Leo XIII introducing the Catholic Social Thought in 1890 said, "We must look at the world as it really exists, then we must look to God for the solution to its problems." It seems to me he was saying you cannot be a good bishop or priest or religious or good Catholic layman unless you KNOW the world you're living in because although the basic moral law does not change the moral tasks change in every age. It's not enough just to know your faith. Your must know the world, the context, the culture in which you are living.

We're now living in a country where if one traces the number of abortions, it's either between 9 or 12 million in this country.

This is a big subject. Starting with the U.S. You may not know it but you're living in a dying country. Demographers say we need 2.1 or 2.2 children to have a reproductive birthrate. I believe it's 2.2.

In this country for the past 25 years despite immigrants and their babies who are upholding our birthrate, we have not reproduced ourselves. Right now the average American completed family size is less than 2.1 child. We are a dying country. In the US over 65% of married couples at 45 years of age according to our U.S. Census have been sterilized, the fastest growing means of birth control in the world.

In Canada they are worse off. In that rich, wealthy, cold, icy country with no markets for their wheat and meat, they have 1.8 children per family. Remember it takes 2.1.

Strangely in Catholic Quebec the 7-8 million French-speaking Catholics have 1.4 children, fast dying out. Forgetting that the French language and culture walks on two legs. So if you put a fence around the western and eastern coasts and allowed no immigrants, given our birthrates we would fast dye out.

Over 1 million immigrants come to the U.S. every year. 9 of 10 are Spanish-speaking so that in 30 – 40 years the Catholic Church in the U.S. will be Spanish speaking. You might not like immigrants, but you better for the future of your country. You might not like the Hispanics or the immigrants but they are going to be the future of the Catholic Church in the U.S. undoubtedly.

Now Europe: Most people in Europe speak German. There are 45 countries in East and West Europe. Only 2 are reproductive, little Albania where the Muslims average a completed family size of 2.8 children. The 300,000 Catholics on the island of Malta have 2.4. All other countries in Europe are dying out because of contraception, sterilization and abortion.

The overall overage birthrate in Europe, East and West, is less than 1.4 children. And would you believe the lowest birthrate in the Western world is Italy where they have less than 1.2 children, one child per family below reproduction. And the lowest birthrate in all the world is in Bologna where the average completed family is 8/10ths child. We used to think that the Spanish were Catholics but the 35,000,000 Spanish have 77,000 abortions a year. And in Spain the completed family size is less than1.3 children.

The Germans are finished, demographers say. And have said this for several decades already. While the 82,000,000 Germans have some 400,000 abortions every year. The average German family has about 1.2 children. Even the Irish are in a bad way. The average completed family size in Ireland is 1.9 children. For the first time in its history, the major seminary in Dublin has no incoming seminarians. 5-6,000 girls go to England to have their babies killed every year.

In Ireland currently of priests retiring and dying, that number is twice the number of priests being ordained in so-called "Catholic" Ireland. And so the Irish are no longer the ambassadors of the faith throughout the world. That honor now belongs to the Filipinos where the birthrate is rather healthy, where vocations are still very many, and so you can find the Filipinos all over the world, even in Arabic countries.

So Europe is finished. It is becominig a gigantic vacuum. In 14 countries in the world, mostly in Europe, have more coffins than cradles. And when you have more coffins than cradles you are in serious trouble because babies are the only future a nation has, babies are the only future the Church has, babies are the only future the married couple has. What's left of your marriage in your old age but your children who come to you from all parts of the country where they come to you on your deathbed and hopefully join you for all eternity.

No babies - no future

We have Mass every day at our office in Front Royal and afterwards one day, was talking to a nice, young man, married of course, had three cute girls, and an obviously pregnant wife and in the course of the conversation, he reminded me that there will be no social security in the future.

"One of these will take me in." "They will all take you in if you raise them properly, like it seems you are doing."

But it is a fact: social security is kaput. Medicare is in trouble. Why? Because many are feeding on it, but not contributing because the number of babies born has been so low for so long.

Now what happens when you have a vaccuum?

Nature doesn't tolerate such, not even a human vacuum, so to say. There are about 15 – 18,000,000 Moslems in Western Europe. And you know from history that the Moslems have never quite gotten along with Christians. And what they couldn't do by war through the centuries to get into Christian, Catholic Europe, they are now doing by having babies because he who has babies has a future, said a retired demographer in France, Alfred Soley.

We're living on other people's babies in the U.S. and in Europe they don't have enough of those to survive.

