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And frankly, that you even frame this issue as simply one of parents wanting to forgo more children so that can buy a luxury item or that parents blithely give away 75% of their children for frivolous reasons shows what incredible privilege you enjoy. I’m glad this is the case for your family, but the fact that you seem not to be able to accept that not every family has your privileges is telling.
Luna
I suppose every assertion can find an exception. I think if you really focus on my point that you and I agree. The things in this world that people sit in their warm houses and type on the internet about are not the case in many many areas. That is what is so confusing to me.
I’m doing a horrible job of explaining myself in my family and society with the exact point you made. We, who enjoy so much, can only see our own worldview, when in fact many families in worse situations make the moral and Holy decision to have more children.
I absolutely agree with you and was trying to point out that if God intends worse situations to have children then maybe we need to take more seriously our own calling to procreate and not have it boil down to “will it be hard”
Again, the Church does not tell a impoverished family in a war torn reason that for all intents and purposes is living as Holy of a life as they can to not have children. In fact it is procreation that is the solution to many of the problems.
And I think you me, and all us first worlders should spend some serious time thinking about what children are, what marriage is and what we are to provide our children with.
It is odd that if one takes the position that not everyone has to or will get to go to college at all is misunderstood and then if one states that even the poorest should be able to have the calling of family one is misunderstood.
Trust me, if your position is that there are children born into terrible circumstances and more terrible than most here will ever face then you and I agree.
if your premise is that the poor, destitute, uneducated, and diseased should not procreate then I have to part ways with you. Everyone has the right to fulfill God’s plan.
That some people have chosen to conceive (or be forced to conceive) when they should not is an undeniable fact underlined by your examples. And in no way is that something we should aspire to as families. But we also hold ourselves to a lower standard just because of our privilege and that is wrong as well. Our “grave or serious” reason has to be just as “grave and serious” as anyone elses. In no other moral issue does the Church give different criteria and standards to different groups of people or different times of history. Murder is always murder. Adultery is always adultery no matter when, or where or how you live. Sure there are mitigating circumstances, a starving man steals a loaf of bread is still stealing but it is mitigated by his circumstance. But that does not mean that stealing is ever right.
As Catholics we can never use evil to attain good. Which is why we cannot hand out condoms to a family who we know is abusive, has aids, and will sell it’s children. We can try to educate, we can try to incarcerate, we can try to help, but we cannot participate in evil just so we can achieve what we deem as good.
Every child, even the ones sold into the brothels you describe is God’s Child, a potential inhabitant of heaven. A potential saint. And while their life may be horrid, while it may seem in vain, it is united with the suffering of Christ. It is them who Jesus spoke to, it is them who Jesus ministered. Jesus did not tell them they should never have been born. he tells them that they are Him. That they are the body of Christ. He commanded us, not to reduce their numbers, not to make them rich, not to save them from their pain and wretched lives, but to love them, want them and save them for Him. Jesus does not preach about family size, about whether the woman who was a prostitute or the thieves beside him on the cross should never have been born, but about what to do when they are born, about why they should have been born, and about how it is God’s will that everyone should be born.
But we, 2000 years later debate if one of them should be born because cable is expensive or we need an automobile, or taking care of them is hard.
The only person Jesus speaks of it being better if he were not born is Judas.
Even Job had horrible things happen, the point of Job is that nothing is as important as God’s will, not family, riches or health.
