rome at the time that Pope Paul the sixth was was Pope and he recalls a mass at which Pope Paul the sixth recounted all of the encyclicals he had over the course of his papacy and commented on each one and then he got to Humanae Vitae on human life in English Humanae Vitae and he paused looked down and then said very softly I did not betray the truth and he repeated himself again I did not betray the truth there was tremendous pressure on him not only from outside the church but from within the church to give way on this key teaching and if and of course God would not have allowed it to happen but one can say that that if the church had given way on this critical point things would be much worse than they are today right along those lines there's so much that you could talk about in your work in China and South America and Africa and New Guinea I mean you've been involved with so much I'm actually the audience is going to hear more about that because you're doing some series you've done some series that will but if you reflect it on the big picture of the cause and effect behind all of this talk a bit about how underlying all of this is kind of listening to the wrong voices listening to the wrong authorities in part of that being the need for an authority you can trust which is whether he's a Jew NER Catholic but how does that impinge and all of this stuff that you encounter when you look at the world in your work well there are are obviously tremendous distractions in the world today even for people of faith our material standard of living has never been higher it's easy to take the the nightly news broadcast as gospel it's not it's it's often just sensationalism many people around the world have stopped reading the book I mean one of the reasons for low fertility the dropping birthrate in once Christian Europe is because mass attendance is so low I mean you've got 25 percent of the people in Spain attending Mass every Sunday and much lower rates of mass attendance in France and Germany and if you don't read the book if you don't read Scripture you don't call to mind the fact that God has told us over and over again that that children are blessings and that give is a great example of how listening to the wrong authority has a big impact the story of how the hope one birth policy happened in China oh well the one-child policy yeah people think it came about because well the Chinese Communist Party has always been tyrannical and one night it decided to impose a one-child policy on the Chinese people well that's not the whole story the story actually begins in Rome Italy in 1974 there was an organization in Rome a secular organization in no way associated with the Catholic Church probably Masonic in large part which published a report which became known as the Club of Rome report it was actually written by a couple of systems engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here in the United States and it predicted this report did that if population continued to increase we would start running out of minerals in the 80's and 90's we'd run out of zinc and chromium and copper and the rest we'd run out of petroleum in 2010 and by about 2050 civilisation as we knew it would collapse that was the Club of Rome report well in 1978 four years later a Chinese systems engineer by the name of seunggeun engineers own was visiting Europe now China had been in the grip of the Cultural Revolution for years the Red Guards had been rampaging in the streets intellectuals had suffered people like engineer some had suffered they'd been under house arrest they'd been persecuted by the Red Guards this was his first trip outside the country in 20 years he was anxious to find out what had been happening in his his field of systems engineering over the past two decades and he stumbled upon the Club of Rome report and he thought aha I found it the latest in Western science and technology I'm going to take this back to China and I'm going to apply it to the Chinese situation and he did just that he went back to China translated it into Chinese and applied it to the Chinese situation and did his own computer projection showing that if China didn't stop increasing its population the Chinese civilization would collapse in about 20:50 he took this to the Chinese top leadership they set in awe as they watched the first computer projections they had ever seen and when he finished they said what should we do mr. song and he said well we have to embark upon a one-child policy and that's exactly what they did now the way they did it by arresting women and by forcing them to have abortions and by massive propaganda campaigns I mean this is typical communist behavior the way they carried it out was according to their own past practices but the idea came from the radical environmentalism of the West and what what song didn't know was that two years after the report came out and two years before he read it for the first time the head of the Club of Rome actually admitted that it was a fraud that the numbers had been exaggerated that it had been a case of garbage in garbage out they put bad numbers into the computer and got these bad results and he said we were just doing this to scare the world's parliaments into addressing the problem of population it was a fraud from beginning to end but the Chinese people died in earnest I mean that that scenario points in in such a bold way and our need to examine who we're listening to where did that information come from and I know that when I was a Protestant that believe that the Bible alone was sufficient for all issues of moral theology I even at one time was in a ph.d program where I thought I was going to be a medical ethicist based entirely on Scripture in other words all I would needed this well but the problem is you know as well as I do that all out there the Bible only people have opinions all around you know all across the board contradicting one another on issues like this very issue some of which promoting abortion and promoting contraception and so also your image of Pope Paul making that statement is an image of why we're Catholic you know that authority we can trust it will not compromise what's true and this is what drew me into the Catholic faith the fact that there was a solid foundation because what