The Catholic Church and Social Justice Issues

By Stephen D. Mumford, DrPH | 8 June 2026
Church and State

(Photo by Leonhard Niederwimmer on Unsplash)

This excerpt has been adapted from Chapter 4 of our Chairman Dr. Stephen D. Mumford’s book, American Democracy and the Vatican: Population Growth and National Security (1984). The book is available at Kindle here and to read for free here.

True democracy is very threatening to the Church. As long as it can control the lawmakers, as it did when the Christian Democrats held sway in Italy for several decades, the Church has no problem with democracy. However, when a democratic government implements advances that tend to diminish influence of the hierarchy and thus weaken its hold on the populace—such as legalized abortion and equal rights for women—these actions can become very irritating. Furthermore, a democratic political system encourages clergy and laypersons to demand a more democratic Church such as existed in the earliest years of the Church. These demands can be exasperating to a Church leadership that rules absolutely. Why should the Church share its power? Its success lies in the fact that it is the most monolithic organization on earth.

The Church has found itself most effective in alliances with right-wing dictatorships. Being very conservative itself, it feels most at home with conservatives. Right-wing dictatorships and the Church coexist in a symbiotic relationship. The Church can deliver the control of the masses, and the right-wing governments permit the Church to conduct its business and its wishes, including ensuring the passage of laws which enhance its power.

Three popular modern movements—ERA, family planning, and legal abortion—all undermine Church authority and power by having as their ends the legalization and promotion of acts that completely counter the tenets with which the Church leadership has indoctrinated its congregants.

The Equal Rights Amendment would, in effect, encourage women to seek out interests outside a role devoted to a lifetime of reproducing and rearing faithful Catholics. Most important, the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment by the secular will soon lead to demands by women belonging to Catholic religious orders to be recognized as first-class citizens. No longer would the Church have at its disposal a force of millions of docile and obedient nuns. Actions such as the recent suit filed against a bishop in New England would become commonplace. There would be unending challenges to the authority of the all-male leadership of the Church by these women. This prospect has undoubtedly generated many nightmares for the occupants of the Vatican. Furthermore, calls for democracy within the Church would be strengthened. The ERA, therefore, seriously threatens the power of the leadership of the Catholic Church.

The Church has staked much of its authority on the issues of family planning and abortion. Initially, the Church took up these issues because it has always been highly pronatalist, believing that through numbers comes strength, and the greater the number of Catholics the better.

The Church’s claim that abortion and contraception are immoral continues to be eroded. What is moral is pretty much determined when a consensus is reached. Murder is immoral. There is a consensus. However, on the issues of abortion and contraception, America continues to slowly move away from the Church’s position. A majority of Americans belong to religious groups that do not believe that abortion and family planning are immoral, including nearly all of the major Protestant groups. An intimate knowledge of the sex lives of individuals gained through confessionals gives priests considerable power over individuals, and ultimately this power is exercised by the Vatican. The celibate males of the Church have always given considerable attention to the sexual lives of their followers, and concern with family planning and abortion became natural concerns.

On these issues of abortion and family planning the Church went out on a limb, staking much of its authority on these two issues. It cannot lose on these two issues without seriously damaging its authority with subsequent substantial loss in power. Both the Vatican and its critics agree here. The Church cannot lose these two battles nor can it reverse its positions. The course is irrevocably set. The Catholic leadership persists on these two issues because its power and authority are at stake. Therefore, abortion and family planning are issues of power—principally Catholic power issues—not moral issues.

Environmental protection and the Global 2000 Report threaten the Church indirectly but nevertheless quite seriously. The basic thesis of the environmental movement, with its inherent premise of population stabilization based on the limitations of the land, is that, if one exceeds the carrying capacity of our ecosystem, an irreversible process is set in motion. Environmental degradation caused by excessive stress on the ecosystem continues to reduce the carrying capacity of the ecosystem until it approaches zero. Desertification is one ultimate result. If this premise is accepted, then it becomes obvious that population growth cannot continue as it has for long. Once this is recognized, changes in social mores and previously pronatalist attitudes will soon bring acceptance of family planning and abortion by the Catholic laity. Thus, the environmental movement threatens the authority of the Church and therefore its power.

The Global 2000 Report was prepared by the most distinguished scientists in our government and is by far the best study of the earth as an ecosystem ever undertaken. I believe that it is unquestionably among the most important reports ever prepared by our government. It examines projections in twelve areas including world food supply, water supply, energy, minerals, and population growth. Although the findings are conservative and far too optimistic, it makes a powerful case by providing an enormous amount of evidence that the world is in deep trouble, that the ecosystem cannot hope to provide for the world’s rapidly expanding population. One of the firm conclusions is that population growth must be sharply curbed if we are to avoid a world in chaos. This means wide availability and use of family planning and abortion. Thus, if the Global 2000 Report is recognized as truth, then family planning and abortion will be accepted as necessary for survival. Thus the Global 2000 movement threatens the Church.

Another threat to the Church is the illegal immigration control movement. If this movement succeeds, and what is perceived by Latin Americans and other governments as an escape valve is shut off, these governments would logically say, “Our demographic course cannot continue.” These governments would have little choice but to confront the Church and say, “If we are to survive as governments, then we must get serious about population growth control. Otherwise, we in Latin America are destined to become a sea of chaos. We, as Latin Americans, must make family planning and abortion services fully available and encourage their use.” Turning off the valve to illegal immigration is therefore a serious threat to the power of the Church.

This movement threatens the Church in another way. The charge is that the Vatican strongly desires to see a Catholic majority in America so that the Vatican can exercise much greater, if not complete, control over the American democratic process, in the same way that the Vatican controlled the government of Italy for decades through the Christian Democratic Party. Many authors have advanced this idea. I have read this charge time and again over the past decade or so, and, until recently, I thought the idea ridiculous. But after observing the Church’s bold and thinly veiled actions in the Reagan Administration, I now believe these authors are probably describing reality. If 150 million Latin Americans legally and illegally migrate to the United States in the next twenty to thirty years, this apparent goal can be achieved. And, as I discussed at length in chapter two, these numbers are demonstrably not farfetched.

The Reagan Administration is clearly being manipulated by the Catholic Church, apparently with the president’s blessing. In an April 1982 speech before the National Catholic Education Association, Reagan made the incredible statement, “I am grateful for your help in shaping American policy to reflect God’s will…. And I will look forward to further guidance from His Holiness Pope John Paul II during an audience I will have with him in June.” Mr. Reagan is obviously leaning on the Vatican for a lot of help, and he’s getting it—much of it not in the best interest of the United States.

If the United States government shows no more willingness to deal with illegal immigration than has been shown by the Reagan Administration, then a migration from Latin America of the magnitude described above is certainly imminent. A Catholic majority in the United States and Vatican control of our government would greatly enhance the power of the Church not only in this country but worldwide.

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).

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