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Development and Population: Policy Perspectives and Catholic Teaching
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
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In the 1970's both the theory of development and the thinking on population policy in relationship to development have undergone significant revision. The purpose of this article is to note some of the broad trends in such analysis and to illustrate how Catholic teaching relates to the development-population debate. The relationship is more complex than descriptions often given of it by Catholics and other analysts. This essay seeks to examine the complexity and to propose a way of shaping a position on development and population which can enrich the wider debate and open new avenues of approach for the church.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1978
References
1 For an overview of the issues discussed here, see: Theological Studies, 35 (1974)Google Scholar; The U.S. and World Development: Agenda for Action (Washington, 1975)Google Scholar; McNamara, Robert, Address on the Population Problem to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Washington, 1977)Google Scholar; Population Memorandum No. 3: Toward a Just Global Population Policy (Washington, 1973)Google Scholar; Dyck, A., “Procreation Rights and Population Policy,” Hastings Center Studies, 1 (1973), 74–82CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
2 Limitations of space make it impossible to articulate in detail the several analytically distinguishable positions in the development-population debate. Two incisive summaries of how this can be done are: Teitelbaum, Michael S., “Population and Development: Is a Consensus Possible?” Foreign Affairs, 52 (1974), 742–60CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Dyck, A., On Human Care (Nashville, 1977), chap, 3Google Scholar.
3 Teitelbaum describes this position as “The Population Hawk” posture (“Population and Development,” pp. 752–53); Dyck's description of “the Crises Environmentalist” position most closely accords with what I have called the first view (Human Care, pp. 34–37).
4 Teitelbaum's description of “The Revolutionist Position,” “The Over-Consumption,” “The Accommodationist Position,” and “The Social Justice Position” shows them to be cognate views of this second position (“Population and Development,” pp. 751–52).
5 This third position is reflected principally in the view Teitelbaum calls “The Population-Programs-Plus-Development” position and in the position Dyck calls “Developmental Distributivist.” In Teitelbaum's analysis the third view is also cognate with “The Social Justice” position.
6 Teitelbaum, , “Population and Development,” pp. 754–58Google Scholar.
7 Dyck, using studies of Roger Revelle, John B. Wyon and John Gordon, points out the complex interrelationships of resources, consumption habits and population growth (Human Care, pp. 41, 43, 44).
8 Dyck cites the examples of South Korea and Taiwan; J. Howe and J. Sewell cite Sri Lanka, Singapore, Egypt and Barbados (“Let's Sink the Lifeboat Ethics,” Worldview, 18 [1975], 13–18Google Scholar).
9 McNamara illustrates the complexity of the factors involved in assessing the meaning of the demographic transition for developing countries today (see Address on Population, pp. 19–21); also, Teitelbaum, , “Population and Development,” pp. 744–45Google Scholar.
10 Dyck, , Human Care, pp. 43, 49Google Scholar. Cf. Rich, W., Population Explosion: The Role of Development, Overseas Development Council, Communique No. 16 (Washington, 1972)Google Scholar.
11 The critique can be found in several places: McNamara, Robert, 1973 Address to the Board of Governors, IBRD (Washington, 1973)Google Scholar; ul Haq, M., The Poverty Curtain (New York, 1976), pp. 27–47Google Scholar; Hansen, R., “The Emerging Challenge: Global Distribution of Income and Economic Opportunity,” U.S. and World Development, pp. 157–88Google Scholar.
12 Haq, Ul, Poverty Curtain, pp. 57–75Google Scholar; Hansen, R., “Major Options in North-South Relations,” U.S. and World Development (1977), pp. 33–36Google Scholar; 60f.
13 Noonan, J., Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 81–84; 275–78; 414–15Google Scholar; 514–16.
14 Ibid., p. 426.
15 Hollenbach, D. argues that “Pius XII was the first of the modern popes to attend directly to the ‘population question’ as it is conceived today” (“The Right to Procreate and Its Social Limits” [Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1975], p. 394)Google Scholar.
16 Paul, VI, “Message on the Population Year,” Origins III, no. 43, p. 671Google Scholar.
17 Paul, VI, “Address to the World Food Conference,” Origins IV, no. 22, p. 351Google Scholar.
18 For a summary and presentation of this tradition see: Calvez, J. and Perrin, J., The Church and Social Justice (Chicago, 1959)Google Scholar; Gremillion, J., The Gospel of Peace and Justice (New York, 1975)Google Scholar; Pavan, P., “Social Thought: Papal,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 13:352–61Google Scholar.
