Contraception and vocations

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Tis_Bearself said:
I suspect that those in the past who entered religious life because they didn’t want to marry but without a “call” are the ones responsible for a good many past abuses and lax disciplines and/or the ones who ended up leaving later.
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I think this is more than a suspicion, and has been a problem for a very long time.
 
The Church teaches that couples can avoid conceiving for an indefinite time for “physical, economic, psychological and social conditions” so long as they are “serious.” We should not be judging others on their determination of whether their situation fits into those very broad categories.
 
Most of the FSSP priests that I have known did not grow up in traditionalist, EF attending families. A few were converts; the rest have mostly been from devout but run-of-the-mill Catholic families. I’d actually like to see some statistics on this. How many FSSP seminarians grew up in traditional parishes? How many traditional parishes are producing vocations? The FSSP parish near me has produced only one seminarian in well over 20 years, though it is a thriving parish.

I think the vocations issue is much more complex than you are giving it credit for. The differences could be related to affluence, opportunity, and, of course, fervor for the faith. There is a surplus of vocations among Greek Catholics in Eastern Europe, after decades of Communism and extremely low birth rates. Vocations are booming in certain parts of Africa and, as a previous poster mentioned, the Philippines.
  • Catholic schools have more priestly and religious teachers, who do not have to be paid nearly as much as lay teachers. Catholic education becomes far less expensive and is once again available to any Catholic student.
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That model is not currently in use, even by schools staffed with religious sisters. The sisters are paid a full salary, which goes to their order to use for the needs of the order.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
Many of these young men and women decide to pursue priestly and religious vocations, which are seen by them as more attractive than taking on the burden of raising a large family.
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this is insufficient reason to choose the religious life. Both vocations carry burdens and joys.
 
babochka said:
I think the vocations issue is much more complex than you are giving it credit for. The differences could be related to affluence, opportunity, and, of course, fervor for the faith. There is a surplus of vocations among Greek Catholics in Eastern Europe, after decades of Communism and extremely low birth rates. Vocations are booming in certain parts of Africa and, as a previous poster mentioned, the Philippines.
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Point well taken. Admittedly I was looking at the situation from a North American/Western European perspective. I would simply ask, though, whether in the places you mention, people nowadays generally accept the Church’s teaching on contraception. In Poland, the country in Europe with which I am the most familiar, it appears that about 3/4 of the people accept contraception:

https://tradingeconomics.com/poland...ence-percent-of-women-ages-15-49-wb-data.html

On an anecdotal note, one of the cousins in my son’s extended family in Poland does use contraception (this I know from his mother), saying “it is modern times now”. Never mind that all times are “modern” for those living in them…
 
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vsedriver said:
If you only have one or two children, you’d be more reluctant to “sacrifice” one to the religious life.
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I only have the one son. In all brutal honesty, I would prefer that he marry a faithful Catholic girl and have several children, but if he were called to the priesthood (I can tell you that’s not likely, but…), well, blessed be God.
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So the sisters are paid less so their order struggles? They are paid less than non-religious teachers from the same work? Catholic school teachers who are paid less than their public school counterparts?
 
babochka said:
I think the vocations issue is much more complex than you are giving it credit for. The differences could be related to affluence, opportunity, and, of course, fervor for the faith.
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Priests and seminarians are human beings, subject to the same wants, needs and influences as any other human beings. There have always been more vocations in times and places where the priesthood was a more attractive opportunity, whether financially or for social reasons. Where the opposite is true, fewer vocations. There have also always been more vocations from those that view the inability to marry as a lesser burden, as well. That is simply human nature.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
There’s no reason that couldn’t be changed.
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True, but even it we wanted to change it (and I’m not sure we would) it is also simplistic to think that we can just go back to the way it was until the 1950s. Schools have many operating expenses over and above salary. Curriculum is expensive, health and liability insurance is expensive, education for those sisters (and other teachers) is expensive, training and facilities/equipment for meeting the diverse needs of all students is expensive (we don’t want to continue excluding students with learning disabilities and other problems from Catholic education). I would love to see a return to teaching sisters and brothers in our Catholic school classrooms, but it will not necessarily make Catholic education affordable. What we need is that all Catholics see a value in Catholic education and give generously to support Catholic schools.
 
