Following up on my post about Baptists leaders calling for church-goers to have more children, Craig Carter provides a list of six reasons Christians should have large families:
1. God has never rescinded his command to “be fruitful and multiply.”
2. There are numerous passages in the OT that view children as a blessing from the Lord (eg. Ps. 127:3).
3. Contrary to much conventional wisdom, the world’s birth rate is declining rapidly…
4. Christians have hope for the future because of our faith in God.
5. All abortion and some forms of contraception should be rejected by Christians.
6. Christians need to submit their wills to God and accept children as gifts from Him, rather than as “projects” or “products” of our own wills
Read the post for his explanation of each reason. Also, be sure not to miss his post on the contraceptive mentality:
All Christians opposed birth control as contrary to the natural law and the will of God prior to 1930. Since then a tidal wave of sexual permissiveness, marital breakdown, family disintegration and normalization of perversions has swept over the Western world. The West is now busily exporting the sexual revolution around the world through the proliferation of Western pop culture that embodies the contraceptive mentality.
June 14th, 2009 | 11:30 pm
The “contraceptive mentality” is blamed here, when the more fundamental problem is contraception itself, for at least two reasons:
a) without denying that the “mentality” is a problem, it’s the use of contraception which results in a contraceptive mentality. (Actually, it could happen either way–mentality causes the act, or the act causes mentality. Our moral choices affect our character, including our attitudes.
b) Contraceptive use radically divides the couple in their most intimate relations, changing the meaning of the sex act, rendering it dishonest and beneath the dignity of humans created in God’s image.
Contraception, as such, is always morally wrong.
June 15th, 2009 | 2:35 am
Please, I strongly encourage anyone who has not done so to read Pope Paul VI’s prophetic encyclical Humane Vitae.
As has been noted in the pages of FT by Mary Eberstadt, it is an extremely prophetic document.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/07/002-the-vindication-of-ihumanae-vitaei-28
But the question, as posed in the title of the post, of whether or not Christians should have large familes must be debated “two by two.” The freedom of the human person – worked out in marriage – demands such.
May be splitting hairs, but I think it more appropriate to state that Chrsitians should always be open to having large families. Then discernment, and our cooperation in God’s plan plays an important role – hence, I suppose the need for more well-formed consciences!
And I still believe that nothing proclaims this truth like seeing it lived – in a joyful, well-mannered, well-ordered family and home. As is the case I suppose with most virtues, hence the incarnation and thus the saints, our model and models.
Last point in response to Joe DeVet’s good words: I would propose that I can’t control someone’s contraception, but I can impact the contraceptive mentality of our culture, by raising joyful children, and raising them to see their siblings, their peers, indeed their own future children as blessings and gifts to their families and to the world.
So I do tend to give more weight to the mentality than the specific act – although they are of course, as you say, directly related. But the mentality pervades all of culture. My generation knows that a full 30% of us are not here. We look at our parents and their peers and know – at a gut level – that for every two of our friends, siblings, and cousins, one more awaits us in heaven.
Within current contexts ‘choice’ now means radical and unfettered personal autonomy even to the point of sacrificing the life of another person. Responsibility before and after the act are minimized nearly to the point of ‘whatever’ irrelevance.
One might say it this way: Before, we were necessarily responsibile to choose correctly. Now we have the choice to correct our irresponsibilities. However, as in all cases in which sacrifice is not made in reparation for sin, it is a woefully tragic correction.
See also Demographics and Depression by David Goldman in the May issue of FT for more on the very far-reaching socio-economic effects of the contraceptive mentality.
June 15th, 2009 | 10:07 pm
I don’t propose that I can control either someone else’s acts, or their mentality.
However, I have a duty if possible to persuade people about misguided or sinful acts or attitudes.
Experience tells me that without contraception, there’s no contraceptive mentality. One could say in opposition to this that people can use NFP with a contraceptive mentality. I can’t deny it, because I believe I have seen it in practice. But what I have also seen over and over, is couples beginning to use NFP with that mentality, but soon finding their mentality changing and becoming more open to life. Taking away the artificial barrier which is contraception leaves room for the magic of “natural sex” to work it’s way into healing the mentality of the couple.