19 Pacem in Terris, para. 60; Gremillion, , Gospel of Peace, p. 214Google Scholar.
20 Cf. Hollenbach, , “Right to Procreate,” pp. 295ffGoogle Scholar.
21 Ibid., pp. 279–282ff.
22 Noonan, Contraception.
23 The text reads:
It is true that too frequently an accelerated demographic increase adds its own difficulties to the problems of development: the size of the population increases more rapidly than available resources, and things are found to have reached apparently an impasse. From that moment the temptation is great to check the demographic increase by means of radical measures. It is certain that public authorities can intervene, within the limit of their competence, by favouring the availability of appropriate information and by adopting suitable measures, provided that these be in conformity with the moral law and that they respect the rightful freedom of married couples. Where the inalienable right to marriage and procreation is lacking, human dignity has ceased to exist. Finally, it is for the parents to decide, with full knowledge of the matter, on the number of their children, taking into account their responsibilities towards God, themselves, the children they have already brought into the world, and the community to which they belong. In all this they must follow the demands of their own conscience enlightened by God's law authentically interpreted, and sustained by confidence in Him.
24 The text reads:
Nonetheless the Church, calling men back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by her constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act (quilibet matrimonii usus) must remain open to the transmission of life.
For the full statement of the position cf. Humanae Vitae, para. 11 and 12; in Gremillion, , Gospel of Peace, pp. 432–33Google Scholar.
25 Humanae Vitae, para. 17; in Gremillion, , Gospel of Peace, p. 436Google Scholar.
26 The entire argument of this section of the paper rests upon an understanding of the distinction between public and personal morality and the legitimate use of this distinction in the Catholic ethic of natural law.
The distinction, as John Courtney Murray has noted, is as old as St. Augustine's De Ordine. Moreover, it flows from the very center of a natural law conception of society. Murray has stated the case in its best contemporary form:
Society and the state are understood to be natural institutions with their relatively autonomous ends or purposes, which are predesigned in broad outline in the social and political nature of man, as understood in its concrete completeness through reflection and historical experience. These purposes are public, not private. They are therefore strictly limited. They do not transcend the temporal and terrestrial order, within which the political and social life of man is confined; and even within this order they are not coextensive with the ends of the human person as such. The obligatory public purposes of society and the state impose on these institutions a special set of obligations which, again by nature, are not coextensive with the wider and higher range of obligations that rest upon the human person (not to speak of the Christian). In a word, the imperatives of political and social morality derive from the inherent order of political and social reality itself, as the architectonic moral reason conceives this necessary order in the light of the fivefold structure of obligatory political ends—justice, freedom, security, the general welfare, and civil unity or peace (so the Preamble to the American Constitution states these ends).
It follows, then, that the morality proper to the life and action of society and the state is not univocally the morality of personal life, or even of familial life. Therefore the effort to bring the organized action of politics and the practical art of statecraft directly under the control of the Christian values that govern personal and familial life is inherently fallacious. It makes wreckage not only of public policy but also of morality itself (We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition [New York, 1960] p. 286Google Scholar).
27 Cf. “Should There Be A Law? The Question of Censorship,” in Murray, , We Hold These Truths, pp. 155–74Google Scholar.
28 Ibid., p. 286.
29 The notion of “public order” and its distinction from “common good” as these terms came to be used in the Vatican II debate on religious liberty is a fundamental concept in understanding the relationship of public and personal morality. Cf. Murray, J. C., , S.J., “The Problem of Religious Freedom,” Theological Studies, 25 (1964), 520–521CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Murray, , We Hold These Truths, pp. 166–67Google Scholar.
31 Ibid., p. 166.
32 Another form of this argument is found in Hehir, , “Church and Population,” Theological Studies, 35 (1974), 71–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 This empirical assessment would include recognition of the following elements: (1) significant divergence of emphasis, tone and content in the responses of the national episcopates to Humanae Vitae; (2) a documented split between significant sections of the theological community and the teaching of the encyclical; (3) statistically validated samplings of the Catholic community since 1965 which indicate widespread divergence between Catholic teaching and practice regarding contraception. None of these factors is meant to imply that in determining morality we are simply involved in a head-count. While the adjudication of the position within the church on contraception has to take account of these various differences—which are qualitative (i.e., theological) as well as quantitative—the argument about public morality is not based on the internal standing of Humanae Vitae. The precise question being raised in this paper is whether it is morally or politically prudent to project as a public position of the church for the whole society a set of prescriptions which the same society knows are under dispute among Catholics.
34 Dyck, , “Procreation Rights,” p. 77Google Scholar.
35 Ibid., p. 79.