The Church and the Population Year: Notes on a Strategy

Abstract

T HE FORMULATION of population policy, whether on the national or international level, is a complex task involving several institutions. The Church is one of the societal institutions whose religious beliefs, moral evaluations, and empirical actions can influence population policy at both the national and international levels. Consequently, it is important to reflect upon the way in which the Church thinks about its influence and its mode of exercising influence in the population debate. This article seeks to reflect upon these questions from a perspective, i.e., in light of its past history in the problem and its present resources it asks how the Church might cut into the populationpolicy debate. From this strategic perspective the article seeks to elaborate three distinct ways to understand the potential of the Church in the population debate. Two considerations are substantive, relating to what the Church might say in the population discussion to its own people and to other relevant institutions. The concluding section is more structural than substantive: it seeks to assess the potential the Church has to use the substantive message it formulates for the Population Year.