Freethinkers United! Conference 1997
Orlando, Florida
[Mitchell Modisett: ... to introduce to you Stephen Mumford, the world's greatest Vatican critic and population expert who will speak to us now.]
Thank you very much Mitch. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak with you this morning. Toward the end we will have 25 or 30 minute session for questions. Can we hear in the back all right? I'd like to sort of set the stage for this presentation by quoting from a special message that was delivered to Congress by President Nixon back in 1969. And I quote:
In 1830 there were one billion people on the planet. By 1930 there were two billion, and by 1960 there were three billion. Today, 1969, the world stands at 3 1/2 billion persons. One of the most serious challenges to human destiny in the last third of this century will be the growth of population. Whether man's response to that challenge will be a cause of pride or for despair in the year 2000 will depend very much on what we do today. If we now begin our work in an appropriate manner and if we continue to devote a considerable amount of attention and energy to this problem, then mankind will be able to surmount this challenge, as it has surmounted so many during the long march of civilization. When future generations evaluate the record of our time, one of the most important factors in their judgment will be the way in which we respond to population growth. Let us act in such a way that those who come after us even as they lift their eyes beyond earth's bounds and do so with pride in the planet on which they live, with gratitude to those who lived on it in the past and with continuing confidence in the future.
In the 28 years which have elapsed since this special message was delivered to congress, the world population has grown by an additional 2 1/2 billion and the world population growth rate remains almost unchanged at nearly 2%. This is a remarkable passage of a message sent to Congress by President Nixon in 1969. At that time America seemed to have the political will to deal with the overpopulation problem. Within five years that will began to weaken. Here today, we can bear witness only to our government's aversion to population control. Why have we come to this sad state of affairs? The Cairo population conference two years ago was a turning point. Until then it was not widely known that the Catholic Church, as directed by its hierarchy in the Vatican, was a principal force in opposing population growth control. Any effort by the Vatican to conceal its staunch opposition was abandoned when the Holy See shut down the meeting for the first six days. Everyone was stunned. Few believed that the Vatican would do this. Few believed that the Vatican could do this. The big question is: Why did the Vatican do it? At the last international population conference convened in Mexico City in 1984, the Vatican was not forced to take such an overt action to achieve their goals. Conservative Catholic James Berkley, led a largely conservative Catholic delegation to Mexico City to represent the United States. They took the Vatican position on abortion and family planning and helped to impose it on the conference. The Vatican, thereby, avoided the need to place itself directly in the way of progress on this vital issue. The Vatican desperately wanted the policy established in Mexico City to be retained after the Cairo conference, but it lacked the powerful U.S. delegation to support it this time.
Why is the Vatican so anxious to impose its will on the world of Catholics and non-Catholics alike when it comes to this issue? First let me say that we are talking about the Catholic hierarchy, priests, bishops, cardinals, the pope, not the laity. It is well know that American Catholic lay people do not differ from non-Catholics in the use of contraception and abortion. The imminent Catholic theologian, Hans Kung, best described the situation when he wrote: "We cannot solve the problem of contraception until we solve the problem of infallibility." What is infallibility? What did Dr. Kung mean? Infallibility is a Catholic dogma, a Catholic teaching, a principle. As you know, according to Catholic dogma, the pope is God's representative on earth and God guides him as he cares for his flock. When the Pope formulates a teaching, he is simply transmitting this teaching on God's behalf. Therefore, the teaching cannot possibly be an error. Thus his teachings are infallible. This principle was not created until 1870, the very year when the Pope lost all temporal power with the creation of the country of Italy. Up to that moment the Vatican was still executing so-called heretics, people who were viewed as posing a threat to Papal power. But suddenly this source of power was gone. The Vatican urgently needed a new source of power. It could no longer control the laity my means of its governance as it had in the Papal states which would later become Italy, but it could control the laity directly by adopting a policy of psychological coercion founded on a new doctrine, that of Papal infallibility.
