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(excerpted from an article by by Fr. Paul B. Marx, OSB) For decades Planned Parenthood, environmentalists, public policy experts and various world leaders have issued dire warnings about overpopulation. However, the real problem is not overpopulation, but of the depopulation of the world. Phillip Longman, in his book The Empty Cradle, says, "The unprecedented fall in fertility rates over the last 30 years is now spreading to every corner of the globe, affecting not only the United States and other developed countries, but also China, the Middle East and Latin America." Today, with the USA and other nations facing falling birthrates and the rapid aging of the population, there will soon be severe shortages of human capital. To worsen the problem, the deepest declines in fertility have been among the best educated and most materially successful members of secular societies, thus indicating that we can expect serious problems ahead. Declining birthrates are exceedingly difficult to restore. Reports already tell of the problems the baby-boomers will cause as they grow into the Social Security system. As the population ages, the financial problems can be expected to increase in the United States. The remedies for the present and developing real demographic disasters lie in moral and spiritual rejuvenation of parental and family life. Exclude the spiritual and the moral aspects of human reproduction and you invite the demographic disasters that are looming. The worldwide decline in population looms as an enormous problem of which few people are aware. The Empty Cradle is an eloquent wake-up call about the consequences of falling birthrates worldwide. The cradle is empty, and the cemeteries are filling up. Be fruitful and multiply — before it is too late. |