Why the Vatican attacks contraception

By Stephen D. Mumford, DrPH | 3 March 2025
Church and State

This excerpt comes from our Chairman Dr. Stephen D. Mumford’s seminal book, The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy (1996). The book is available at Kindle here and to read for free here.

The Vatican’s public attack on contraception has centered on the morality of contraception. Webster’s dictionary defines morality as a doctrine or system of ideas concerned with conduct, or a system of principles or rules of proper conduct. For centuries the Church has relentlessly claimed that she is the only authority with the right to define this system of rules establishing what is right and what is wrong. This claim goes unchallenged. By default, the pope gets to make all of the rules. He decides what is moral and what is immoral. With amazing frequency, American Presidents and statesmen publicly proclaim, in effect, that the pope is moral leader of the world. By doing so, they enhance the pope’s authority and power.

But if the pope must protect the principle of papal infallibility by all means at his disposal, why would he not define the system of rules concerning right and wrong in such a way as to protect his principle of infallibility? In fact, he has. The Papacy has a vested interest in defining the system and a long history of using all means necessary to insure the survival of the institution. In the Catholic system, morality is defined in terms of what will protect the Papacy.

Having been exposed to the living conditions of the world’s poorest peoples on numerous occasions, I came to question the pope’s system of morals. About 25 years ago, after much observation and thought, I concluded that in the deepest sense it was immoral. I cannot imagine accepting this institution’s system of morality. Tens of millions of thoughtful Catholics around the world have reached the same conclusion and have left the Church.

"The primary focus of the Church bureaucracy is on protection of the principle of infallibility."

Postponing Self-Destruction of the Catholic Church https://t.co/ghzoANEFzf via @ChurchAndStateN

— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) November 20, 2024

But few speak out. Irish writer Conor Cruise O’Brien is one who has. Referring to the pope in 1980 he writes: “A good man giving bad advice is more dangerous than a nasty man giving bad advice. A good man, whom you believe to be infallible, and who gives you bad advice, can hurt you a lot, and, through you, others.”[197] The British novelist and biographer A. N. Wilson, a High Anglican, reviles the pope for his distaste for the intellect: “His hatred of the intellect would appear to know no bounds. Not since the persecution of the modernists in the time of Pius X has the Western Church known such a virulent Inquisition. Any professor of theology who ventures to question the Pope’s views has been ruthlessly deprived of his license to teach. Hans Küng, arguably the most distinguished theologian in the world, is only one of hundreds of academics whom the pope has muzzled … the Pope did not interest himself in the truth. If he were an illiterate peasant, this would be a pardonable vice. In an extremely intelligent former university professor, it is sinister.”

Wilson continues, “Since he is manifestly intelligent, we must conclude that he knows what he is doing…. But as he flies about the world, blessing the sick, kissing babies, and addressing the crowds in their own language, it must give him a very odd feeling to think that so many people accept his outrageous views and claims.”

John Paul II does not “interest himself in the truth.” Overpopulation is the gravest threat ever faced by our species, but the pope ignores the truth. We acknowledge that this sinister man is the moral leader of the world. We permit him to make the rules in spite of his outrageous views and claims.

Our willingness to publicly accept the pope’s views and claims of what is right and what is wrong is serving to postpone the inevitable self-destruction of the Papacy. Our leaders should end this unreasonable practice and let self-destruction take its course.

Dr. Stephen Mumford is the founder and President of the North Carolina-based Center for Research on Population and Security. He has his doctorate in Public Health. His principal research interest has been the relationship between world population growth and national and global security. He has been called to provide expert testimony before the U.S. Congress on the implications of world population growth.

Dr. Mumford has decades of international experience in fertility research where he is widely published, and has addressed conferences worldwide on new contraceptive technologies and the stresses to the security of families, societies and nations that are created by continued uncontrolled population growth. Using church policy documents and writings of the Vatican elite, he has introduced research showing the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church as the principal power behind efforts to block the availability of contraceptive services worldwide.

In addition to his books on biomedical and social aspects of family planning, as well as scientific articles in more than a score of journals, Dr. Mumford’s major works include American Democracy and the Vatican: Population Growth and National Security (Amherst, New York: Humanist Press, 1984), The Pope and the New Apocalypse: The Holy War Against Family Planning (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina: Center for Research on Population and Security, 1986), and The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina: Center for Research on Population and Security, 1996).

The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy

By Stephen D. Mumford, DrPH
Paperback Publisher: Center for Research on Population and Security (October 1996)
Kindle Publisher: Church and State Press (February 6, 2015)
ASIN: B00TBR5AIK
Kindle Store