This was a brilliant concept and it worked for a century. At its introduction in 1870, the Catholic intelligencia, among them theologians, historians and bishops, recognized at some point in the future this principle would leave to self-destruction of the institution. Why? Because they recognized that times were certain to change and in unpredictable ways. This principle would lock the Church into an unchangeable course, teachings that could not be changed without destroying the principle of infallibility itself. These thoughtful Catholics foresaw that this principle would immediately become the fundamental principle of the Catholic Church, upon which all other Catholic dogma would rest, the very foundation of the Church. They understood that if this principle were undermined and destroyed at some future date, all Church teachings would collapse around the eroded foundation and the institution itself would be devastated. They were convinced that one day, encumbered by her unchangeable teachings, the Church would find itself down a blind alley from which there would be no escape, and faced with inevitable self destruction as a result of a grave loss of credibility. These distinguished scholars were strongly opposed to this principle, and many left the Church. The blind alley turned out to be the issue of birth control. They could not imagine the population explosion of the last half of this century.
As it now stands, the church cannot change its teaching on birth control without undermining all of its teachings. The Vatican must protect the fundamental of Papal Infallibility at all costs. We all know that the Catholic Church has lost much of its credibility, authority and claim to moral leadership as it has stonewalled any serious solutions to the population problem. The 1968 Encyclical Humanae Vitae, ruled out any change of the Church's position on birth control for all time. Since the adoption of Humanae Vitae 29 years ago, there has been a hemorrhage in the Church's credibility just as the intellectual leaders of the Church predicted in 1970. Self destruction is now well underway.
This morning I will give you several examples of the erosion, but there are scores of others. In 1965 there were 42,000 young men in American seminaries studying for the priesthood. Today there are fewer than 6000, even though there are 50% more Catholics. One half of all American priests quit the priesthood before reaching retirement age due to this loss of credibility of the institution itself. There are not over 20,000 ex-priests. The Vatican now regards America as a missionary region. Younger priests from Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America are being brought in to protect Papal interests because American men are shunning the priesthood. The average age of nuns in the United States is 65 years. Only 3% are under age 40 while 35% are older than age 70. The number of Catholic general hospitals is down 22% since 1960. Only 28% of Catholics attend Mass on a typical Sunday while 30 years ago Mass attendance was more than 70%. Catholics contribute only 1.1% of their income to the church, while Protestants contribute 2.2%. Twenty years ago they gave about the same. There are scores of other examples.
Self destruction as a result of loss of credibility is underway but progressing slowly. The Pope still has hope that he can turn this around. We know that he is convinced that if he changes the Church's position on birth control and destroys the principle of infallibility self, destruction will be very swift. We know that this matter was the focus of his attention for several years in the 1960's. In 1964 Pope Paul VI created the Papal Commission on Population and Birth Control which met from 1964 to 1966. It was a two-part commission. One consisted of 64 lay persons, the other 15 clerics, including Pope John Paul II, then a Polish Cardinal. Pope Paul gave the Commission only one mission, to determine on how the Church can change its position on birth control without undermining Papal Authority. After two years of study, the Commission concluded that it was not possible to make this change without undermining Papal Authority, but that the Church should make this change anyway because it was the right thing to do. The lay members voted 60 to 4 for change, and the clerics 9 to 6 for change. We know this because one or more of the Commission members released the details without permission to an Italian newspaper and a French newspaper. Pope Paul did not act immediately on the Commission's report. A minority report was prepared, co-authored by the man who is now Pope John Paul II. Now here we have it in the Pope's own words. In this report he said, and I quote:
If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubii was promulgated), in 1951 (Pius XII's address to the midwives, and in 1958 (the address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died). It should likewise have to be admitted that for a half century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error.
This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding, under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now be declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved.
In 1980, years after he became Pope, John Paul wrote to the German Bishops and I quote:
I am convinced that the doctrine of infallibility is in a certain sense the key to the certainty with which the faith is confessed and pro-claimed, as well as to the life and conduct of the faithful. For if once this essential foundation is shaken or destroyed, the most basic truths of our faith likewise begin to break down.
