Dear Mr. Mosher,
I am writing after your visit to our Dicastery in mid March. You might remember we spoke in my office and you gave me a copy of your book and your article “Money for Nothing” of February 2009. I would be interested in publishing the article in the next update of our website (www.laici.org and then click on the top left, “woman section”). This update is due in early May. But I would like your permission to do this and also if you could send me the article in electronic version. I found the article extremely interesting and well argued and I think all our readers would appreciate it. I hope you will agree.
With best wishes from Rome and my prayers for your brave and important work,
Ana Cristina Villa Betancourt
Pontifical Council for the Laity,
Vatican City
Dear Ana Cristina,
Of course you have my permission to publish “Money for Nothing” in your May update of the website. I will send you the final edited version electronically shortly.
God bless,
Steve Mosher
Editor’s Note: PRI gets its share of hate mail, as you might imagine. Here is one example:
Sir,
Your reckless and irresponsible claim that there is no risk of overpopulation is an outrage. The claim that all the people of the earth would fit in a tiny corner of the globe is completely specious and misleading.
This ignores the fact that there are vast areas of the globe which are completely uninhabitable or which could only support a limited population.
And your anti-contraception policies and anti-choice folly only increases human misery around the world. The foolhardy policies of the Catholic church and the Pope have been the cause of untold human suffering.
This earth has only limited resources, and something must be done about limiting population, or this planet is doomed. Intelligent family planning, the availability of contraception to the poor, and the right to abortion are absolutely necessary. The obtuse anti-abortion, anti-contraception policies of the Bush administration must not be continued, and fortunately under president Obama, they will not.
Dear Mr. B.,
All of the world’s people would fit in Jacksonville, Florida, but it would be standing room only. They could live in the state of Texas, in single family dwelling with a front and back yard. These illustrations are neither specious nor misleading, since they are intended to suggest that the world is still largely an empty place.
As far as “vast areas of the globe” being “completely uninhabitable,” you are, of course, technically correct. After all, five-sixths of the world’s surface is covered water But there is no continent, with the exception of Antarctica, where the human population could not grow and thrive under the right socioeconomic system. Who would have thought that the tiny island of Hong Kong, home to just a few thousand fishermen two centuries ago, could provide a pleasant home to several million people?
We object to abortion, sterilization, and contraception not just on moral grounds, but because the programs that promote them violate human rights, undermine primary health care, and compromise authentic economic development. I suppose that it is the Church’s principled opposition to such things that you see as the “cause of untold human suffering,” but I assure you that it is not so. Among other things, the Church stopped female infanticide, raised the status of women, undergirded marriage, instituted the rule of law, started the university system, opposed slavery, jump-started the scientific revolution, and developed both the concept and the substance of human rights. How can it not speak out now when the rights of women, both born and unborn, are being so cruelly violated in the name of combating a myth called “overpopulation.”
I do not agree that the earth has limited resources. We have unlimited energy from solar and nuclear power, and vast reserves of other kinds of energy, such as oil shale, which have not yet begun to be tapped. Why don’t we use our God-given intelligence to use our resources wisely and well, instead of targeting the poor for elimination through government-run population control programs. This is what you mean, after all, when you say “intelligent family planning,” namely, that the government should decide who can have children and who cannot.
Well, I have news for you. This has already been tried in China. And, as you will read elsewhere in this issue, the experiment is not working out so well.
Steven Mosher
President
Editor’s Note: As mentioned in the last issue of the PRI Review, we recently established a presence on Facebook. This step has made the following message possible.
Dear Mr. Mosher,
As I write this, l cannot begin to fathom how technology has come this far that I would be able to get in contact with someone who has irrevocably changed my life.
I read your article in Reader’s Digest back in the ’80s, about China’s one child policy, when I was about 8-9 years old. I lived in Hong Kong at the time, before it went back to China. Up until that point, I equated the independence and freedom with which I lived inside of Hong Kong as far reaching and including China. My shock and slow realization, after reading your brilliant and engrossing article, was that my charmed life in Hong Kong was just that — charmed — by living in the geographical and political boundaries that separated two islands by just a drop in the ocean.
The revelation that we people (Hong Kong residents and China’s people), so close to each other geographically, divided by just the sea, were separated by a political mechanism that set China backwards in civilization by 200 years and propelled Hong Kong forward enough that it was labeled one of the four Asian Tigers, is simply unbelievable.
I lived in Hong Kong from my birth, 1979, until 1991, and so was there during its peak time in all spheres of life, and enjoyed the fruits of this growth, living so lavishly and unperturbed by what was going on just across the waters, in China.
Your article helped revolutionize my already philanthropic and empathetic nature and gave it new direction. I had always wanted to help the less fortunate in some way. Combined with my love for China and all things Asian, I found in your article people who desperately needed my help and a path to follow this zeal within me.
Thank you so much for that just one article that forever changed my life and I remain indebted to you forever, and hope you don’t mind that I take you as my mentor.
Sincerely,
Kirin A., (received via Facebook)