Now in France for example, where the birthrate is 1.8 children, they have 4,000,000 Moslems. They have lots of children. All over the world the Islamics are having lots of children and according to the Encyclopedia of Religions by the year 2000 there will be more Moslems in the world than Catholics for the first time in history. That is not good news.

So in Europe the Church is in a very bad way, as the Pope told a meeting of all bishops in Europe in 1987, "Europe is dying. Do something." What do you do when you have a dying birthrate? There is no modern nation that I know of that was able to restore its birthrate, no matter how many family allowances they make.

East Germany tried that and gave all kinds of allowances. The birthrate went up slightly, then fell. Sweden did the same thing. It went down even though it offered fantastic benefits for families with children. So today the Swedish are dying like the rest of Europe.

And strange things are happening in this modern world. In Europe many live together without the benefit of marriage. In England the government is so desperate about pre-marital pregnancies with all the costs to welfare, that they now give the Pill to 11-year-old girls. In England it's rather common for men to own a flat, an apartment, invite in their girlfriends, when they tire of her they throw her out and get another one.

I was astonished when I was in Ireland the last time, their telling me this is now true of Ireland, where the girls often own the flat and invite their boy in and if they don't measure up, out they go.

So I guess I'm anticipating my final talk – the Sixth Commandment is not very much observed in the Western world.

Let me take you behing the Crumpled Curtain. I was in Poland when Communism was still alive – 1979-80.

Let me back up and remind you that in 1919 Lenin gave the Russians abortion on demand and divorce on demand. Why? He wanted to shut out Christianity overnight and the best way to do that is to attack the families, like all dictators do.

In 1937 the birthrate had so collapsed (that's universal when it comes to legalizing abortion) and there was so much venereal disease raising medical costs that they forbade abortion but the genie was out of the bottle. How to get it back in? The Russians never succeeded despite all kinds of laws they passed, the family allowances they gave, the hero medals they gave to mothers who had 3 or 4 children – nothing really helped.

In 1951 or 2 I forget the exact date, after the war in which the Russians lost 20,000,000 – they really bled, and mostly civilians – remember, in 1951 or 52, the law forbade abortion more or less, exceptions – yes. But it was so out-of-control and there were so many medical problems, that the Russian Communists thought they would have more to gain by allowing it once more, while discouraging it at the same time, with higher family allowances, etc. It never succeeded. But that opened up abortion in all the other common-turn (sounds like – maybe he means Communist) governments and the Polish relaxed their law in 1955.

When I was in Poland in 1980 I remember a bishop a telling me, hard to believe, that there were at one time 500,000 abortions in the most Catholic country in the world – Poland. Once that law goes down all hell breaks lose.

So now in all those countries, they are not reproducing themselves, the future is very bleak and even in Poland (I still think they are the most Catholic country in the world, excluding Africa – there are some wonderful segments of Catholicism there) they are not reproducing themselves. The law allows abortion on exception but when you have Communism and abortion has been a means of birth control for so long, it is very, very hard to recover.

It always reminds me of the wisdom of the ages. Abortion was condemned l-o-n-g before Christ in the major law codes we know. And, of course, 400 years before Christ by the Father of Modern Medicine, a Greek doctor, Hippocrates by name, who gave his name to a famous oath, The Hippocratic Oath, which doctors took in the civilized world for 22 centuries, at least, in which they condemned abortion and euthanasia. And now countries give abortion on demand and doctors don't have to take the Hippocratic Oath.

Let me take you to Japan. In 1948, thanks to Planned Parenthood and the international abortion apparatus, they work all over the world, they succeeded in having the abortion law attached to an omnibus bill. They call it the Eugenics Protection Act. An Omnibus Bill is a series of bills, usually not much discussed, usually at the end of a session and it sounds very good and most members thought they were voting only for abortion for defective children, for hard, hard cases. But it was in fact abortion on demand. And the Japanese, so nice, most literate nation on earth, they killed nothing less than 65,000,000 babies since 1948. They still have well over 1,000,000 abortions today in a nation of 123,000,000 people, the fastest aging nation on earth, with a birthrate of less than 1.4, actually 1.39th. And the government is desperate because the handwriting is on the wall.

And they're not so lucky as the United States, England and other countries who can bring in foreigners who although English is foreign, they can learn it quickly, and you integrate them into the educational system and the work. But the Japanese can't do that because the language is so difficult, takes you years to learn it. So they are in a very bad way economically and demographically.

