Peace Without Poison

NO DATANo institution in the world today has a deeper or richer experience dealing with populationcontrol than the Catholic Church.Throughout its 2000 year history the Church has made the regulation of human life on the planet,both in terms of quality and quantity, its holy grail. The moment man left the Garden of Eden tobe above and beyond all other creatures on earth, and succeeded, he became free of nature, but adanger onto himself.Man being a pack animal he has always lived in collectives and has always needed to conceiverules that regulate conduct within human society – from the smallest and oldest unit, the tribe, tothe largest and most current, the international community – so as to keep the peace between men,between tribes, between nations, between blocks of nations and now between human civilizationand the natural world.The Church has been at the center of this struggle to civilize man and to keep the peace. Tosucceed it realized early on that regulating life is key to social harmony and to the emancipationof man from beast to a higher being. So it devised rules of social conduct and rooted them inobvious and not so obvious principles of justice and fairness. To ensure that all men procreateand that dominant males do not monopolize females, as it happens in the animal kingdom, thenotion of monogamy and the institution of marriage were created and protected through thepromotion of virtues such as chastity, temperance and love, thus through positive reinforcements,but also through negative reinforcements, such as the prohibition of adultery, covetousness, envyand lust.To ensure that social cohesion is not threatened and the family structure diluted by multiple andcompeting authorities, the Church assumed the sole right to legitimize the union between a man934 | P a g e