In these contexts the Pope took the position that a change on the birth control issue would destroy the principle of infallibility and that infallibility was the fundamental principle of the Church upon which all else rests. The principle of infallibility must be protected at all costs. The security/survival of the Papacy is on the line. Civil law which legalizes contraception and abortion undermines Papal Authority. The Church insists that only it can determine what is moral. By passing these civil laws governments are challenging the prerogative of the Pope to be the ultimate authority on what is moral. Because most Americans look to democratic process to determine morality, the authority of the Pope is threatened by this process. In the simplest analysis, the Church cannot coexist with such an arrangement which in its view threatens the very survival of the Papacy as a world power.
Now my views on these matters have been influenced primarily by three Catholic writers: theologian Hans Kung, historian Bernhard Hasler, and sociologist Jean-Guy Vaillancourt. In the same year that the encyclical Humanae Vitae was issued, 1968, Richard Nixon was elected president. Nixon felt very strongly about the population problem. Public awareness of this problem and political commitment to deal with it was just beginning to peak in 1968. In March 1970, Nixon created the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. The task of this commission was to make a series of recommendations that could be used to formulate a comprehensive population policy for the United States. After two years of intensive study the Commission made more that 70 recommendations. The report had the makings of an outstanding population policy. This is a copy of that report, torn and tattered somewhat. The report is available in very limited copies around the country, and it is difficult to even find a copy. Now two of the recommendations were that contraception and abortion would be made available to all those who wanted them at government expense if necessary. 1972 was a presidential election year and President Nixon was facing a difficult campaign. So when the report was presented to him on May 5, 1972, six months before Americans would go to the polls, Nixon sharply condemned its most important recommendations. Nothing ever came of this report. Not one recommendation was ever adopted. To this day the United States does not have a population policy. According to the chairman of the commission, John D. Rockefeller III, and commission member, James Scheuer of New York, the president was convinced that the Bishops who were hostile to the report, had the power to upset his bid for reelection. This report never saw the light of day again. But Nixon did make another bold move. Despite the intense opposition of the Catholic hierarchy that he encountered in the wake of his population Commission, Nixon's assessment of the gravity of the world population problem remained unchanged. In April 1974 in National Security Study Memorandum 200, or NSSM 200, he directed that a comprehensive study be undertaken to determine the implications of world population growth for U.S. security and overseas interest. He ordered that this study be undertaken by all the departments and agencies of the government that had significant intelligence-gathering capabilities. This included the National Security Council, the CIA, the Defense, Agriculture and State Departments and the Agency for International Development. Before the study was completed in July 1975 President Nixon had lost his job. However, his successor, Gerald Ford, recognized the importance of this study. Both the findings and recommendations are as relevant today as they were in 1975. The study group defined why overpopulation is a threat to the security of all nations, not just the United States. They summarized this in the following way:
Populations factors are indeed critical in and often determine and solve violent conflict in developing areas. Religious, social and racial differences, migration, rapid population growth, differential levels of knowledge and skills, rural/urban differences, population pressure and the spatial location of population in relation to resources, in this rough order of importance, all appear to be important contributions to conflict and violence. [Notice that they write religious first on the list.] Clearly conflicts which are regarded in primarily political terms often have demographic roots. Recognition of these relationships appears crucial to any understanding or prevention of such hostilities.