you find in academia day is a total lack of understanding of the really big questions what is God they reject the very existence of God what is the state they imagine state of solutions to everything what is man they imagine he came about from some random collection of atoms they don't understand the relationship between man and God in the state they can't answer the big questions they're busy playing in the shallows they have no authority they speak without authority and here you have an institution you know I studied Chinese history and / Chinese history you see the rise and fall of dynasty after dynasty and even the best well founded dynasties only lasted a couple of hundred years 300 years at the most and yet here you have this institution the Catholic Church which has gone through century and century and century now beginning its third millennium this is not a human institution a human institution would have decayed long long ago this is a divine institution headed now by our 260 fifth divinely selected Pope what a wonderful thing to have an authority like that a center a heart of our faith let's go to Irene from Texas hello Irene what's your question for us tonight god bless both you I have a comment for dr. Moser and I wish you would explain it to the public how the contraceptive frame of mind leads to abortion and how people don't even realize it thank you both Thank You Irene for good question well this is something I learned from other marks as I learned so many things because father always said that contraception led to abortion and I'll tell you why first of all you have contraceptive failures these contraceptives that are all over the markets are not 100% failsafe they fail at a rate of 3 percent 5 percent or even higher condoms fail at a rate of 10 or 15 percent a year so you have contraceptive failure but if you've got a contraceptive mentality if you've already rejected in your mind the possibility of having children what are you going to do when the contraceptive fails well the next logical step is to consider an abortion ending that child's life that you to prevent from coming into existence in the first place and contraception encourages fornication it encourages sexual activity before and outside of marriage and that leads to higher rates of abortion as well I mean we've got many a very high percentage of women in this country who contracept the abortion rate is not going down the abortion rate is staying the same many of the abortions that are done are repeat abortions on women who were contracepting the first time the second time and are now back for their third abortion worldwide we have raised the contraceptive prevalence rate I say we being the United States because we fund this to the tune of billions of dollars a year we have raised the use of contraceptives up to about 65 percent and yet the abortion number of abortions worldwide continues to increase contraception leads to abortion it doesn't reduce the rate of abortion and there's also that some contraceptions are really a border face oh absolutely absolutely and for every surgical abortion you have in the United States or around the world and we're talking about you know over a million surgical abortions you have also chemical abortions caused by the birth control pill caused by Norplant caused by depo-provera and the IUD which is still in use in many places in the world doesn't prevent conception at all all it does is prevent that tiny human being that embryo from implanting in the womb so it's not a contraceptive it is solely about efficient and someone wearing an IUD can conceive two or three or four children a year and each one of those children will die when implantation fails and we go to our next caller just a tag on that little that question and that not only our contraception is not effective at preventing birth or abortion they're not also effective at preventing disease either talk about your Africa deal so much with it we have we have been trying to to help the African bishops deal with the scourge of AIDS and the African church has the only effective program against AIDS because it emphasizes marital fidelity as the church has always taught and it emphasizes chastity before marriage and chastity within marriage chastity properly understood the church has the answer to the scourge of AIDS the answer given by the secular humanists is to promote sex education and and condom use this is spreading the disease that's not preventing the disease and when you talk about these chemical contracept is like the birth control pill and depo-provera you're actually giving women a progestin based drug a powerful steroid based drug that thins the lining of the of the the vaginal lining and thins the lining of the uterus making it more liable not less liable to infection so the disease may be spread in that way as well let's take our first email here is this this comes from Teresa and Flushing Michigan is the right of women against forced abortion one of the rights listed as a basic human right by the United Nations or any international political organization or is the right of women only being defended by religious organizations thank you well let me tell you a little bit of personal history here because when I came back from China and remember I'm pro-life but I'm still a secular humanist I first thought to go to my secular humanist friends my pro-choice friends the members of the National Organization women for example in a row because they talk all the live long day about a woman's right to choose and hear clearly the women in China were being denied the right to choose so I thought they would be sympathetic to women in China I remember speaking to the head of the national organization of women and when I got all done recounting the evidence I had pictorial evidence I had audio tapes I had many manuscripts proving forced abortion forced sterilization she said well I'm personally opposed to forced abortion but after all China does have a population problem and she wouldn't touch the issue after that now the UN Charter on Human Rights does not mention the right to have children as a human right because I think because it was so basic a right that no one in 1948 imagined that it would ever be called into question but the UN Population Fund in its charter