Parishioners who are living in London at the moment remark that in their neighborhood, their family of four is the smallest among their friends. This is certainly a change. Our parish's "baby boom" is not unique, either. Larger families are increasingly seen among the so-called affluent sophisticates who, just a generation ago, disdained family life altogether.

Whether this bellwether of social responsibility is too late to stanch the decay of Western civilization remains to be seen. The United States is unusual among Western nations in maintaining population replacement levels. Without a more radical demographic increase Western Europe will have a Muslim majority within three generations at most. Soon the largest house of worship in Britain will be a mosque: The construction is about to begin and the money is guaranteed. It will be in central London.

While ideological dilettantes are thrashing themselves over the ambiguous conundrums of global warming, their civilization is teetering on the brink, and it could be replaced by the world's fastest growing religion, which is used to hot weather. This was evident when shocked Belgian animal-rights activists were recently confronted by Muslims sacrificing thousands of sheep in the streets of Brussels in a religious ritual far different from our non-sanguineous Ash Wednesday. People in Western society who have been critical of Judaeo-Christian morality on issues of gender and sexuality must now confront a system which could disenfranchise or even behead them.

Pope Benedict XVI used his Angelus address on the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas to reiterate his Regensburg appeal for the harmony of faith and reason. Telling how Aquinas developed the richness of Jewish and Arab thought, he said that "faith supports reason and perfection; and reason, illumined by faith, finds strength to raise itself to the knowledge of God." This knowledge attains its fullness in the Logos, the Living Word, which is Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man.

It is only right that a religion that believes itself to be true, to use a word from rational discourse, should seek to convert others. But where reason does not figure in the theological system, conversion allows no conversation. While conscientious Muslims abjure terror, the "struggle for Allah," known as Jihad, is enjoined on all believers if only by the subtle but also more effective method of population growth.

Since 1968, many mocked the Catholic Church's warnings, in the encyclical Humanae Vitae, about the consequences of contraception and abortion. They now have to deal with the fact that in Germany right now the most popular name for newborn boys is not Carl or Hans or Dietrich, but Mohammed. With respect to the author of Humanae Vitae, it may not be too late for reasonable people in a self-indulgent society to admit that Pope Paul VI was, if they do not want to say infallible, accurate.

Fr. George W. Rutler