Now, because of the constraint of time I can only cite a few of the findings in this remarkable report, and I quote [from Executive Summary of the NSSM 200 Report]:
There is a major risk of severe damage from continued rapid population growth to world economic, political, and ecological systems and, as these systems begin to fail, to our humanitarian values. [page 10] ... World population growth is widely recognized within the Government as a current danger of the highest magnitude calling for urgent measures. [Page 194] ... Population factors are indeed critical in, and often determinants of, violent conflict in developing areas. [Page 66] ... Where population size is greater than available resources, or is expanding more rapidly than the available resources, there is a tendency toward internal disorders and violence and, sometimes, disruptive international policies or violence. [Page 691] ... In developing countries, the burden of population factors, added to others, will weaken unstable governments, often only marginally effective in good times, and open the way to extremist regimes. [Page 84]
Now this report predicted the invasion of Kuwait and the United States-Iraq war and pointed out that the costs of such a conflict will far exceed the cost of decades of world-wide population growth control. The report also predicted the civil wars in Somalia and Rwanda and Bosnia and numerous other population-driven hostilities of the past 20 years. The report offers numerous recommendations. The following few excerpts will give you the idea of the concern expressed by the departments and agencies which conducted this study, and I quote:
Our objective should be to assure that developing countries make family planning information, education and means available to all their peoples by 1980. [Page 130] ... intense efforts are required to assure full availability by 1980 of birth control information and means to all fertile individuals, especially in rural areas. [Executive Summary, page 9] While specific goals in this area are difficult to state, our aim should be for the world to achieve a replacement level of fertility, (a two-child family on the average), by about the year 2000. ... Attainment of this goal will require greatly intensified population programs. ... U.S. leadership is essential. [Executive Summary, page 14] No country has reduced its population growth without resorting to abortion. [Page 182] ... Indeed, abortion, legal and illegal, now has become the most widespread fertility control method in use in the world today... [Page I] ... It would be unwise to restrict abortion research for the following reasons: 1) The persistent and ubiquitous nature of abortion. 2) Widespread lack of safe abortion techniques. [Page 185]
This was one of the most incredible findings (and terribly accurate) of this report. No country has reduced its population growth without resorting to abortion. Indeed abortion, legal and illegal, now has become the most wide-spread fertility control method in use in the world today. They really understood the role abortion was playing in 1975. Now its conclusion: Overpopulation threatens American security and the security of all nations. Overpopulation is a more serious threat than the nuclear threat.
And this is a copy of that report which remained classified for 14 years and with the help of Congressman David Price of North Carolina, I was able to get a copy of the report. It was never published. This is a manuscript. You can see President Ford's handwriting in the margins where he made notes to himself as he reviewed this report.
On November 26, 1975 the 227 page report and its recommendations were endorsed by President Ford. However, none of them were ever implemented. The Vatican moved swiftly to intervene and all efforts were very quietly subverted. On November 20, 1975 six days before Ford endorsed the recommendations, the U.S. Catholic bishops adopted a plan to build a political machine with the stated goal of passing a human rights amendment to the Constitution. This is a copy of that plan, and there are copies on the table at the back. Please feel free to pick up a copy on your out. This plan describes the creation of a new right movement, including the Moral Majority. Within a period of only four years, almost the entire new right movement had been created. More recently, the bishops were the moving force behind the creation of the Christian Coalition to replace the Moral Majority, which had fallen into public disrepute.
Many documented details of the Vatican intervention in the implementation of the NSSM 200 recommendations are described in my last three books, including the latest one which is on sale next door. Given that the very survival of the papacy is on the line, the Vatican has taken extraordinary steps to halt any and all local and global initiatives to promote population growth control activities.
Now the current administration did attempt to adopt a policy to address this new security threat of overpopulation. This was done through the preparation of a Presidential Decision Directive, a PDD, prepared by the National Security Council in cooperation with the State Department, The Agency for International Development, Health and Human Services, the Treasury Department and the EPA. This PDD was to announce a new population policy for the United States, and I have a draft copy of that PDD right here. Now the PDD begins: Rapid Global population growth is an urgent and substantial threat to international stability and sustainable development. This Presidential Decision Directive articulates objectives for and guides the implementation of United States policy on population growth. This draft is dated June 1, 1994. It was to be finalized and cleared by June 3, 1994. However, this PDD was suppressed, killed, just like the Rockefeller Commission and the NSSM 200 reports before it. Nothing ever came of this 1990's attempt to address the issue of global overcrowding, despite the gravity of the threat to U.S. security posed by overpopulation and described in the draft PDD itself. I believe that this grave conflict between the well-documented efforts of the Papacy to preserve its power and influence and the security survival interest of our country and the entire world, is the most important story of the last half of the 20th century. This incredible story is going untold.
[end of side 1, content lost] ... think about the lengths to which the Vatican would be willing to go in order to save the Papacy. A few months ago the New Republic magazine reminded us that in 1966 conservative Catholic writer L. Brent Bousell, William Buckley's brother-in-law, wrote "the Catholic Church in American must forthrightly acknowledge that a state of war exists between herself and the American political order. Since then the Catholic Church has behaved accordingly and aggressively undermined the American political process. Much of the ugliness we see today in American politics, especially at the national level, is the result of this war. I urge you to tell this story to others. The silence maintained regarding this conflict between the U.S. and Papal security interests is preventing any action to address this new threat to our national security. In the back of this room there are copies of this presentation, or most of it. Please feel to take a copy and to discuss it with others. It's the silence on this matter that's making it possible for the Vatican to behave as it is, and very successfully so. Thank you very much for this opportunity.