CHINA: I went there in 1979 and 1980. Some of my friends asked why I would want to go to China? It's dangerous. I said, "why should I be afraid? After all, my name is ‘Marx.'" So I passed right through Customs and got a Guide. He was a sociologist I could tell from the kind of questions he asked. So I saw a lot of China.

They had just begun the one-child policy and one of the saddest sights I saw in China was a grandfather and a grandmother oggling the one grandchild they're ever going to have. And in China, as in most of Asia, for generations and many years, the social security was the oldest boy who had to take care of the family.

And if you can only have one child, what are you going to have? A boy. What if it's a girl the mother is carrying. Well, then you abort it. If it's born then you throw it away or choke it. When I was in China good people told me there were at least 500,000 female infanticides in that country every year. They even told me how they choke them with uncooked rice kernels .

Steve Mosher blew the whistle in 1979 or 80 or later when he was doing research at Stanford. He lost his doctorate because he exposed to the world this horrendous one-child policy. He tells me now there are between 30 and 40,000,000 more boys than girls in China. And can get very graphic in describing the future mess for China which, by the way, is not reproducing itself.

INDIA: I've been there 4 or 5 times and the last time I was there, pro-lifers told me there was at least one surgical abortion for every live birth. Which would mean there are 15-16,000,000 million abortions in India every year. Now let me burn something into your memory you will never forget: a lot of people don't know it. When we talk about abortion today, you must remember the surgical abortion is one of very many and is by no means all of them. For example, in the US, the latest figure is between 1.2 million per year, or 3-4,000 every day.

Well, in other words, in less than one year, our doctors kill more Americans by abortion than died in all the wars we Americans have fought in our 217 years of history.

Dr. Bogomir Kuhar estimates there are between 9-12,000,000 abortions in this country. 10-12,000,000 women still use the Pill and the Pill is abortifacient. There is no doubt about it. There is a great book from Australia done by a pharmacist, on precisely that topic – that ALL Pills abort at some time.

Now you have 1,000,000 women on Norplant, those 5-6 rods under the arm which feed the content of the Pill into the female system 24-hours a day. We have IUD is an abortifacient. And we don't know how many have the injective DepoProvera. They are most certainly aborting. Then there is the new Metrotraxate, and the big one now pushed all over the world is the "Morning After" Pill, so popular on university campuses where boy and girl have intercourse on a Saturday, "unprotected" as they say, and then on Monday morning they go to the health clinice to get this "morning after" pill and if pregnant, she will most certainly abort.

So you see, when you talk about abortion to people make it absolutely clear they understand there are very many more abortions than the surgical ones. And furthermore, the whole thrust of research all over the world on means of birth control, is chemical. A mild pill which, if she gets pregnant, the wall of the uterus would reject without too many medical health complications.

That's the future of abortion. The butchery of abortion we know today will come to an end, except for the few who can't make up their minds.

Let's go to AFRICA. I was speaking to 350 seminarians in Poland in 1990, all in black cassocks, black suits, no shorts, you know, the old-time religion. I though I won't see this again very soon. So about six weeks later I was in Nigeria on the first round. I spoke to 480 major seminarians, all in white cassocks, black hands, faces. What a sight! 480 seminarians. These were theologians, carefully sifted. And right now in Nigeria, the largest Black country in the world with 110,000,000 – they have eight major seminaries, five of them have more than 500 seminarians. And I was talking to the archbishop of Abjua, the Washington, D.C. of Nigeria, and mentioned this to him and he said, "Those are only the secular seminaries. There are many religious seminaries who have that many seminarians. They have about 50 minor seminaries in Nigeria and a very wonderful program because in Africa the priests still have a high status, you see, and if you want to rise in society you become a priest. If you want an education, you go to a seminary. If a boy comes with a high school education, a Nigerian, to a minor seminary – the first thing they do is take off a year to study Christianity, Catholicism.

Then he takes three years of philosophy. After that, he makes a year of spirituality, as a kind of novitiate. Then he takes up his four years of theology, but after two years, he will be sent to some good pastor to work for a year to make sure he knows what he is doing or will be doing in the future. Then he comes back to complete his seminary. The Nigerian priests are extremely well educated. Very few leave and more and more are coming to this country.

While Africa has 51 countries, only 5 are down thanks to Western pressures. Africa is the cleanest continent when it comes to abortion. But they are going to have it because what has now killed, disimated the West, is now poured in to Africa by the West – contraception, abortifacients, raw, biological physical sex education. It gets the kids away from the parents and if you can get them to be sexually active, you reduce the birthrate, you sell a lot of pills, etc., etc.

