VIDEO: ‘Demographic Winter’

My wife and I have six children, which is three times the national average in the U.S. People often ask, “Are you Catholic?” No, we’re proudly Protestant. Yet one cannot ignore the fact that, almost alone among major Christian denominations, the Catholic Church has a well-developed pro-life, pro-family doctrine as part of its basic belief system. It is lamentable that Protestants — even conservative denominations — have not followed suit, insofar as I think that the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, for example, has proven quite literally prophetic in its forecast of the social consequences of what has been called the Contraceptive Culture. (See “The Pill at 50: Unhappy Un-Birthday.”)

One obviously need not be a Catholic to see this, nor even a Christian, because every man may examine the facts for himself. And strangely, most people remain utterly unaware of the dire results of a collapsing birth rate. If you’ve read Mark Steyn’s America Alone or Pat Buchanan’s The Death of the West, you know what I’m talking about. But those are political books by conservatives, and the arguments made by Steyn and Buchanan are apt to be rejected by those who aren’t interested in politics, or who don’t share the conservative views of the authors. In the same way, religious arguments about sexual matters are likely to be rejected by people who aren’t religious.

Therefore, it was very encouraging when an e-mailer sent me a link to this video hosted at a Catholic site, Gloria.TV, of the 2008 documentary Demographic Winter. It’s 54 minutes long, but it’s well worth watching.

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The important thing to understand is that there are no inexorable trends in human affairs that we are powerless to resist. Men make trends, and not the other way around. Change begins with one person — and that person is you. Do not ask what government can do. Do not ask what your neighbor or your church can do. Instead ask yourself, “What can I do?” And whatever that is, do it.

Don’t look at me. I’ve got six kids — certainly I’m part of the solution, not part of the problem.