this is an organization that was set up in 1968 to deal with the so called Population Bomb does say that couples have the right to determine the number and spacing of their children so there is something there at least in the UN populations fund charter but you find people who are working on the population control front and very unconcerned about what's happening in China their response is just like the response of the head of now well China does have a population problem I quickly I think I ran across an article where you had written about UNICEF well unfortunately this anti people mentality has has penetrated all of the UN organizations not just the UN Population Fund which was created for this purpose but also the United Nations children fund the United Nations Development Programme the other programs and UNICEF has gotten involved in promoting contraception it's gotten involved in promoting family planning and population control as part of the UN system so there's so all of the organizations that of our little kids out there they're little boxes collected money thinking they're going to help little children yes didn't be doing that there are many many good causes to give those monies to don't give it to UNICEF do not trick-or-treat for UNICEF all right very good just take our next caller Eric from New Hampshire hello Eric what's your question oh hi Marcus I love your show fantastic Marcus I went to Magdalene College back in 79 actually that was a year that I became I stoke Catholic welcome all but I have a question for dr. Mosier concerning his education at Stanford concerning you you know you've mentioned that you became a cyclist by default by going to Stanford in reference to the universities today in their pursuit of science do you see a lack of gratitude in the sciences to its truth in there by towards nature and how do you see this as causing people to disrespect nature in themselves thank you thank you well you know let's not over generalize here because about half of all scientists do profess a belief in God that's right and and and it depends a lot on the discipline I had the misfortune even before going to Stanford of being in the biological sciences up the University of Washington in Seattle and in biology of course they take evolution to be an article of faith and so they reject a priority the existence of God then I went into anthropology at Stanford which was just as bad because they their their situational ethicists and moral relativists they believe that whatever any tiny human group decides to do is should be should be morally exceptionally acceptable and if you don't accept that then you're being ethnocentric so I saw a probably academia at its worst a lot of the physical scientists a lot of the physicists for example and the chemists the ones who actually work to discover natural laws in the way that processes work do become convinced of the existence of a creator by the simple fact that that natural laws do exist who put those laws in place and why is it that all of those laws work in favor of the existence of life and particularly human life there are too many things going on at the same time for it all to be coincidence and I think many scientists recognize yeah I know that when I because I was a scientist in college my main emphasis on that it's almost to the point where some Sciences are more truly more pure Sciences like you mentioned and some that I even think anthropology some of the biology curricula are almost become pseudo-sciences mm-hmm especially in the psychology psychiatry area were there their theory based on theory based on theory bears on theory it's almost a form of Gnosticism where they start with one is one assumption and slowly they've forgotten where they began right and but they've disassembled all without question and and that's not science you know that's a form of religion in itself let's go let's take a break and then go back in just a mom your questions for Stephen Mosher units welcome back our guest tonight is Steven Moser and there's all kinds of good stuff we'd love to talk about those are the last question on science would be a fascinating ones that continue discussing let's take this email from Lynn and Alexandra she writes Markuson and dr. Mosier we keep on you doctor is that correct I appreciate the promotion but no I was denied the PhD I mean you had everything but and I'll take an honorary Doctorate from you okay well everyone here is giving you one tonight some claiming how do we respond to our non Catholic friends who ask how the Roman Catholic Church can justify banning contraception in overpopulated underfed countries well that takes us to the heart of the matter that's a very good question what is overpopulation well the answer is we don't know demographers have never been able to define overpopulation when people start talking about overpopulation they usually conjure up images of crowded cities or slums sure there are places in the world that are very densely populated but there's no logical definition of overpopulation how many people can the planet hold how many people can the United States hold how many people can the state of Texas hold there's no way of knowing before the fact what the carrying capacity of the US or Texas of the world is before you define what level of industry you've got what level of technology you're able to use and then you can come up with a number how you're producing food whether you're mechanized or you're out there with a hoe in the fields I mean hunter-gatherers can only survive at about the rate of two people per square mile we have 50 60 thousand people per square mile in New York City how do they all survive they actually don't just survive they do very well because in the city they have access to better medical care better job opportunities better educational benefits people live in cities for a reason they live in highly congested places because those places give them advantages that they wouldn't have on a desert island for example so we have to be careful about assuming that any place is overpopulated now famine is still a problem in the world not because of a worldwide shortage of food we have a worldwide surplus of food ask any farmer you know food prices keep going down further and further in each time they drop it