Column Church grapples with crowded planet
By ROBERT F. DRINAN
On Oct. 15, the 6 billionth person
on Earth was born. That boy or girl represents a doubling of the worlds
population, which was only 3 billion in 1960. Although experts differ, there is
some consensus that the worlds population will top out at 9 billion in
another 30 or 40 years.
Some talk about the crowded planet. But Catholics will
recognize that the child born on Oct. 15 was created by God as a very special
and unique person, chosen to radiate the glory of the Holy Trinity in a way
that no other creature could do.
The depressing conditions in which almost one-half of humanity
lives, however, have to raise the most troubling questions. Christians must be
concerned that there are 78 million newborns each year, or 1.5 million each
week concerned that we bring children into a world in which their full
human dignity will be respected.
John Paul has recently raised another sort of population question,
this one concerning the number of Christians in Asia. He has called for renewed
evangelization efforts to boost the number of Christians on the continent where
three-quarters of the human family resides.
The question is, how do these two demographic imperatives go
together? Is there a tension between working for justice in an expanding world
and working to make converts?
A full 96 percent of the annual population increase occurs in
developing countries, including most of those places where overcrowding and
resource depletion are already a grave problem.
The population has stabilized in the developed world; Europe,
North America and Japan will have a population in 2050 that will be slightly
less than in 2000. But Nigeria and Pakistan will double their population in the
next 50 years; Ethiopia will nearly triple. In 1960, Europe had twice as many
people as Africa; by 2050 there will be three times as many Africans as
Europeans.
There have been spectacular improvements since 1960 in the
availability of food. China, for example, has increased its corn production by
213 percent, and global life expectancy has risen from 46 to 66 years.
But there is still a grim, dark side for Gods children. Some
841 million are chronically malnourished, and there are 88 food
deficit countries. Nearly 1 billion people are illiterate, two-thirds of
them women; 60 percent of the 4.8 billion people in developing countries lack
basic sanitation.
It is another kind of global demographics, however, that most
occupies the attention of the Vatican. In 1900 there were 490 million
Christians. In 2000 there are 1.6 billion. Catholics in Africa increased from
very small numbers in 1900 to 120 million today.
What will the world picture be for Catholics in the year 2100?
Could its adherents shrink from the present estimate of 1 billion? Or could the
church with its incredible appeal grow to 2 billion or even more? These are
questions that obviously galvanize the imagination of the pope.
In his address in India in November, John Paul stated that
Christians evangelized Europe in the first 1,000 years of Christianity and
spread the gospel to Latin America and Africa in the second millennium. He
suggested that Christians in the third millennium will, or at least should,
bring the gospel to India and to all of Asia in the third millennium.
But that aspiration is not necessarily what Catholics, especially
Asian Catholics, regard as their priority. Catholics want to share the gospel
with everyone, as Christs words clearly direct. But how should this be
done with the 2 billion persons, for example, in India and China?
Some Hindus made it clear on the occasion of the popes visit
that they do not want Christians to try to convert them. Many
Muslims in the roughly 40 nations with a Muslim majority might well feel the
same way. The danger inherent in an aggressive new program of evangelization is
that it might exacerbate tensions among religions, and thus undercut the
solidarity they need if they are to work together for justice.
Christians must take as one of their highest priorities the
alleviation of hunger and illiteracy in the developing nations. Over 1 billion
people on the planet enter the new century unable to read or even to sign their
names. Over 35,000 children die needlessly every day.
So one way to approach the population question would be to ask,
which set of numbers should command our attention more: the number of Catholics
in the world, or the number of starving people? If boosting one gets in the way
of cutting the other, is it worth it? How do we choose?
No one pretends the answers are easy or clear. But these
challenges come to us directly from God, who created us to live at this
critical turning point in the history of the church and of the world.
Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan is a professor at Georgetown
University Law Center.
National Catholic Reporter, December 3,
1999
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