(Part 8)
We have seen that a widespread culture of materialism and consumerism is a counterforce in the efforts of the developed countries to increase the average fertility rate. The moment individuals get used to considering the cost of having children in terms of a Lexus car, an expensive apartment, a world tour or some other luxury item they have to forego, it would be very difficult to convince married couples to have two or more children or even to get married at all.
Getting married and having children cannot be reduced to a cost-benefit decision based on purely materialistic goods and human pleasures. For example, local governments in China today are cold-calling married women to ask about their plans to have babies and are handing out cash to parents to encourage them to have more than one child. Universities have been asked to introduce so-called love courses for single students. These efforts are all doomed to fail. Decisions about children are fundamentally human ones that necessarily involve the spiritual and moral dimensions of man.
Countries that are desperately trying to reverse the decline in their respective populations and the corollary rapid ageing of the same must turn to a non-materialist or spiritual interpretation of the role of marriage, the family and children in society.
Here, I present the Catholic view of marriage, the family, and children, a world view that includes a belief in God as the Creator of the universe and a Law giver who has issued very concrete decrees about marriage and everything related to this sacred institution. This Catholic view is shared by millions of Muslims and Jews because they are contained in the divine revelations found in the Old Testament which is accepted by the two other religions. Those from other faiths or of no religion alone can arrive at some of these truths by the light of reason alone, albeit with some difficulty.
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we read in Number 2331 that “God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image…, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the responsibility of love and communion… God created man in his own image… male and female he created them; He blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’; When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.”
St. John Paul II elaborated on these points of the Catechism in his famous Apostolic Exhortation entitled “The Family in the Modern World.” He emphasized that the human person was created out of love, and each is called to love within his or her vocation. Marriage and family life are special opportunities to live the vocation of love. The love between husband and wife mirrors the love between Christ and his Church — that is, this love is sacrificial and life-giving. A person’s freedom, far from being restricted by this fidelity, is secured against every form of subjectivism or relativism and is made a sharer in creative Wisdom. Married life is enriched and becomes a family with gift of children. It is clear from these teachings of the Catholic Church that marriage, and the marital act must be open to the possibility of children coming from this union of love. That fact that “love is sacrificial and life-giving” means that married couples must be ready to suffer the discomforts, inconveniences, privations, etc. that come with having children. Only when the majority of a population accept this philosophical (and theological) truth will efforts to arrest the decline in the fertility rate and the rapid ageing of the population succeed.
St. John Paul II elaborates further that the family is more than an economic, biological, and sociological entity. As mentioned repeatedly in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the family is part of God’s plan for creation and salvation. It is within the family that the human person comes to be whom he or she is and comes to know the living God. Love within the family reveals in a special way the unbounded love of God for humanity. Family love involves four general callings: forming a community of persons; sharing a love which serves life; participating in the development of society; and sharing in the life and mission of the Church in the case of baptized Christians. The family, likewise, helps to morally renew the social order. To bear witness to the inestimable value of the indissolubility and fidelity of marriage is one of the most precious and most urgent tasks of Christian couples in our time. Fortunately, in the Philippines there are a good number of apostolic initiatives of married couples who are committed to these urgent tasks, such as the Couples for Christ, Marriage Encounter, Regnum Christi, Focolare, Education for the Upbringing of Children (Educhild), Parents for Education Foundation (Paref), and many others.
In a summary of the detailed ways of promoting an increase in the fertility rate, the following very concrete measures are suggested to concerned married couples, who should always be at the forefront in efforts of “serving life”: (cf. familylife@diolc.org)
• Spouses are to give themselves totally to each other in the conjugal act by honoring God’s inseparable union of love and life. The love between husband and wife must be fully human, exclusive, and open to new life.
• Serving life includes recognition that contraception and natural methods of family planning are very different. Natural methods invite spouses into dialogue, reciprocal respect, shared responsibility, and mutual self-control.
• Spouses are called to be generous to life.
• Husbands and wives are the first and foremost educators of their children. Parents must recognize that they are primarily responsible for the upbringing of their children. Their role is so decisive that scarcely anything (not even the best teachers, except in the few situations when, with God’s grace, teachers or other persons, for example, decide to adopt orphans or abandoned children) can compensate for their failure in it. This is the mission of the two Philippine NGOs mentioned above, i.e., Educhild and Paref.
• Parents are to create a family atmosphere that is animated with love and reverence for God and others.
• Parents are to teach their children to live a simple lifestyle and recognize that material goods are not as important as people. From a very early age, children must realize the fact that in giving birth to them, their parents had to deprive themselves of many material comforts and luxuries.
• It is the parents’ privilege and duty to share the details of sexuality education with their children in such a way that sex (and their sexuality: womanhood and manhood) is viewed as an enrichment of the whole person and an opportunity to give oneself in the gift of love.
• Parents are to work cooperatively with private and public institutions, maintaining cordial and active relationships with teachers and school authorities. Those in society who are in charge of schools must never forget that the parents have been appointed by God Himself as the first and principal educators of their children and that their right is completely inalienable.
• Serving life also includes caring for those outside the immediate family who are society’s outcasts. Also, from a very early age, children must learn from the example of their parents to care for the poor, the sick, and the abandoned.
It would be futile for public authorities in those countries that are going “extinct,” to use the expression of Elon Musk, to sponsor or promote all sorts of programs to arrest the decline in population without having resort to some religious or spiritual motives. Materialistic or consumerist motivations, as have already been tried in countries like Singapore, South Korea, and Japan (and are being desperately resorted to by Chinese authorities today), will not work. I suggest that these governments make as required reading for their public officials the Apostolic Exhortation of St. John Paul II so that they can be inspired to look for deeper human motivations based on religious or spiritual convictions that are the only ones that can inspire married couples to make the necessary sacrifices to “serve life.”
It may also help for the public authorities to seek some assistance from those Catholics in their respective populations who continue to be faithful to the Teaching Authority of the Church and have not been influenced by the so-called “woke” culture that promotes abortion, same-sex marriage, and other practices that are contrary to “service to life.”
(To be continued.)
Bernardo M. Villegas has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, is professor emeritus at the University of Asia and the Pacific, and a visiting professor at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. He was a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission.
bernardo.villegas@uap.asia
