Europe as we know it is a dying civilization. Pat Buchanan, in his book The Death of the West, uses United Nations statistics to project that the native populations of Europe will decrease by 70% in the next 100 years, simply because native Europeans are no longer having enough babies to reproduce themselves. In some European countries, the average woman is now having 1.1 babies in her lifetime. The number needed to maintain a population is 2.1.
The last time Europe’s population showed a drop remotely close to this magnitude was during the Black Plague of the 14th century. Nowadays, however, the deadly infection isn’t being carried by rats. It’s being carried by an ideology – one that bills itself as charitable, progressive, even Utopian. Indeed, the Planned Parenthood paradise of “unrestricted reproductive freedom” has materialized in post-Christian Europe during the early 21st century. Europe is exercising its “right to choose” and it is choosing cultural suicide. I hope the last European turns out the lights.
During the Black Death, the elderly died with the young. But the plague that envelops Europe today takes only the young. Of course, the nations of Europe have Social Security systems similar to ours, and as the people of these nations age, they are running out of young workers to fund their retirements. Reluctantly, they are allowing poor, uneducated immigrants from the Middle East and Africa to take the bottom rung jobs necessary to continue funding the retirement system. By the year 2100, these immigrants, mostly Muslims, will outnumber the native Europeans.
This next bit of information didn’t make the network news, but it represents the tip of a proverbial iceberg that I believe lies under the whole continent of Europe. It seems that a well-known psychology professor at the University of Aarhus in Denmark is now calling for state measures to encourage childbearing among intelligent people and discourage childbearing among those with low intellectual ability . . . to create what he calls a “better Danish society.”
Gee, I wonder where we’ve heard proposals like that before. More to the point, I wonder why this and similar ideas seem to be popping up all over Europe . . . right now, 60 years after the fall of the 3rd Reich.
What has brought Europe to this point? One would have hoped that these kinds of ideas died in a bunker in Berlin. The answer, I think, is that the native populations of Europe – the Danes, the Germans, the Italians, the Spaniards, the Swedes, the Dutch -- are scared stiff. Facing the specter of becoming minorities in their own countries, a great many native Europeans are beginning once again to embrace Adolf Hitler’s ideas about building a Master Race of superior citizens.
Not to get too melodramatic or anything, but we are in the midst of a battle of dominions and principalities. You can almost hear the flapping of satanic wings, can’t you?
Where should we look for our armor in this battle? Well, I suggest that we start by remembering who warned us about what would happen if Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, got her way. It has been the constant teaching of the Catholic Church for two thousand years that artificial contraception is gravely immoral. Until the middle of the last century, public policy broadly supported Church teaching in every Christian country on the planet, Catholic and Protestant alike.
But along came the “sexual revolution” of the 1960’s, creating in its maelstrom an anti-family and anti-life mindset -- the contraceptive mentality -- which has resulted in 40 million surgical abortions in the United States alone since 1973, and God only knows how many chemical abortions.
Concerning that last point, perhaps Planned Parenthood's most diabolical legacy is the birth control pill. Indeed, Margaret Sanger supplied the primary funding for pill research and development in the 1950’s.
Did you know that the common birth control pill results in the abortion of a tiny human being in a small but meaningful percentage of reproductive cycles? If you don’t believe me, check out the Physician’s Desk Reference at your local library. This is the volume that the pharmaceutical companies use to advise doctors concerning the chemical effects of their drugs. If you do so, you will discover that the “pill” not only prevents sperm from fertilizing egg; it is also formulated to kill tiny but genetically complete babies 5 to 7 days after fertilization, when necessary to abort pregnancies. Popular birth control products like Depo Provera kill tiny babies roughly 50% of the time. Intra-uterine devices do so 100% of the time.
Pope Paul VI, in his historic 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, predicted that widespread use of artificial birth control would result in: • an increase in conjugal infidelity, • the general lowering of morality, • the loss of respect for women, • and it would be a dangerous weapon in the hands of public authorities.
If you are pretty depressed by all this, I can’t blame you. But I can tell you that despite this mess there is incredible reason for optimism.
Thankfully, just as the Church first warned us about the dangers of the contraceptive “paradise” promised by Margaret Sanger, the Church also provides the tools to “bruise the heel” of the serpent that lurks therein. The antidote to Planned Parenthood is the blood of our Savior. And we can arm ourselves with the blood of our Savior . . . and His body too . . . during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass . . . in the sacrament of the Eucharist.
We can also look to the Holy Mass to recruit powerful allies -- the angels and the saints. Most Christians, even most Catholics, don’t understand the fundamental proposition that worship is warfare. In the book of Revelation, God’s vengeance closely follows the prayers of the martyrs beneath His altar.
At Mass, we worship beside those martyrs as well as the angels. We call upon their help. Listen closely to the words which lead into the Holy, Holy, Holy: “Now, with all the angels and archangels, and the whole company of heaven, we sing the unending hymn of Your praise.”
The word “company,” as in the “whole company of heaven,” is a military term. Many Eastern liturgies refer to our alliance with the “hosts” of angels, like legions or divisions. In the Liturgy of St. Mark, we hear the prayer of the martyrs: “Crush under our feet Satan, and all his wicked influence. Humble now, as at all times, the enemies of Your Church. Lay bare their pride. Speedily show them their weakness. Bring to naught the wicked plots they contrive against us. Arise, O Lord, and let Your enemies be scattered, and let all who hate Your holy Name be put to flight.”
The Mass is nothing short of D-Day in the spiritual realm. It is our most potent weapon.