Summary: Influential pro-life activist and writer; pioneering advocate of natural family planning (NFP); professor of sociology and department chair at St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota (1957-1965); founder and executive director of the Human Life Center at St. John's (1972-1981); founder, president, and chairman of Human Life International (HLI)(1981-1992).
Widely recognized as one of the most important and influential figures in the American pro-life movement, Father Paul Marx, O.S.B., built his career as a crusader in defense of human life first as a newly ordained Benedictine priest in 1947 and then as a professor of sociology teaching at the order's St. John's College in Minnesota during the 1960s and 1970s. One of the youngest of fourteen surviving children born to a Belgian mother and Bavarian father in St. Michael's, Minnesota, Marx entered the Benedictines in 1942 after finishing college. He did various studies at Berkeley, Harvard and American University and completed his Ph.D. at the Catholic University of America in 1957 with a dissertation on the life and work of fellow Benedictine and liturgical movement leader Virgil Michel. Marx chaired the sociology department at St. John's from 1957 to 1965 and began to focus his intellectual energy on reproductive issues during that time.
In 1971, after attending a conference entitled "Therapeutic Abortion: A Symposium on Implementation," held at the International Hotel in Los Angeles, Marx wrote THE DEATH PEDDLERS, a short book in which he charged government, business and the medical profession with a conspiracy to legalize contraception, abortion and forced sterilization programs throughout the country. Marx followed with three less well-known books, THE MERCY KILLERS (1973), DEATH WITHOUT DIGNITY (1975), and ABORTION INTERNATIONAL (1978). It was during this period, as the American legal and political climate shifted in anticipation of the United States Supreme Court's controversial 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, that Marx entered the activist fray. Marx's organizational leadership in the militant pro-life movement began at Collegeville when he founded the Human Life Center (HLC), an independent organization headquartered on the St. John's campus but administratively and financially separate from both the school and the order. After a series of disputes among HLC leadership as well as with the school administration regarding Marx's vision and methods, Marx secured leave from the abbey to reorganize in Washington, DC, where he founded Human Life International (HLI) in 1981. HLI moved headquarters twice: first to Gaithersburg, Maryland in the mid-1980s and then to Front Royal, Virginia in 1994. The Center remained at St. John's until the late 1980s when it moved to Steubenville, Ohio.
Encouraged by Pope John Paul II's 1979 intimation that Marx's efforts on behalf of unborn infants, and to a lesser extent, the disabled and elderly, had him doing "the most important work on earth," Marx led his organization to national prominence and oversaw the creation of HLI offices and affiliated organizations in dozens of countries around the world. As a recognized leader of the militant pro-life movement, Marx traveled constantly. He maintained correspondence with associates in each of these countries while building HLI as a resource for organized pro-life protest; as a center for the organization of symposia, seminars, and workshops on abortion and the promotion of NFP techniques; and as a lobbying springboard that kept its supporters informed of legislative and political developments on life issues.
Although conscious of and at times outspoken in promoting Catholic moral teaching on such issues as euthanasia, the AIDS crisis, homosexuality and women in the priesthood, Marx firmly maintained his focus upon fighting abortion and what he termed the "contraceptive mentality," the rapid disassociation of the pleasure of human sexuality from its inherently reproductive nature, which he and others argued actually increased the number of clinical abortions performed both domestically and abroad each year. Closely related to Marx's struggle against abortion were his efforts to promote NFP as a medically safe and statistically more effective method of pursuing healthy sexual relationships and parenting among married couples. Marx's high-profile career embroiled him in almost perpetual controversy. This persisted even after he retired from his position as president of HLI in 1992. He continued to travel, organize, speak, and teach as the founder of HLI and a member of its board of directors until his full retirement in 1999, when he was appointed Director Emeritus. At that time he returned to his community at St. John's