1Now concerning the things whereof you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2But for fear of fornication, let every man have his own wife: and let every woman have her own husband.... 6But I speak this by indulgence, not by commandment. 7For I would that all men were even as myself. But every one hath his proper gift from God: one after this manner, and another that. (1 Cor 7:1-7)
After two millennia, St. Paul's world is finally coming into focus, where all men are like him, at least in regards to conceiving children. As anyone paying attention knows, the global total fertility rate (TFR) is dropping like a rock. According to a study of 204 countries published in the Lancet, 76% percent will fall below population replacement rates by 2050 (estimated global TFR 1.83), 97 percent will fall below by 2100 (estimated global TFR 1.59). By 2100, only six countries will still have positive population growth.
I have pointed out elsewhere that the Catholic Faith was very successful in agrarian, subsistence-level societies, but does very badly (as do all faith systems) in technological, surplus-goods societies. While I could see that this was the case, I couldn't figure out why. However, while reading the following essay, this line jumped out. It resolved the issue:
This deep desire, by both men and women, to do meaningful and important work — not just have well-paid jobs — has a substantial negative impact on their desire to have children.
The idea that every man and woman has meaningful and important work to do, this is an ancient and foundationally Catholic idea, bound up in Genesis itself:
The gods themselves exemplified the Greco-Roman attitude. In the entire pantheon, only one god was crippled and ugly - Hephaestus/Vulcan. He was the smith, the maker of technology, the only one who got filthy dirty in his craft. His feet were on backwards and he had been cast from the heights as a child because of his extreme ugliness....
... [But] out of all the pantheons of all the gods in all the cultures of the world, I am aware of only one culture which rejected the idea that manual labor was not fit work for divinity. That would be the Hebrew faith, the faith whose God actually worked with His own hands in the clay of the earth and breathed His own life into the clay His hands had formed....
...Labor was hard, but suffering in one's work was reasonable because... well, because we are meant to imitate Christ and HE suffered in His work. He was a carpenter, He worked in wood as He had long before worked with His Father in clay.
Thus, John Paul II, in Laborem Exercens, can say:
Work is a good thing for man-a good thing for his humanity-because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfilment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes “more a human being”.
This emphasis on the divine image that is manual labor is precisely why the Catholic Faith was particularly suited to agrarian societies. But, besides emphasizing the importance of manual labor, Catholic Faith did something else no one had ever done before.
The Marriage of Intellect and Work
I have written elsewhere about the fact that intellectual superheroes are functionally non-existent in comic-book universes. Sure, some characters are described as being super-intelligent, but none of them actually display that super-intelligence. Felicity Smoak can crack codes and write programs in a time frame absolutely impossible for normal human beings, but when she is finally given physical deeds of derring-do to do, that is, when she finally becomes a classic superhero, she is immediately killed.
Ancient agrarian societies have many variations on Hercules, but, apart from Odysseus and Loki, they have very few intellectual heroes. When intellectual heroes appear, they are tricksters and cheats, their good qualities matched or outweighed by the damage they do to those around them. Remember, while Odysseus is the hero of the story, he is able to save only himself. He gets all of his companions killed.
Agrarian, subsistence-level societies value strength over intellect because agrarian societies don't expect anything to change. Great intellect is not needed. The great-grandson's life is not expected to be any different from that of his great-grandfather. Children live the professions of their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. Intellectual pursuits are the hobby of the rich, a way of virtue-signaling one's superiority to those who worked with their hands. Most of the ancient philosophers came from wealthy families.
The Catholic Faith changed this equation. Intellectual pursuits were originally just a form of wealthy virtue-signaling. With Catholicism, instead of merely virtue-signaling, the intellectual was expected to do meaningful work that directly benefited others. Catholic intellectuals did not just answer theological questions, such as the true nature(s) of the God-man, or the intricacies of how the sacraments worked. Intellectuals could also answer questions about the natural world, the world God had made with His own hands.
As a result, Catholic society was no longer bifurcated into a slave world and an intellectual world, as it had been in the pagan Greco-Roman age. Rather, the two worlds were joined together in a common task: building up the city of God. The intellectuals were now tasked with improving the lot of the wage-slave. That meant the intellectuals were duty-bound to lighten the burden of the slave, make his work easier, encourage the use of tools, investigate the physical world to assist in the work of creating a richer life for all. Monastics built labor-saving machinery so they could spend more time at the altar. This labor-saving machinery also allowed the common laborer to do the same.
Contrast this attitude with the ancients. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew about steam power and automation, but Greco-Roman intellectuals never thought to apply these advances to assist common people. Precisely because the God of the Hebrews and the Catholics was the god of slaves, a God who worked with His own hands in the clay, the Catholic Faith was originally the faith of slaves and women:
For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:27-28)
The unrecognized intellectuals within these groups finally had an outlet for their intellectual activity, a way to meld the work of the hands with the work of the mind. The celibate life became a way for a man or woman to devote him/herself to intellectual pursuits. Even the slave or the woman could do it. The slave priest or the Christian consecrated virgin could receive enough money to live on from fellow Christians while devoting themselves not just to the spiritual needs, but also the physical needs, of their fellow slaves.