makes life a little more difficult for farmers we do have a problem of distribution in some parts of the world but a brilliant Indian economist by the name of am artisan got the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 for showing that famine was ultimately a political problem that the only famines that had occurred in the 20th century were famines that had been brought on by government miss intervention in the economy as happened in China in 1960 Chairman Mao took the workers out of the fields left the wheat crops and the rice crops to rot in the fields in many cases and set them to work building dams and steel mills and starvation ensued and 42 million people died they didn't die because there was a shortage of food initially at least they died because of bad judgment bad decisions on the basis of Chairman Mao who when the starvation began refused to admit to the world that there was famine and refused to ask for help instead of swallowing his own pride he let Chinese peasants and die by the millions that's what I mean by political famines we see political famines even today they're not caused by shortage of food caused by bad government you know I was thinking about in in our United States people talk about that we have a population explosion in the United States you know but you don't have to all you do take an airplane ride from from New York fly across the country and just look all the way to California and there is plenty of land out there well I think part of the problem is that if you went back 150 years when when towns was continuing to spring up across the United States I mean they're Republican state maps probably every week because new towns but what could happen in those days well you could start a town and that little town could be self-sufficient because the Mon pot grocery store and the livery stable and all of that you know that you go start a new town and everyone could work in that because it was locally centered but with technology we've destroyed that possibility in the United States and so that's why we're all conglomerating like ladybugs in our part of the world ladybugs creep into the house and crammed into a corner you know I mean that's what we've become like but we can't spread out because become we've become so attached to this way of life that we don't want to give up well I was I was talking to a fellow from New York City a couple of years ago and he was complaining about the fact that there were too many people in the world and yet he voluntarily chose to live in the largest city in the United States why because there were advantages to doing so the center of the country is emptying out I mean the Dakotas are losing population Nebraska Kansas are close behind cities towns are shrinking and dying in that part of the country when the local school goes of course the town generally ends yeah they're running football teams with not 11 players now but only six players because they don't have enough high school boys to feel an 11 man team the trajectory of this is not promising over the long term it means extinction for example Italy if you're averaging only one point one child a little over one child for each couple what does that mean for the Italian population well it means that it's going to be cut in half each generation I mean I like the Italians Marcus I'm going to miss them but if they don't start having children they're gone well using that the underlying issue of our whole social security thing that we're looking at here the United States right well we do I mean I I see the debate in Congress and I think we're just talking about which is temporizing we're just talking about intermediate solutions sure we could push back the agent retirement we could raise the taxes a little bit we could lower the benefits we could bring more women into the workforce we couldn't have the elderly work longer but all of those just mask the underlying problem which is that we're having too few children we're raising too few children up to be future taxpayers future contributors to the Social Security system and we at the population Research Institute have actually done a study showing that if we could get the birth rate in the United States back up to where it was before Roe versus Wade before the legalization of abortion at about three children per couple the Social Security system as currently set up would not be compromised forever it would be solvent forever so the basic problem is raise the birthrate encourage young couples to have children and the problem goes away alright thank you let's go to Pat from New York hello Pat what's your question hello yes I have a question I was wondering how much effect the United Nations program and commissions around the world had on the increased abortion in third world countries Thank You Pat oh the UN Population Fund has a tremendous influence in the third world the UN Population Fund brags about being the largest supplier of contraceptives in the world and it is closely behind the UN Population Fund is our own International Agency for development but I have some good news on that front for the last four years the United States has not been funding the UN Population Fund and it's not been funding the UN Population Fund because in 2001 an organization called population Research Institute sent investigators in to China to look and see whether or not the unfpa was involved in forced abortion in China we came back with the evidence showing that they were and the Bush administration cut funding that year and has cut funding every year since so even though the UN Population Fund is out there promoting sterilization contraception and abortion we are not paying for it okay let's take this email from Susan Tampa Florida she writes I have heard that in the next few years China will experience serious problems with elder care since traditionally senior citizens have been cared for by their children soon however there will be not enough young and middle-aged adults to care for them also aren't there a disproportionate number of males to females well they have to look outside of China to find marriageable females Thank You Susan for your email oh this is a huge problem for China I mean we look at the world today and we have two different sets of problems in the developed