By Stephen D. Mumford, DrPH | 3 December 2024
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 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
Often I’m told that I should not speak out against the Church because “I might offend Catholic liberals and if there is hope for change within the Church, it rests with the liberals.” Since conservatives are in absolute control regarding the direction of the Church, no one’s interests, except the conservatives’, is served by pointing to liberals in the Church and saying “but they are on our side.” They have no influence on Catholic policy making—and they will have none in the foreseeable future.
As used here, the term liberal Catholic is defined as an American Catholic who does not agree with the papal position on abortion and contraception. According to a well designed study published by Catholic Sociologist Father Andrew Greeley in the Jesuit magazine America, liberal Catholics account for 93 percent of all American Catholics! It is stunning and tragic how little influence this overwhelming majority has on the American bishops.
As long as liberal Catholics remain in the Church, they serve the interests of the conservatives by deflecting and confusing forthright criticism of the Papacy—criticism that could further erode institutional credibility and papal authority. The liberals also serve the conservative cause in another important way. A letter sent by the six American Cardinals and the president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to President Clinton in June 1994, regarding the International Conference on Population and Development begins, “We speak, Mr. President … for Catholics throughout the United States ….” The implication is that the bishops speak for 59 million Catholics in America, giving the bishops enormous political power. Each American represents one small increment of political power. The bishops have acquired these small increments of power from each American Catholic and these small increments add up to an impressive bloc of power. They just took these increments and American Catholics have not objected. It is extremely important that American Catholics take steps to end this arrangement. As the credibility of the Papacy continues to sink, which is inevitable, American Catholics cannot predict the ways in which the pope will call upon their bishops as he desperately attempts to insure survival of the Papacy. Liberal Catholics can best serve the needs of their countrymen and the rest of humanity by bolting from the Church and encouraging others to do the same. Since Humanae Vitae, millions already have. (We will come back to this in Chapter 13.)
We must remember what is at stake, as illuminated by NSSM 200, and act accordingly. In no way should we assume responsibility for the painful predicament Catholics find themselves in today. It was set in motion in 1870. Above all else, we have a high moral responsibility to protect our nation’s security-survival from all threats, domestic and foreign. Nurturing liberal Catholics to participate in the population growth control movement by avoiding identification of the real opposition to population growth control undermines any hope of success. Until we identify the opposition to our movement, and educate Americans as to why and what the Catholic hierarchy is doing to thwart population growth control, we have little chance of success in dealing with the population problem. We must identify the enemy’s weaknesses and exploit those weaknesses if we are to solve this problem. Some liberal Catholics will choose to leave the population movement or not to join; others will remain or join. But in any case, we cannot compromise our movement by refusing to identify our opposition, and failing to formulate our strategy so as to take advantage of its weaknesses, just so we will not offend liberal Catholics.
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
Vatican control of World Health Organization population policy: An interview with Milton P. Siegel
Why are Catholic Politicians Liberal, Generally?
Christ the King: Liberalism is Anti-Catholic
Be sure to ‘like’ us on Facebook