Christos: Before you pose the questions to Dr. Mumford I would like to advise you that we are all aware of our overpopulation problem to only have one ... [laughter]
[inaugible Q:] Mumford: The question is how can the government account for the way it's handling the immigration problem presently? given the implications for U.S. population growth. About half of all growth in the United States since 1970 has been due to immigration, either direct or the offspring of immigrants. So about half of all our growth is due to immigration. So it's a very significant factor. Now, most people are not aware that more than 90% of all immigrants are Roman Catholic. And the Church has an enormous stake in keeping our borders open for new arrivals because they tend to be more obedient than American Catholics, as you're aware. As immigrant Catholics arrive, they tend to have even larger families than they would have had in their countries of origin. Then the next generation it starts falling off, but that first generation, the family is actually larger than it would have been because of rising expectations we think.
[inaudible Q:] Mumford: Yes, most of the address is in the small pamphlet in the back of the room.
[inaudible Q:] Mumford: I think there are about 150. I think it is a sufficient number.
[inaudible Q:] Mumford: Why isn't ZPG involved in this debate with the Catholic Church? And this is a very interesting story. Not too long after ZPG was created, a policy was adopted that there would be no attacks on the Catholic Church from within ZPG. Now some of you may be aware of the organization called Californians for Population Stabilization. This used to be called California ZPG and what happened was, this chapter was the largest chapter in the United States, accounting for 1/4 of the entire membership of ZPG. California ZPG's newsletter attacked the Catholic Church and they were warned not to do this again. They did it again and they were kicked out of the national organization for doing so. More recently Elaine Stanfield's ZPG of Los Angeles went through a similar exercise. She published an attack on the Church in her little newsletter. ZPG national warned her, you do that again and you are out. She did it again, the very next issue, I think, and they kicked her out.
[inaudible Q:] Mumford: The Catholic Church's influence extends into the ZPG national office. The most important population issue is the threat to security of all nations by population growth itself. That's the number one issue. It goes undiscussed. The reason it goes undiscussed is because if you accept the security threat exists and that it's as important as the Nixon administration was saying, then you have to also accept that the Roman Catholic Church is a grave threat to U.S. security. People don't want to face up to this, that the Vatican truly is our greatest threat.
Q: I just wanted to point out that Floridians for ... population and has been in existence for two years. It is ... There are brochures outside in the ... We have annual meeting .... If you would like to attend .... Please see me after the meeting.
Q: Let me say that I very much enjoyed your talk and I had previously seen some of your material. I think some of the people here are hearing it for the first time. Some of the people are involved in ZPG and various organizations. But they are sending their money ... they are spinning their wheels. Would it be your suggestions that people who support ZPG write to ZPG and say: you had better start doing this or i am out of here. ...
Mumford: This is a great idea. This man is suggesting that each of us write ZPG and question why they are not getting into these issues that have been presented this morning. This is an excellent idea because no one else is doing this and at some point there is going to have to be an uprising in ZPG and to deal with this opposition to saying anything negative about the Catholic Church. I'll tell you we are not going to get into the security issue due to influence of the Catholic Church because the Church recognizes how explosive this is, how threatening this is. I've been at this since the late '70's, publically speaking, and let me just give you a little example of how things have been. I spoke in January 1978 in a large conference in Washington. It was a long hall, a little bit more narrow than this one and maybe twice as long. At the end of my presentation, a line formed at the microphone right over here. The line extended all the way out the back door and there was only one person who had a good thing to say about my desire to bring the security thing into the debate. It was an incredible experience. There is going to be a lot of effort to keep this out of the public debate for this reason. It does so threaten the Catholic Church.
Mumford: The question is will I speak about the wealth of the Catholic Church. I will tell you it is probably the most wealthy institution on the planet and much of the wealth is not coming from contributions on Sunday mornings. It's due to... it's coming from real estate investments and ownership of American companies and companies around the world. And it's sort of unlimited funds to accomplish their goals. It's amazing how much influence this institution has on American Politics and it can only have that much influence with the help of money, a lot of money.
