What Is It with Gonzaga and Population Control Advocates?

[If the Big Cheesehead can invite the Big PopCon-Artist to his shindig, why can't the Jesuits at Gonzaga invite some little ones to their bash?]

What Is It with Gonzaga and Population Control Advocates?

blog.cardinalnewmansociety.org/2012/08/17/what-is-it-with-gonzaga-and-population-control-advocates/

What is it with Gonzaga University and population control advocates?

For their 2011-2012 commencement speaker, the Jesuit university hosted population control advocate Archbishop Desmond Tutu. And now, Gonzaga recently announced that this year’s Gonzaga Presidential Speaker Series will see New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman come to the Spokane campus in the fall and Dr. Jane Goodall in the spring.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Friedman has spoken glowingly of China’s one-child policy while Goodall, a primatologist and conservationist, backs a radical population control group. Friedman will speak Sept. 4, while Goodall will speak April 9 (2013).

Friedman’s lecture is titled, “That Used to Be Us: A Crucial Time for America and the Role Education Must Play.”

In his book Hot, Flat and Crowded, Friedman reportedly credits China’s one-child policy with having “probably saved China from a population calamity.” And he credits China’s “one-party autocracy” with being “led by a reasonably enlightened group of people.”

Thankfully, Friedman’s lecture subject wouldn’t seem to touch on population control but one can’t say the same about Dr. Goodall’s lecture entitled, “Making a Difference: An Evening with Dr. Jane Goodall.” It will focus at least in part on what she’s learned about affecting change in the environment. Sadly, it is exactly Goodall’s views on the environment that run counter to Church teaching.

The radical environmentalist group Population Matters (formerly the Optimum Population Trust) touts Goodall’s support on their homepage, labeling her a “Patron.” The group advocates birth control and abortion as a way of slowing climate change. “We support the right of women to decide whether and when to have children,” reads the website. “Effective contraception is always preferable but we believe abortion has to be available where contraception has failed.”

Population Matters endorses contraception, abortion, and ending subsidies for large families. “We need to send a clear message that large families are unsustainable,” reads the website.

Population Matters Chairman Roger Martin singled out the Catholic Church in 2010 as “inhumane,” according to the group’s website: “The Catholic Church does much good in the world, but the effects are nullified by its uniquely inhumane doctrine on, and campaign against, contraception.”

Goodall, herself, is quoted on the website saying, “It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it — but there are so many of us.”

Goodall charged in this 2007 video that the Catholic Church stands in the way of reducing the population, saying, ”The Catholic Church makes quite a major problem when you are trying to balance between people and their environment and that’s what has to happen.”

Gonzaga President Thayne M. McCulloh, who selects the series presenters, said, “These individuals challenge and inspire us with their knowledge and perspectives. In this, Gonzaga’s 125th Anniversary Year, we are interested in how the speakers have encouraged and continue to foster the transformations our world must embrace to prepare for the future.”

While Catholic universities should be fostering transformations, steering students towards population control advocates wouldn’t seem the best path for a Catholic university.