Experience also persuades me that contraception itself undermines marriage by what it does to the mutual communication of the sex act. Contraception attacks the very bond of marriage; it fosters a “contraceptive mentality; it cheapens sex and increases temptations to infidelity; it often (in its hormonal forms like the Pill) directly causes early abortions. Contraception, as such, is always morally wrong. I heartily hope that more people will be able to see this important truth.
June 16th, 2009 | 1:51 am
Joe, indeed we agree. Like you, I assent and ascribe to the teaching of the RCC that contraception as such is always morally wrong, and I deeply share your hope that more and more hearts and minds will come to know this truth as well.
Perhaps, the question may be where our efforts are best directed – either at defining the act as evil in itself, or by pointing out its evil fruits.
June 16th, 2009 | 3:11 pm
Adam, indeed we do agree. I move we do both–reveal the consequences and identify the intrinsic evil. Clarity requires it, I think, and not all are moved by recounting consequences. (See the less-than-edifying responses to the Eberstadt article last year in FT on the vindication of Paul VI’s predictions in Humanae Vitae #17.)
I say that clarity requires us to keep trying to explain the reason contraception is evil in itself, because, while we should keep pointing out its evil consequences, if we defend the teaching only by appealing to consequentialist arguments, it undermines the point that consequentialism is not a proper tool for evaluating the moral question of contraception.
Does that muddy statement help clarify??? Maybe I should try again, or maybe you can help.
June 18th, 2009 | 6:41 pm
Joe, well said indeed. What are your thoughts about our culture’s ability to *hear* the intrisic moral reasoning?
I agree that the consequentialist argument is not the proper tool for evaluating the moral question of contraception. However, I wonder if beginning with the evil external effects is not a beneficial way to open the conversation… and then to drill backwards toward the question of “what is the root cause of the effect?”
Perhaps I am being cynical, but it seems that most discussion of Natural Law – that which is embedded in the truth of the created world – would cause 90% of folks to simply tune out.
June 18th, 2009 | 7:07 pm
Joe,
Regarding the above, I was chastened a bit just now reading this excerpt over at The Catholic Thing:
http://www.thecatholicthing.org/content/view/1754/2/
“But a problem remains all the same. Our colleague James V. Schall mentioned in a column here last week that the apostles cared about Christ and would not have given much thought to preserving Christendom or Western Civilization. It’s undeniable that as a simple practical matter, you only get something like a Christian civilization when you are aiming at something else, or rather Someone else.
One of the big failures of cultural renewal in this country and elsewhere, however, is that it has gotten things backwards: people seem to want religiosity so that we will get a better public order, rather than seeking a better public order so that people can live their lives with fewer obstacles to their eternal salvation.
That’s a difficult argument to make in our kind of democracy. So instead we have to talk, for example, about how a “hookup culture” of sexual promiscuity leads to STDs, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, family breakups, welfare dependency, illegitimacy, and social problems. As with all sins, there are real-world consequences to bad behavior. But the one thing that cannot be said, though it is the most important thing for Catholics and many other believers, is that such behaviors may lead to eternal damnation.”
June 18th, 2009 | 10:56 pm
Adam: What are your thoughts about our culture’s ability to *hear* the intrinsic moral reasoning?
I think many people are open to the arguments and would likely even agree with the underlying moral reasoning. The problem is that they will inevitably let economic realities shape their behavior. For example, as long as middle-class families think that all children should go to college they will limit family size to what they can “afford.”
This is completely understandable—parents want to make sure they can provide a good life for their children—but it shows how we are more prone to follow economics rather than theological ethics.
Regarding the above, I was chastened a bit just now reading this excerpt over at The Catholic Thing
That is a good point. It’s always difficult when you write on a blog that focuses on public policy to balance it with eternal concerns. All my posts should carry a disclaimer that “This is issue is important, but what is more important living for the Kingdom of God.”
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