Global fertility rates: Here’s how majority-Catholic countries rank against rest of world

[Michie]

As global fertility rates continue to decline, even majority-Catholic and historically Catholic countries aren’t free from the demographic collapse, which increasingly threatens to shrink the populations of countries below the necessary rate of replacement.

Global fertility has been falling for decades, with the problem often most acute in industrialized nations with higher standards of living, even while the fertility rates in many developing nations with strained resources, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, continue to climb. Many of the world’s most developed countries are well below the “replacement rate” of fertility — generally about 2.1 births per woman over her lifetime — needed to keep a population stable, according to data gathered by the World Bank.

In the U.S. the overall fertility rate in 2021 was about 1.7, falling to 1.6 two years later; in the U.K. in 2021 it was about 1.6; in Greece about 1.4. Japan and South Korea have some of the lowest birth rates in the world at 1.3 and 0.81 respectively.

Catholic populations have for years been associated with high fertility rates, owing in part to the Church’s forbiddance of artificial contraception and its long-held teaching that children are, in the words of the Second Vatican Council, “the supreme gift of marriage.”

Continued below.

Global fertility rates: Here’s how majority-Catholic countries rank

Catholic populations have for years been associated with high fertility rates — but that has changed.

www.catholicnewsagency.com

 

[Bob Crowley]

So according to our population growth alarmists, world population isn't growing fast enough??

Would they like to tell me what they think is a supportable limit"?

Do you know when the contraceptive pill came in? Around after 1962 just when this graph was taking off like a rocket.

Or as my old pastor put it, "I think the contraceptive pill was God's gift (given to some extent by Catholic researchers) just when population pressures were becoming a real problem in some parts of the world".

After John XXIII's death in 1963, Pope Paul VI added theologians to the commission and over three years expanded it to 72 members from five continents (including 16 theologians, 13 physicians and 5 women without medical credentials, with an executive committee of 16 bishops, including 7 cardinals.)[1][page range too broad][2][page needed]

Majority report[edit]​

The commission produced a report in 1966, proposing that artificial birth control was not intrinsically evil and that Catholic couples should be allowed to decide for themselves about the methods to be employed.[1][page range too broad][4][page needed][5] This report was approved by 64 of the 69 members voting.[6] According to this majority report, use of contraceptives should be regarded as an extension of the already accepted cycle method:

The acceptance of a lawful application of the calculated sterile periods of the woman – that the application is legitimate presupposes right motives – makes a separation between the sexual act which is explicitly intended and its reproductive effect which is intentionally excluded.

The tradition has always rejected seeking this separation with a contraceptive intention for motives spoiled by egoism and hedonism, and such seeking can never be admitted. The true opposition is not to be sought between some material conformity to the physiological processes of nature and some artificial intervention. For it is natural to man to use his skill in order to put under human control what is given by physical nature. The opposition is really to be sought between one way of acting which is contraceptive and opposed to a prudent and generous fruitfulness, and another way which is, in an ordered relationship to responsible fruitfulness and which has a concern for education and all the essential, human and Christian values.[7][8]

I'm not in the least bit impressed by Pope Paul VI's ban on contraception or the church's continuation of his policy.

So we need more and more people do we? To do what exactly - produce more and more goods many of which we don't need in a world already struggling with over consumpion?

Sorry - not impressed.

 

[Cosmic Charlie]

I don't know why we're making this a religious issue. It's becoming clear that there is a serious global problem with fertility, and global issues typically aren't religiously based.

Something is keeping people from getting pregnant. It needs to be addressed.

If it's physical in nature (which we don't know - which is part of the problem) telling people to go out and have kids, isn't going to help.

If it's financial in nature (which we don't know - which is part of the problem) telling people to go out and have kids isn't going to help.

If it's cultural in nature, I don't know what to do about a global cultural issue, I really don't, this would be a first.

It would be nice if we could figure out what the problem is.

As an aside,

There exists less data that there is a global fertility problem than there exists data that there is a global climate change problem. A lot less. Actually, it's not clear that this is a long term issue. (I think it is, but the evidence is open to interpretation).

But EVERYBODY has their hair on fire about global fertility, and half the USA still thinks climate change is a liberal lie.

Go Figure.

 

[RileyG]

By the 2050s, the global population is supposed to be going down. I’ll be late middle aged by then so i have no clue what my life will be like by then.

 

[Bob Crowley]

I won't be here then,but it will still be crowded by the sound of it as no one could count all the people!

I hope the Father's mansion has lifts and some green spaces. But since it will be a cube if we take it literally if I walk too far I'll fall off the edge..

 

[Simon_Templar]

So according to our population growth alarmists, world population isn't growing fast enough??

Literally your entire view is nothing but alarmism.

Sorry - not impressed.

I'm sure St. Paul VI is devastated that you are not impressed with his teaching.

 

[Bob Crowley]

I'm not the only one who wasn't and isn't impressed.

Quoting Eamon Duffy in his book "Sinners and Saints" which is a history of the popes, on page 281 (in my copy).

"in the face of growing unhappiness with the Church's total ban on all forms of artificial birth control, even within marriage, Paul (VI) had taken the radical step of removing the question of contraception from the jurisdiction of the (Vatican II) council and remitting it to an advisory commision of theologians, scientists, doctors and married couples. The commission prepared a report recommending modification of the traditional teaching to allow birth control in certain circumstances, and it was widely expected the Pope would accept this recommendation. In the even he could not bring himself to do so, and the encyclical reaffirmed the traditional teaching, while setting it within a positive understanding of married sexuality. To his horror, instead of closing the question, Humanae Vitae provoked a storm of protest, and many priests resigned or were forced out of their posts for their opposition to the Pope's teaching....

Meanwhile there is the elephant in the room of world population growth. Would you like to tell me how long the earth could sustain this kind of graph?

The church is flogging a dead horse on this one. Catholic women will go on using the contraceptive pill or other artificial contraceptives.

To quote an otherwise devoted Catholic lady from years ago who said to me "What my husband and I decide to do in the bedroom is none of the Pope's business!".

Guttmacher Statistic on Catholic Women’s Contraceptive Use

In April 2011, the Guttmacher Institute published the results of an analysis finding that 99% of all women of reproductive age who have ever had sex—including 98% of such Catholic women—have used a method of contraception other than natural family planning. These data have been ubiquitous in the...

www.guttmacher.org

The above statistics on women who have ever used contraceptives are not to be confused with data on women who are currently using contraceptives. Among women who are currently at risk of unintended pregnancy, 88% overall—and 87% of Catholics—use a method other than natural family planning.

Like I said - "not impressed".