I am a firm believer in the saying “a broken clock is right twice a day.” Meaning, even something that is almost always wrong is eventually right on something.
Well, today I found somebody I can agree with: Turkish President Recep Erdogan’s recent statement that “No Muslim family should engage in birth control”:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told an audience that Muslim families should reject ideas of population planning and birth control during an address in Istanbul, Monday, saying “No Muslim family can have such an approach.”
Erdogan went on to say “we will do what our Lord says and we will walk the path of our beloved prophet,” stressing that this is the “duty of mothers.” “The real owner of the generation are the mothers,” he added, emphasising that the role of women as mothers and their supposed duty to raise children.
Now what does this sound like?
Men rightly observe that a conjugal act imposed on one’s partner without regard to his or her condition or personal and reasonable wishes in the matter, is no true act of love, and therefore offends the moral order in its particular application to the intimate relationship of husband and wife. If they further reflect, they must also recognize that an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life. Hence to use this divine gift while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will. But to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source.
It’s the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI. You can read the whole text here.
Now there are many legitimate Catholic criticisms of Humanae Vitae, but at the very least, we can all agree on one central point about it: the document clearly reiterates the long standing and unchanging position of the Church, which is that birth control is a sin and Catholics cannot engage in it. While there is disagreement as to the exact numbers, there is no doubt that the distinct majority- over 2/3- use birth control in spite of the fact that it is in direct opposition to the faith they claim to uphold. When it comes to Protestants, the numbers are even higher.
The opposition to artificial birth control is clear. As Humanae Vitae points out, the purpose of sexual relations is absolutely conditional upon the possibility for the generation of new life. This is the central element to the entire matter. The way this is understood is that when having relations, while couples can engage in many different kinds of activities, the matter must finish with the man ejaculating inside the woman’s vagina. The fulfills the requirement set forth by natural and divine law, since anything outside of this denies the possibility of new life and is simply a form of selfish pleasure seeking, or mutual masturbation. This also leads to other very dangerous problems because if sex can be separate from procreation, then the only limit to human sexuality is one’s feelings, and man’s feelings can never be fully satisfied as they are not a moral boundary nor to the possess moral limits unless bridled.
The two are related
Many Christians are disgusted with the situation in our western society today that sees rampant homosexual deviancy. Yet at the same time, it was many of these Christians- regardless of denomination- who allowed this situation to happen because they ignored the Church’s teaching on family and birth control. Sex without the possiblity for natural procreation leads to a disgusing hedonistic orgy where anything goes in the name of pleasure. After all, logically speaking, if a man can masturbate using a woman’s vagina (assuming he is not ejaculating inside her vagina but into a condom or she is on the pill), they why can’t a man masturbate using another man’s anus (sodomy)? Or how about with a dog (bestiality)? Or a child (pedophilia)? What is there to stop the abhorrent and foul sexual practices so commonly found in mainstream pornography such as gokkun or bukkake? (You can read about them if you wish at the attached Wikipedia links if you really want to know more).
The disgust aspect is only one part of the lack of fertility in the West. The more dangerous and destructive part is the decline of fertility rates to unsustainable levels.
I wrote about this recently. All of the western nations except for France have a fertility rate below 2, and the only reason France is not lower is because the Muslims are having children. To the contrary, African and Muslim nations are having large families, averaging anywhere from 3 to 7 children per family.
Nobody says “be like the Duggars,” but let’s face it, they are not part of this problem.
All of this Malthusian nonsense about “too many people” and “overpopulation” is just that- nonsense. The problem that the world has, and especially the West, is underpopulation- people simply not having enough children, and mostly for selfish reasons.
I understand that having multiple children is not easy (I speak from direct experience as well), but there is reason why this is so. First, because God ordained it, and second, because the value of a society is found in the people who make it up. Without people a society cannot exist, and many times man does not actually know what is good for a society. That is why all members, from the biggest to the smallest, must be respected, protected, and most importantly-be given the opportunity to exist.
Some might say that the “population control” schemes of the West have not worked. I disagree- they have worked very well- at destroying the native populations to unsustainable levels, to such an extend that not only may the native European peoples never recover their former nations, but that some might completely disappear from history.
People have not stopped having sex. They stopped having children. This is why the Church is so strong against fornication and birth control, because taken to its logical ends, the situation today is the result.
As much as President Erdogan is an evil man, even he understands the importance of people- the value of a society is found in them, and you cannot have a society without them.