So that's the tragedy in Africa where also, however, I must tell you the birthrates too are falling. But to me it seems humanly speaking, the future of the Church is in Africa where they have lots of vocations, also lots of nuns, and theologically very, very good climate, although the crud is moving in. We're trying to prevent all that with certain publications, etc.

But Africa, by the way, is the second largest continent in the world. Lots don't know that. And it's enormously well-endowed. In Nigeria they told me that that country, properly cultivated, could feed the whole of Africa.

In the lower one-third of Africa you have the world's essential metals – 90%. And of course the most strategic point in the world is the tip of South Africa, around which all tankers must go because they're too fat to get through the Suez Canal. That's why the Communists want South Africa – to control that point.

Africa is very interesting and the Church is flourishing. And one reason the Pope goes there often is that he knows that it is true and while I think of it, the Pope condemned contraception 30 times in 10 days in these countries. He's totally convinced that contraception is the root evil.

In 1971 or 72, I went to every country in Latin America because I was convinced that abortion was coming there. And indeed it has. A great surprise to me in Latin America was the number of illegal abortions. They are many! They are started by midwives who tell the girl if you are still bleeding tomorrow morning, get yourself to a hospital. By the time she gets there, the doctor has to deliver the dead baby, and often do a hysterectomy. A very common thing in Latin America. So the abortionists now say, ‘let's have nice, clean abortion. Then we won't have all these injuries from illegal abortion.' Well, the fact is, legalize abortion and you have an enormous increase of ALL abortions and the reduction of the birthrate, etc.

There are 21 countries in Latin America. Urguay relaxed their law very early, for exceptions. And it's a typical country after so doing there are 3,500,000 people there and they have a non-reproductive birthrate and the propaganda for abortion is all going to Latin America.

First it's contraception. They never talk about abortion at first because they know that:

Once you have contraception you will always get abortion. There is no exception!

Brazil is about to go down. They just relaxed the law on abortion and sterilization. And BENFAM estimates that 40% of married and co-habitating women have been sterilized in Latin America, mostly with American and Western tax money. The birthrate of 5 or 6 children 25 years ago, is now down to 2.9 in Brazil.

In Argentina in 1974 they told me there were at least 300,000 abortions illegal. The birthrate was not reproductive in this wealthy huge, beautiful country. And so in Latin America they will almost certainly have the same situation you have in the Western world. Given all the money from foundations, governments and the lack of priests, vocations, and so on.

So poor Latin America. The only Catholic continent on earth and now recovering fast economically but birthrates fiercely falling.

MEXICO: The Mexicans for the last 25 years have had brutal sex education and propaganda for birth control I was astonished a few months ago, someone sent me a memo from the health department. The Mexico National Population Council, the most aggressive official organization promoting birth control, admitted last week that the country would become a nation of elders if changes are not introduced in official population policy.

That policy was in government hospitals in Mexico they would sterilize women without their knowing it. Or they would talk to her during delivery and say if you don't want to go through this again, we can fix it right now. Or they would put in IUDs. The woman not knowing it. It was absolutely brutal, inhuman. Now the birthrate has fallen and they say that they are now urging every couple to have at least three children. Because the birthrate, while 5- 6 children 25 years ago, is now down to 2.9 and falling so the future looks very bleak.

The National Population Council recently issued a report warning that the elderly population in Mexico will reach 20,000,000 by the year 2000 while the proportion of children and youth will diminish dramatically. According to the report, if the current population dynamics are kept unchanged in the next 15 years, the total population will increase 22% while the population older than 60 will increase 73%, getting fast ‘top-heavy.' Too few working to support the nation.

Well, let me say something about the whole population situation worldwide. You hear all the time about population explosion. There are too many people. Well, since 1971 the percentage growth of mankind has been going down, down, down. Today between 50 and 65 nations are dying because of low birthrates. In 1985, the average American family in the world had 4.5 children. Today it is 2.9. There are some fantastic figures in Moslem countries where there has been enormous pressure for birth control from the Western world. The birthrate in Bangladesh, for example, since 1965, has been halved. They had 6.5 children and now have less than 3.

So that the world population is fast falling to a point where even the New York Times is noticing it in an interesting article two weeks ago. Four months ago there was a semi-secret meeting in the United Nations to address this new problem of dying nations. But what they don't say is that they created it. They spread contraception and abortion all over the world.

