The century of older persons

It is ironic that the United Nations has named 1999 the International Year of Older Persons. U.N. Population Fund efforts around the world threaten to make the entire 21st century a “century of older persons.”

Five years ago in Cairo, the United Nations adopted a plan to slow world population, purportedly to aid development. This summer, in a process that will culminate in a conference dubbed “Cairo+5,” U.N. delegates will meet to try again to assess how the plan should continue to be implemented. So far, in extensive committee meetings in The Hague, Netherlands, in February and New York in March, delegates have failed to come to agreement.

The problems bogging them down are familiar to Register readers: the newly created “sexual rights” of adolescents and “reproductive rights” of women — promoted by U.S., Canadian and Western European delegates — and the abortion and sterilization that would be required of Third World countries if they wish to receive humanitarian aid.

The best reason to be against such policies is respect for the people of the Third World, born and unborn — respect for their safety, their cultural integrity and their moral autonomy.

But another reason is numbers. The population of many countries is edging dangerously close to a demographic cliff, as Bishop James McHugh has pointed out. Rockville Centre's coadjutor bishop, who represents the Holy See at the Cairo+5 meetings, points to statistics suggesting that by 2050 the number of people added to the world's population each year will be cut nearly in half — from today's 81 million to 41 million per year.

The consequences are alarming: In many countries, increasingly smaller labor forces will provide fewer financial resources for a growing population of seniors.

In Japan, the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, birthrates are already below replacement level with fewer than two children per family — and in some places fewer than one child per family.

Now, Third World nations are beginning to match these low birthrates.

In mid-May, the U.N. Population Fund urged Pakistan to prepare for a future with more people who are older and needing special care, and with fewer young people contributing to economic growth.

The notice ought to have included an apology. The Population Fund has been a prime exporter of first-world population myths to Third World nations such as Pakistan.

In Central America, the U.N. Development Fund and the U.N. Population Fund see an opportunity to promote more of the same birth-reducing “aid.” In recent Stockholm meetings, plans were under way to make world monetary and debt-relief aid to hurricane-ravaged areas dependent on their adoption of abortion and sterilization programs, the World Life League reported.

It quoted one official who said of Central American people: “The striking thing is the size of their families. Those are the roots that cause the problems and they are still there.”

The quote is characteristic of a dangerous mindset in richer nations regarding Third World peoples. The suggestion that fewer people in the Caribbean would make for less need for humanitarian aid smacks of racism and ignores the fact that large families sustain cultures — especially in the wake of a disaster such as last autumn's Hurricane Mitch. Eliminating these large families would leave an aging population stranded in a devastated economy with no means of support.

The U.S. Senate is now considering Resolution 100 — a measure that was overwhelming adopted by the House — which would instruct U.S. delegates to Cairo+5 to reject the worse excesses in the U.N. population plan.

This solid and well-crafted language is supported by pro-lifers and designed to be difficult for opponents to reject. Each state's U.S. senators ought to be cosponsors of the bill, and to vote for it when it comes to the floor.

To find out where your senators stand, call (202) 224-3121 and ask for their offices by name.

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God Unwelcome

Mementos left to honor victims of the Columbine High School massacre covered nearly four acres of Clement Park in Littleton, Colo., adjacent to the school.

Appropriately, many of the mementos bore witness to the faith of the victims — several of whom were members of a Christian prayer group and Bible-reading circle that met in the library where the shootings took place.

Now, the temporary memorials have been taken away and the agency managing Clement Park wants to build a more permanent monument there, reports the Family Research Council. But though there is strong support in the Littleton community for a memorial that includes Christian symbols and biblical references, park managers fear that any permanent “religious” fixture would draw a lawsuit.

One Colorado activist with the Freedom from Religion Foundation has already objected. The Family Research Council quotes his worry that non-Christians would “feel unwelcome” at such a park.

C.S. Lewis once remarked that societies are most zealous in opposing the sins they are least guilty of, while they excuse the evils that plague them the most. The evil excused today is society's disrespect for religion and for the moral codes that accompany it. The Columbine massacre is itself a sign of where this disrespect is bound to lead.

The time has come to encourage religious expression in the public square, not to zealously root it out.