world we have countries that grew rich before they grew old and they're having difficulties with their pension programs but you also have countries like China that have grown old our growth going old before they will grow rich and they have no pension programs in place for about 80% of the population what are they going to do when these massive numbers of people now enter old age with only one child to support them it's a completely untenable situation I'm very afraid Marcus that in years to come China will embark on another population control program kind of the polar opposite of what I saw I saw a young pregnant women being arrested and taken in for abortion targeted their babies were targeted I'm afraid the targets in the future in China will be the elderly they have been open to euthanasia you out there well they they they have a quietly begun a kind of stealth euthanasia program you can't be admitted to a hospital in China today if you are elderly they admit people of working age if you're elderly they generally don't give you a bed they tell you to go home the other thing that's happened is there is now a euthanasia society that has been set up in China well China is under the control of the Chinese Communist Party these things don't just spring up out of the popular will so this is the opening wedge I think of a campaign to legalize euthanasia and when it happens it'll happen in a massive way you mentioned how the whole population issue started in China with one coming out and reading something the Soviet the camonte read soient green remember that old thing I do yeah you know or there was another movie about putting people into coma so you could harvest their their body parts for sale I mean you hopefully that's those issues don't get drawn back into a culture that has an overabundance quote elderly people yeah and women a shortage of women yeah there are a hundred million more men than women in China today and about 25 million of those men are young men who are growing up who will not be able to get married not be able to find Brides because their brides have been killed what chance do you see on this eventually escalating into a military issue worldwide well III think China is a problem first of all because its economy is growing by leaps and bounds we're helping in that regard secondly because it remains one-party dictatorship so you have a partially free-market economy combined with a Leninist one-party dictatorship what is that it's not classical communism it's national socialism this is this is Nazism Redux happening again in China that's the political system the economic system that they've got today now are they going to move in the direction of respecting human rights and democracy I hope so because that they don't in about ten years we will have another superpower confrontation already China has looked at at our national military academies as a near peer competitor and sadly more and more of our own money is being funneled into China as we bind more and more as we buy Chinese goods and on the one hand you say well you're helping ordinary Chinese who work in factories to make these things to improve their lives on the other this is hard currency it goes into the coffers of the central government and it frees up resources for them to buy and borrow and steal weapon system over seas so it's a real concern we have to pray for the conversion of China the ultimate solution to this is the ongoing conversion of China the last along with India that one of the last great unconverted countries in the world we need to reach the Chinese people with the gospel alright let's go to John from Louisiana hello John what's your question John markets gonna hear from you good actually I had a question for the caller I think my question related to what is the population Research Institute doing currently to engage in a public discourse on this issue because I think this is a real huge issue and I know I'm in graduate school right now and whenever you bring this up about the population myth there's an inherent bias against that position and I want to know what the population Research Institute and your guests were specific activities they were doing to create and inform the public policy approach to this issue thank you John affect John talks to a real problem out there right yes presumed underlying assumptions that are everywhere in our culture from the late 1960s early 70s we have been fed this in our social science textbooks biology textbooks it is it has been a a government-funded campaign and can there are too many people in the world and so for most people it's just common sense to say there's an overpopulation problem and when you say to them no our long-term problem is not too many people it's too few people when you say to them the current numbers show that the population is going to peak in about 3035 years at a billion and then begin to decrease and decrease at an ever-increasing rate and when you say that before that happens the populations will age and pension funds will go belly-up it takes a while for them to absorb that but those are the facts and facts are hard things we're doing all we can I mean one of the things we're doing is we're doing a series on on EWTN that I think will air in in June and July on the global fight for life taking people to Mexico and dying Spain for example one of the shows is on dying Spain Spaniards are averaging 1.1 children just like the Italians and we asked why that is so and what can be done to reverse that trend you know I hate to say it I don't have a lot of confidence in our political leaders in our country and sometimes I think they're almost like that the China issue where one guy comes back with a report and convincingly and they all buy into it that are our politicians on both sides of the tables are so influenced by so many votes and contributors and lobbyists do you see any great champions out there that have recognized this as a myth and are willing to take a stand on the significance of this issue in our government well you know when you talk about the US Congress you're talking about a herd mentality most of the people sit on the fence there are some who are or who are declare themselves to be pro-life back in their home states and back in their districts but there are only