Mumford: The percentage of Catholics in this country is about 25, but many do not consider themselves Catholic any longer. A recent poll of Catholics showed that I think about 28% state that even though they were born in the Church they no longer identify with the Catholic Church. So many have already left the Church completely.
Q: What about the other churches?
Mumford: Are other churches involved in this opposition to population growth control? With respect to family planning there is almost no other opposition in the United States. The United States is where the battle is being fought, not in other countries; it's right here. Now with respect to abortion, there are other religious institutions, primarily fundamentalists, but the Catholic Church has taken great lengths to organize Protestants against abortion. I don't know ... I grew up in a fundamentalist area in Kentucky and I also worked with fundamentalist churches professionally in Houston, Texas, and they are almost impossible to organize, you can't get two of them together to do anything. But the Catholic Church recognized early on even back in 1971 there is an article in the Jesuit Magazine America where they said if we're going to win on the abortion thing we're going to have to make this effort look non-Catholic. And, they have set out, even before the pastoral plan was adopted four years before, they already recognized that a chunk of their plan has got to be making this anti-abortion thing look Protestant.
Q: John Patrick Michael Murphy: ... as I understand it ... Holy See ... 108 acres, the size of a golf course. Less than 800 citizens, all male, all asexual ... except for involuntary nocturnal emissions [laughter] ... why the hell should anybody pay more attention to them than ... or any other ... postage stamp? How do you get permanent observer status at the United Nations?
Mumford: I'd like to speak to this "permanent observer status." Even though they have some characteristics of being a country, 108 acres and so forth. They do not meet the definition of a country set forth by the U.N. when it was founded. The Vatican has tried twice for full membership in the U.N. as a country and both times they failed. So, they asked for this permanent observer status. Now there is only one other entity with this permanent observer status, and that's Switzerland, but Switzerland qualifies as a country, using the criteria set forth. So the Vatican is the only entity that does not qualify as a country with this special observer status. They got this status by using muscle, nothing but muscle. There was no other ... money and influence of country ... members. And it is going to be very difficult ... there is a petition on the back table, ultimately we're going to get the nation's attention on this and why it's not good for humanity. One way we can do this is by taking a petition before the Secretary General of the U.N. And that is what we are working toward now.
Mumford: I have a monograph prepared by the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy which researched this and they do not mention this and maybe only because the Archbishop of Canterbury does not attempt to exercise any privileges with his status. I know it's not mentioned in this monograph.
Q: Do you know if the Catholic Church has any ... affiliation with the Promise Keepers?
Mumford: Does the Catholic Church have any relationship with the Promise Keepers? I simply don't know. I have been watching for this and I have seen no evidence thus far.
Q: What about Pat Robertson?
Mumford: Yes, he is very much in bed with them. That's correct.
Q: I would suggest that the freethought community have some ...
Mumford: Obviously I agree with this position.
Q: There are other population organizations beyond Zero Population Growth such as Negative Population Growth ... quite a few others. Are any of them willing to take on the Catholic Church issue?
Mumford: The question is there are other population organizations such as Negative Population Growth and are they willing to take this on. Thus far no. I shouldn't say that. There are some that are stepping forward. Carrying Capacity Network has stepped forward, and in their recent compendium, 3500 page compendium, they have pulled about 15 pages out of my latest book with the hardest hitting material in that book. Let me go to one other population organization I would like to talk about and that is the organization NARAL, National Abortion Rights Action League. When NARAL was founded by Lawrence Lader and others, they were attacking the Catholic Church constantly because they recognized that the Catholic Church was overwhelmingly their number one opponent. The organization existed for five years and then there was a national meeting where a vote was taken from the board of directors and the leadership of the organization and there was a coup at that meeting nd Lawrence Lader and his group were thrown out and another group took over which adopted a policy which said there will be no attacks on the Catholic Church by NARAL. Kate Michaelman was chosen to be the Executive Director at that point. There had been no attacks on the Catholic Church by NARAL and the Catholic Church is the number one opponent of NARAL.