This had never before been possible. In both Judaism and pagan societies, having children and family was a divine ordinance: For instance, in both Hinduism and Judaism, the priesthoods are hereditary. Pagan Rome had Vestal Virgins, but there were only ever six of them at a time. Even then, they took their vows between the ages of six and ten, and they were sworn to celibacy for thirty years. Widespread celibacy was seen as an attack on society, the loss of fertility that was created by celibacy was penalized by the community.
The First Great Divorce
Catholic celibacy, on the other hand, was celebrated. It was not restricted to a tiny priestly elite, rather, it was recommended for everyone who could handle it. Catholics deliberately and systematically destroyed family life as the highest goal, and replaced it. Celibacy became the highest goal. This was a radically new idea. However, as the historical dominance of celibate men and women in technological progress shows, the deliberate destruction of the family turned out to be beneficial not just for spiritual pursuits, but also for technological progress.
Celibacy, the release from family obligations, allowed the great majority of scientific advances made in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Right up through the Enlightenment, deacons, priests and bishops made up the majority of what we now call scientists. The celibacy that allowed intellectuals to focus entirely and exclusively on intellectual pursuits led to the massive success of those same intellectual pursuits. Because Catholic celibacy was now the highest goal in life, and because celibacy could be pursued by anyone, everyone with the capacity to be an intellectual could now become one. It is estimated that between 15 and 25% of the Medieval European population was celibate. This was possibly the largest creation of a dedicated intellectual workforce in history.
The Second Great Divorce
Clearly. Catholic celibacy promoted scientific progress. So, why did the science and faith divorce? They divorced because people began to realize that
This deep desire, by both men and women, to do meaningful and important work — not just have well-paid jobs...
did not actually require the religious aspect in order to succeed. Procreative control could be accomplished using other rationales. Thus, we should not be surprised to see the "conflict thesis", the idea that religion is opposed to science, arose precisely over the problem of procreation.
Darwinian biology directly implied "eugenics". Eugenics was a radically new attack on family life. Darwin's work implied that, not only was celibacy, or at least the refusal to procreate, a positive good, celibacy was so good that it should be imposed on people who were not biologically qualified to procreate. Religion permitted celibacy for those capable of intellectual pursuits. Science now wanted to impose celibacy on those who were not capable of intellectual pursuits. Both Catholicism and science saw themselves and their worldview as improving society, but the question of which should have the power over procreation now became the centerpiece. Because Catholicism refused to coerce celibacy, it was branded anti-scientific. Eugenics fought, and still fights, Christianity on this point.
Now, it is one of the great ironies of evolutionary theory that, apart from Darwin himself, the people who proposed survival of the fittest, and who stress the importance of eugenics don't themselves have replacement level fertility. That is, ardent evolutionists apparently don't see themselves as worthy of procreating. But, leaving this aside, we can now see why surplus-goods societies don't have replacement-level fertility.
This deep desire, by both men and women, to do meaningful and important work — not just have well-paid jobs — has a substantial negative impact on their desire to have children....
... Work is a good thing for man-a good thing for his humanity-because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfilment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes “more a human being”.
Child-Free: More Human?
Everyone wants to "become more a human being." People began to see it was not the religion, but the worldview that allowed people to pursue child-free lives, that made radical help for the poorest of the poor, possible:
31 And they that use this world, as if they used it not: for the fashion of this world passeth away. 32 But I would have you to be without solicitude. He that is without a wife, is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. 33 But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife: and he is divided. 34 And the unmarried woman and the virgin thinketh on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. But she that is married thinketh on the things of the world, how she may please her husband
Childhood and poverty are closely linked. The corporal works of mercy are identical whether a parent applies them to his child or a celibate applies them to the poor. Both the Catholic and the technologist want "the fashion of this world to pass away." Both want a better life for the children, the only difference being that the technologist, the social justice warrior, sees the government as the Church and the poor as the children. Both realize that avoiding procreation helps bring those who avoid it into razor-sharp focus on what matters. The focus of the child-free person allows that person to build a better life for everyone.
The Logical Conclusion
So, if we are to free the world of poverty, and if the poor man is but a kind of child, then the technology which rids the world of poverty establishes the greatest good. The child-free society that Paul originally recommended to everyone moves everyone towards that good. Like the child-free monks of old, technologists strive to be free of the concerns of this world. The focus on technological advance and labor-saving machinery can remove our concerns about food, clean water, medical care, housing, poverty in general. We can achieve a technologically poverty-free society by pursuing a child-free life.
People who have children are not as good as people who don't. Catholic faith has long taught this as a foundational truth. Can anyone blame the world for taking the lesson to heart?.
As the original essayist proposed, it may soon be the case that work and progress will be made so easy, that child-bearing and child-rearing may again be permitted to become an important work to society. After all, as the essayist notes, the rich are now having more children than they have traditionally had in the last few centuries. However, it is also possible that most modern cultures will follow the example of Rome, and simply collapse from dropping fertility rates.
But, for good or ill, the dropping fertility rate of our surplus-goods societies are merely the world answering the radical call St. Paul made two millennia ago. At the moment, all are becoming like him, and forgoing procreation.
