Kirkus Reviews QR Code
CATHOLIC VIEWPOINT ON OVERPOPULATION by

CATHOLIC VIEWPOINT ON OVERPOPULATION

By

Pub Date: Sept. 8th, 1961
Publisher: Doubleday

Continuing the Hanover House series of Catholic Viewpoint books (earlier ones featured treatments on Censorship, Racial Problems, Church and State), this one on Overpopulation takes up a critical question of the day. Sketching in a history of thought from Plato to Sanger, Father Xlmmerman demonstrates that this problem has existed from all time. In doing so, he defines many popular notions about what is desirable to protect the world from cating itself out of existence. Throughout the book, Father Immerman views which sometimes surprise, as, for example, when he says, birth prevention is a personal sin which does not upset God's general plan for the race"". He faces every situation squarely. The case of the Japan experiment and its consequences some for full analysis. The skeleton of Christian principles on which he bases his position are the directives of the Popes. Conceding that upright people, with a healthy respect for morality, may have difficulties in accepting the fact that contraception is an act against reason, he suggests that ""much work remains to be done in that field"" by the Church to make that clear. Economic imbalances are seen as spawned by social and inadequacies, not the size of families, and therefore are to be rectified by the speedy development of a proper social order and productivity. A Catholic Viewpoint thorough analysis of a much misunderstood position on an important world problem.