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Catholic perspectives on populations issues II.

This Bulletin discusses the history and current status of the population problem from a Roman Catholic viewpoint. While upholding human rights and admitting the right of couples to control the size of their families, the Catholic Church continues to prohibit the use of artificial methods of contraception as sinful. This position hinders the Church, with its some 750 million adherents, from taking an effective lead in confronting the growing threat of global overpopulation. Rhythm has been permitted since 1930 but Pope Pius 12 in 1958 forbade contraceptive use of the pill. Despite the liberal spirit engendered by Vatican Council 2 and against the recommendation of a papal birth control commission, Pope Paul 6 in his 1968 Encyclical Humanae vitae reaffirmed the ban on artificial contraception, apparently convinced that this was necessary to combat growing sexual immorality, family breakdown, and materialism. This stance has been upheld by Pope John Paul 2 and the 1980 Synod of Bishops. The decision ignores the pleas of a number of responsible churchmen speaking for their people at the Synod and of a growing majority of Catholic theologians and laity, that Church teaching must be updated to take account of the facts of modern life. Surveys reveal that Catholic married couples increasingly find Church-approved natural family planning methods unsatisfactory and feel obliged to turn to artificial methods to regulate their family size. On the world scale, Pope John Paul 2 and the Vatican, while insisting on human rights and the need for a reordering of unjust economic, social, and political structures, seem to be neglecting the threat of civilizational breakdown that looms with the prospect of too many people in too little space with too few resources.