[waterbadger]

Uh, I would consider something called the “Malthusian League” close enough to eugenics from my point of view.

But you are right, birth control itself predates modern era eugenics. What I meant was “modern” birth control.

A lot of the people who have shaped this cultural stuff are just very disturbed. In the past they were pretty open about their perspective before talking about it openly became somewhat taboo. As an example of the “Malthusian mindset” in 1954:

Nuclear scientist Harrison Brown publishes his book "The Challenge of Man’s Future". In the book Brown examines carefully the probability that the human carrying capacity of the planet is between 50 and 200 billion people, before summarizing the reasons this fact is best kept secret:

“If humanity had its way, it would not rest content until the earth is covered completely and to a considerable depth with a writhing mass of human beings, much as a dead cow is covered with a pulsating mass of maggots.”

Here is the papal encyclical “Humanae Vitae” by the way if you are interested in why the Church considers birth control to be harmful:

https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/docume...

[eesmith]

What informs your view? Because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_League doesn't sound anything like the eugenics movement.

Modern birth control started in the mid 20th century with the combined oral contraceptive pill. Rice-Wray, from what I can tell, saw it as a way for poor families to be able to voluntarily plan the number of children they have.

I don't see how that's informed by eugenics.

What do you see as "eugenics"?

What do you see as '"modern" birth control'?

> As an example of the “Malthusian mindset” in 1954

"Malthusian" has multiple meanings. The Malthusian League Wikipedia entry says: "The organisation maintained that it was concerned about the poverty of the British working class and held that over-population was the chief cause of poverty".

This is in accord with what Malthus wrote. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Early_history , Mathus' "criticism of the working class's tendency to reproduce rapidly, and his belief that this, rather than the exploitation of their labour by capitalists, led to their poverty, brought widespread criticism of his theory."

The Malthusianism page goes on to quote: "Though Malthusianism has since come to be identified with the issue of general over-population, the original Malthusian concern was more specifically with the fear of over-population by the dependent poor"

You quoting someone in 1954 doesn't mean it's the same as the goals of the Malthusian League some 80 years previous.

I have so many disagreements with the position of the Catholic church - sex outside of marriage, sex by teens, abortion, the role of women in the church, gay marriage, co-habitation, and so much more - that I don't see the point of trying to understand its official views of birth control.

[waterbadger]

If you get into the history of the late 19th century through the mid 20th century there is a pretty clear thread you can draw through:

- industrialization

- racial theories about immigrants

- birth control

- the birth of compulsory education (i.e. you must send your children to school to be “Americanized” or the police will arrest you)

- eugenics

- wealthy industrialists trying to consolidate their hold on power politically and economically through developing ways to control “the lower classes” through the “scientific management” of society.

Much of this involved domestic propaganda campaigns beginning in the early 20th century that the instigators were very open about at the time. Many prominent figures were also very explicit about using compulsory education as a tool to form a stratified society that would prevent “the poor” from being a threat to the utopian and “racially pure” world they wanted to build.

For example in 1901 Edward Ross published his book "Social Control" in which he states:

“Plans are underway to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education, and mass media.. ..the State shakes loose from Church, reaches out to School.... People are only little plastic lumps of human dough.”

Or in 1919 Arthur Calhoun published his "Social History of the Family" in which he describes how the child was passing from its family "into the custody of community experts." He also predicted that in time we could expect to see public education "designed to check the mating of the unfit."

Where did the idea of eugenics come from? What other ideas were popular at the time that made it appealing to so many people?

From what I’ve studied about the time period, all this stuff, including eugenics and birth control, came from a literally racist and fairly deranged view of the world. They are all symptoms of the same mindset.

Large families are a powerful safety net for its members. When those families break down what happens? You have isolated and economically vulnerable individuals that are much easier to exploit and manipulate.

I understand that a random person on the internet probably isn’t going to change your mind about the Catholic church for many potential reasons.

That being said, I would argue that the Catholic church safeguards literally the only rationally consistent and ethically sound perspective of reality that we have.

There are teachings of the Church that are difficult to follow but, for the most part, that is because our modern world has organized itself around hedonism instead of loving God, serving God, and cultivating virtue.

As most people understood for thousands of years: cultivating virtue is actually the only path to the true freedom in life most people are looking for. Without pursuit of virtue the only alternative is to grow in slavery to a variety of hedonistic appetites.

To paraphrase St. Augustine:

The virtuous man is free even if he is a slave, the unvirtuous man is a slave even if he is a king.