So the future problem will NOT BE overpopulation. It will be underpopulation. And it will be a very, very serious problem because even in this country, don't count on social security or medicare. It will be severely rationed. So that if you have no money in your old age, you will get very poor medical service. What impresses me about all this is the Church is right and the world is wrong. I have been in 91 countries. I have talked to more pro-lifers than anybody in the world, I'm sure and I have asked all kinds of people in all kinds of countries, "You show me a country with nice, clean birth control and a good, viable birthrate and flourishing family life." THERE IS NONE! No one has been able to point such out to me.

Once you start with contraception, you always get abortion.

In 1979 I met the Pope who had just returned from the U.S. where he roundly condemned contraception in Chicago, begged the bishops to promote NFP, etc. I told him I'd been in 48 countries and once there is contraception, you always get abortion. If parents contracept, teens fornicate more. Once there is widespread contraception, there is ever more venereal disease, ever more sterile women, dry up the adoption services, you prostitute the medical and legal professions, and of course, if you can kill before birth, why can't you kill after birth!

He finally told me I must bring this pro-life message all over the world.

Before Vatican II when they started talking about contraception, the Pope got his best theologians together in Poland to discuss the morality of contraception and the consequences of allowing contraception.

They came to the conclusion that once you allow contraception, you cannot hold the line of sexual morality. This before Vatican II. And that's what I find all over the world.

What I find so impressive is Church documents again and again that show the Church is right and the world is very wrong indeed.

What do we need to do? It's very obvious. We must become Catholic once more. In this country you can bet that well over 70% of Catholics fertile and married are contracepting or are sterilized, using abortifacients. Keep in mind, when it comes to contraception all that is left is the condom, withdrawal, the diaphram, very little used and some forms of spermicides. That's contraception.

All other means of birth control are abortifacient.

That's what the priests should be saying from the pulpits. I preached in 800 parishes and tell it like it is. I go to the back to get the flak and I'm told I'm the first priest to talk about contraception from the pulpit. That's the problem.

Natural Family Planning works. I've been involved from early on and I think I know more couples who practice it. The happiest couples I know are those who follow the rules. The wife doesn't get used. They solve their problems together. They are surprised once in a while, that happens. It happens with all birth control.

We must get back to being Catholic. But most in the last generation or two have never learned their Faith. So, it's great to be a Catholic if you know your faith because it's the only thing that works. We have the same job the early Christians had. In the ancient world sex was fun and games. Contraception goes back 1600 years before Christ in Egypt, we have evidence of that.

And the first non-Biblical Christian document, the Didache, about the year 70 ad, condemned abortion. It was very common in the ancient world. When you play with sex, you get pregnant, and what did the pagans do – kill it.

That's where we are today – in a new paganism, in a new relative morality, if you can call it that, and we get the same job – it's going to be harder because of massive communications, the money is against us, the government, a lot of bishops – in the sense they never alk about contraception, sterilization. What I can't understand the US Census says over 60% of couples are sterilized at 45, but no one talks about it. It's the fastest growing means of birth control in this country.

Boy for you, girl for me and heaven help us from having three.

Priests can pray every Sunday for women tempted by abortion, talk about all those who use abortifacient pills, who have been sterilized. Why not? Educate them. Use every opportunity.

One reason the Pope condemns contraception in every country, except Japan where he was only 16 hours and he talked about the atomic threat. In every country he has condemned contraception. He is convinced the Church is right.

And I am convinced – not because the Church says so – I'm a sociologist – I have seen the mess. You allow contraception, and I'll tell you what will happen.

Again, we must get back to the old-time religion, teach it, practice it.

G. K. Chesterton said if there is one thing you don't have to prove in the Catholic Church teaching is the fact of original sin. It is so obvious if you look at the stupid things human beings do.

If you have no chastity in a society, all kinds of things go wrong. As an ancient man said, "God always forgives, man sometimes, nature NEVER!"

There are 8,000,000 single-parent families in the US. It costs the taxpayer $15 billion a year. Single-parent families is the bane throughout the West. Why? No morality. There are 30 million Americans with Herpes. One out of every 5 Americans over 12 has Herpes.

Over 4,000,000 couples live together without the benefit of marriage. 4 of 10 marriages ultimately fail. One-half of births are out of wedlock. We have infertility problems like never before. 15% of couples cannot get pregnant. When I was ordained in 1947, the figure was 8%. Why? VD, preceding abortion, use of contraception, etc.

In this country also we have the sterilization plague, a non-reproductive birthrate.

The vocation crisis is a sex problem. Why? Because in all past years priests, nuns, religious have come from large families.

The adoption services are dried up so there are 2 – 4 million families who would love to adopt babies but cannot find them because we kill them. Or because 90% of teenagers keep their babies – a new phenomenon.