Brian Clowes, July 2007

Whoever said, "It's a small world," hasn't traveled from Virginia to Dar es Salaam lately.  The trip is made especially vexing by Kenya Airways, whose motto seems to be "We hope you're going to Chile, because your luggage is!"

This journey took nearly 30 hours, and I finally laid my tired head down after 2:00 AM.  But there is little rest on a missionary journey if it is to be productive.  And so, nine hours later, I was extolling the many benefits of the virtue of chastity to a huge crowd of about 1,500 students at St. Matthew's Secondary School in Mbagala, about 30 miles West of Dar es Salaam on the Morogoro Road.

This is what Human Life International does best. We show people that the Church's teachings make perfect sense, not only theologically, but also logically and scientifically-after all, the God Who made us also wants us to be happy.

I told the kids that there are only two things that make us happy-Faith and family.  So many millions have tried everything else the Devil has to offer and have still felt hollow inside. Only belief in God and the loving arms of a family give us deep contentment where nothing else will.  Not coincidentally, Faith and family are under the strongest attack in the world today.  This is logical, because they are all that stands between a nation (particularly one that is developing) and total demographic disaster, as is happening in Europe today.

I talked to quite a few of the students one-on-one, which is always when the best communication seems to happen.  One young kid of only 13 asked me how he could remain pure in the face of an increasingly promiscuous culture.  It saddened me that someone this young even had to ask such a question.  I told him that first he had to pray consistently and make a firm and unyielding decision to avoid sexual activity before marriage and then studiously avoid the near occasion of sin regardless of the temptations that would inevitably come his way.

Tanzania is in the crosshairs of the population controllers because it has one of the most rapidly growing populations on Earth.  Its current population of about 39 million will double in the next 50 years, and it is an extraordinarily young nation where the median age is not even out of its teens!  Women still average nearly five children, which is absolute anathema to the (population) control freaks, who are constantly sticking their noses into the Tanzanian's most intimate affairs.  (See sidebar on page 7 for a list of Tanzania's population control network.)

Everywhere we went in Dar es Salaam, gigantic billboards advertised Salama ("Peace") condoms.  Top-of-the-line, brand-new Land Cruisers (with snorkels yet!) belonging to such groups as Family Health International and UNFPA roared past us frequently, and these advertised condoms as well on their wheel covers.  They always seemed to be in a hurry to get where they were going, and were the fastest drivers I saw anywhere in Tanzania.

Another of our activities was a press conference on the deadly Maputo Protocol with Emil Hagamu, director of Pro-Life Tanzania, and Harris Kachaso of Malawi.  As usual, the pro-aborts use outright lies and deception to get their way.  The Maputo Protocol is presented as a tool to combat female genital mutilation, but FGM is mentioned only once in the entire document, which strongly emphasizes repeatedly that abortion must be legalized all over Africa in order for women to be able to gain equality with men.  Emil, Harris, and I pounded home the deceptive nature of this document, and almost everyone, by the end of our presentation, was impressed with our speaking.  I told them that there is a simple way to determine when the population controllers are lying:  When their lips are moving, they're lying.

Oddly, when we were finished, a handful of the press people thought that we were population controllers ourselves just because we talked about condoms!

Emil, Harris, and I had the opportunity to speak to 144 seminarians at St. Mary's Junior Seminary in Visaga due to the kindness of the rector, Father Ferdinand.  My primary message to the seminarians was that, if they tirelessly promoted Faith and family and were fearless in condemning evil (especially those evils related to sexual morality), that they would be a lot happier themselves as priests.  Instead of counseling one bitter, depressed married couple after another, they would spend a lot more time performing weddings and baptisms-and would have to deal with far fewer cases of AIDS as well.

After Father Tom, Emil, Harris, and I trained about 30 seminarians from five East African countries at the 2007 Summer Seminarian Institute (see HLI's upcoming FrontLines for a fuller report on the Seminarian Summer Institute), we began making plans for returning and visiting all of the major seminaries in Tanzania within the next year.

At HLI, we believe that by strengthening the priesthood - the "thin black line" that protects society from complete moral chaos - that we protect Faith, life, and family as well.  As Europe is finding out to its regret, giving up Faith and family means not only death for objective standards of morality, but death for entire nations as well.

One dying continent is enough.  HLI is working as hard as it can to prevent this fatal lassitude, this deadly indifference, this surrender to Satan, from spreading any further than Europe.