I want to speak to the Population Institute in particular because Warner Fornos has stepped forward and you will see on the back of the cover of this book a comment from Warner Fornos endorsing this book. It took a lot of guts for him to step forward because he really is the first of the big population organizations to endorse my work.
Q: We have an embassador to the Vatican. Is there any way we can eliminate that?
Mumford: The question is we now have an embassador to the Vatican. Is there any way to eliminate that position. Yes, there is, simply by having a President with enough courage to say this is not right, and not appointing another embassador. The question was asked in the back of the room what about the Mormon Church, do they have any influence. The Mormon Church is very much opposed to population growth control and they tend to want to have very large families. However, the Mormons outside of the state of Utah do not have a political organization comparable to that of the Catholic Church, and I think that they serve as soldiers within the Catholic opposition but do not have as a Church an organized opposition like we see from the Catholic Church.
Q: ... to take this opportunity to bring up something you once discussed about the federal policy which prevents ... tubal ligation from getting it and waiting for 30 days and it's not been looked at to see what impact that has. We all know ... waiting periods for abortion ... on Medicaid they've got to wait 30 days once they decide they want to have a tubal ligation.
Mumford: Even back in the 70's under Joseph Califano there were policies adopted by the government which made getting family planning services difficult. One of those was a 30 day waiting period which is the question this gentleman is asking. Is this 30 day waiting policy still in effect? It is in effect. Since 1975 there has been a continuous addition of obstacles to make it difficult to deliver family planning and abortion services in this country. It's this gradual eating away that the Catholic Church has succeeded at.
Q: I want to know if you can tell me if there is a contradiction. Just recently they passed the Family Planning Bill to allow early dispensation of funds for international family planning. Yet at the same time there is a movement in Congress to change its entire direction, start to obviously whittle away Roe v Wade by starting with the late-term abortion bill. Now is the Catholic Church behind one of these? If it is why do they go on the one hand to give international family planning funds and ... ?
Mumford: To repeat the question, there seems to be a conflict in Congress. Recently there was a bill passed that would allow President Clinton to release family planning funds that otherwise would have been held until July 1, if I remember, right? When this bill was adopted there was a provision that if the President could establish that this was causing difficulties in providing services around the world, Congress could revoke that provision, that all funds be held until July 1 until this year. Congress took a vote on this and it narrowly passed. As you know, it only passed by less than 10 votes, if I remember right. The Catholic Church's position on this: they were opposed to the passage of a bill releasing those funds. The Church is in favor of the rewriting of the law which will result in the whittling away of the usefulness at least of these family planning funds and of global funds as well. So, the church was not in favor of releasing the funds July 1. They were posted. They did not have power to put it off. They were very close, only 10 votes away, and I can assure they were behind the initiative to rewrite this law to make it more difficult to provide these services.
Q: I just wanted to comment that the Senate has not passed that legislation. It's only passed Congress. So ....
Mumford: Now, to tell you to be honest, I was unaware of this. I thought the senate .. That's right, it will come right after the Easter recess, the vote.
Q: I would like to point out that when you started you said there were 60 million Catholics in this country and that by and large American Catholics have the same attitudes toward population control as most other Americans. You left out the fact that many Catholic theologians dispute infallibility--it is not a closed issue. Also, many of the lower clergy are opposed to the official Vatican position. So I'm upset when you say the Catholic Church in that it means all the people in there. I'm not the least bit upset when you say the Vatican, which is quite different than American Catholics. ... One of the reasons for not attacking them is because of them ... are our allies.
Mumford: This could be defined. If care is taken to define what you are attacking we can deal with this problem. It is a problem. But I would like to say that on the infallibility thing as far as the Vatican is concerned it is a closed issue and Hans Kung today can no longer teach in Catholic Universities. He has been stripped of his teaching authority because he insisted on continuing to attack the infallibility principle. So, as far as the Church is concerned, as far as the Vatican is concerned, this issue is decided.
Mitchell Modisett: Thank you very much Dr. Mumford.
The Vatican's Role in the World Population Crisis: The Untold Story
Stephen D. Mumford, PhD
Center for Research on Population and Security
P.O. Box 13067
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
919-933-7491