about a dozen who will really lay down in the road and and and and die for the babies who are really in a sense sacrifice political capital to to save human lives to rescue unborn children and when you're talking about the population question overseas the numbers even fewer but they are coming around we had an up or down vote a few years ago population control funding for the first time in 30 years we argued that we should take a hundred million dollars of money instead of spending it on sterilization equipment and handheld suction abortion machines and and abortifacient contraceptives we should spend it on primary health care what a radical idea let's save babies by giving them immunizations instead of preventing them from coming into existence and it was a fairly close vote I think we gave the other side of scare and so I'm confident in years to come that we can we can move the ball forward how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time one vitadetox a long line process alright let's take our next email from Ellen she writes I enjoy your show very much and I am against contraception but what about Africa with AIDS isn't it right to use contraceptives since 60 50 million people will be dying from AIDS and many children be left orphans because of it thank you and God bless thank you for your fine questioning Ellen I know that expressed is a concern of a lot of people it certainly expresses a concern of mine I am I am continually distraught over the fact that there are 50 million people in Africa with AIDS and you know we have to understand that AIDS runs its course very quickly in a population which is undernourished where many women are anemic where typhus and typhoid and malaria and yellow fever are endemic where you don't have access to clean food clean drinking water it can kill you in two or three or four years leaving the population bereft of people in their 20s and 30s that takes the very heart out of the population what do you have after an AIDS epidemic sweeps through a country you have children and you have grandparents how do you develop an economy like that but what do you do about this what do you how do you stop the disease there's only one country that has been successful in stopping not only stopping but reversing the AIDS epidemic and that is Uganda and what Uganda did was emphasize abstinence before marriage and fidelity within marriage being faithful in fact you you can see billboards today in Africa in Uganda the country of Uganda would say zero grazing outside of your own field that's Ugandan for be faithful to your wife zero grazing outside of your own field and they've dropped the AIDS infection rate from 13% down to five percent because age doesn't rain on you you get it from a certain kind of activity or you get it from bad medical practice you can only get it from either sexual activity or bad medical practice and if you're faithful in a lifelong monogamous relationship as the Church teaches with one man or one woman you're safe see we can grab one last email very quickly Jeanine from Alabama hello what's your question hello there very quickly yes I was just wondering there are so many people that are um want to adopt children if your guest could sort of get it started in that right track for anyone that would have wanted opt some of these unwanted children that are in China Thank You Jenny hang up good good thank you I think adopting little girls from China because they're all little girls they're not little boys they're all little girls in the orphanages today in China is a wonderful thing I think that every baby adopted from China is a life saved and I mean that because conditions in the orphanages now are better than they were ten years ago but they are still very dangerous places for a little baby girls to do their frequent epidemics the babies die in large numbers so every baby adopted is the life saved certainly a life saved from from institutionalization and it is possible to adopt baby girls from China not for me I'm a spy in the eye of the China in the eyes of the Chinese government they won't let me in the country otherwise I'd go there and come back with the baby under each arm but but any American can go to an adoption agency and one of the one agencies that are active in China and and apply for adoption and if you know our questioner would like they can they can visit our website and and I'll send them a list of of agencies maybe really quickly as take this last one but that leg is to end on this because this is very important an email from Li perhaps you could say a few words in the State of the Catholic Church in China and the martyrdom going on there well the martyrdom is a real thing there have been recent just in the last couple of days arrests of underground priests the state of the Catholic Church however is very good the number of converts is growing there is a long history of the Catholic faith in China there are villages that have been Catholic for centuries those villages survived the faith is strong there today the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church the church is growing in China we don't know how many Catholics there are in China but I would tell you this that the Minister of Education of the People's Republic of China admitted to a friend of mine a few years ago that there were 80 million Christians in China 80 million I know some of those bishops are even appointed by the the government if in fact ended up between faithful Catholic right most of them well most of that's such a great miracle so it's a great miracle Stephen thank you very much for joining me on the journey home thank you for your witness and for your work with the population Research Institute it's good stuff as our as our callers emphasized that sadly so many of these myths are just out there like a pudding and we're in the midst of it and they influence our way of thinking but thank you for your work and your witness to us thank you for joining us on the journey home it's always a great pleasure to be with you god bless see you next Oh

Channel: EWTN

Views: 52,330

Rating: 4.8587642 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television, Atheism (Religion)

Id: ocvN9G4OoiE

Length: 56min 21sec (3381 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 08 2015