babochka said:
True, but even it we wanted to change it (and I’m not sure we would) it is also simplistic to think that we can just go back to the way it was until the 1950s. Schools have many operating expenses over and above salary. Curriculum is expensive, health and liability insurance is expensive, education for those sisters (and other teachers) is expensive, training and facilities/equipment for meeting the diverse needs of all students is expensive (we don’t want to continue excluding students with learning disabilities and other problems from Catholic education). I would love to see a return to teaching sisters and brothers in our Catholic school classrooms, but it will not necessarily make Catholic education affordable. What we need is that all Catholics see a value in Catholic education and give generously to support Catholic schools.
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When I was in Catholic school 40+ years ago, our sisters lived in community and all of their basic needs were provided for (I believe they received a small individual stipend for personal needs, something tells me it was $20/month which would be more like $100/month today). We received a solid basic education — no bells and whistles. Lay teachers, when needed, were paid a very small salary (not saying that was acceptable, just stating the fact).

The faithful need to donate more to the Church and, of course, support the monasteries and convents. I would be very interested to see how Catholic donations compare with, for instance, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and so on. Tithing might be a plan for those in higher income brackets. (Just as a side note, the Diocese of Wichita provides free Catholic education, but you have to be in an 8% donation plan to qualify for it.) Vouchers would be nice.

Fact is, “back in the day”, Catholic schools existed not so much to provide an alternative, but because the Church believed itself to possess the one true faith, knowledge of which was required for the proper care of souls, and Catholic education had as its goal to teach all truth from that vantage point. (Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Divini illius magistri, 1929, also warned against coeducation, but that is a matter for another post.)
 
TMC said:
Priests and seminarians are human beings, subject to the same wants, needs and influences as any other human beings. There have always been more vocations in times and places where the priesthood was a more attractive opportunity, whether financially or for social reasons. Where the opposite is true, fewer vocations. There have also always been more vocations from those that view the inability to marry as a lesser burden, as well. That is simply human nature.
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This is the exact point I was trying to illustrate.
 
Bruised_Reed said:
So the sisters are paid less so their order struggles? They are paid less than non-religious teachers from the same work?
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At least traditionally, they have gotten free room and board, health care, old age security, and so on, so they can be said to have received types of compensation that lay teachers would not have received.
Bruised_Reed said:
Catholic school teachers who are paid less than their public school counterparts?
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Often, unfortunately, yes. Generally speaking, though, there are not many teachers who are paid as much as they should be paid.
 
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HomeschoolDad said:
At least traditionally, they have gotten free room and board, health care, old age security, and so on, so they can be said to have received types of compensation that lay teachers would not have received.
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Their Order supports them, yes. But if they are paid less then their order receives less and so do those who are retired, and those that need care.
HomeschoolDad said:
Often, unfortunately, yes. Generally speaking, though, there are not many teachers who are paid as much as they should be paid.
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Right, and Catholic school teachers make less and you want religious to make even less when their income is needed for more than just their basic needs.

All Catholic schools staffed by religious today is a fantasy anyway. And it has to be all so that financial accessibilty you are talking about is available everywhere, not just elite areas.
 
Bruised_Reed said:
Right, and Catholic school teachers make less and you want religious to make even less when their income is needed for more than just their basic needs.
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I want the good Sisters to have everything they need to live simply and decently, and to be provided for in their infirmity and old age. If that can be best accomplished by paying them a salary that is then turned over to their order, so be it. Personally, I like a program like what the Diocese of Wichita has. The money has to come from somewhere.
Bruised_Reed said:
All Catholic schools staffed by religious today is a fantasy anyway. And it has to be all so that financial accessibility you are talking about is available everywhere, not just elite areas.
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I would like to see Catholic education available to all Catholic students, not just “elite areas” as you put it. Catholic schools have morphed into, in many cases, elite academies that many if not most find unaffordable. I’d like to see how the schools were funded in the 1950s and adapt that, insofar as possible, to the present day.
 
Diocese of Wichita expects their Catholics to pony up and give. To give in the way our Protestant brothers and sisters do.

Your parish has numbers, they can tell you that a fragment of parishioners donate to the parish. It is shocking when they start looking at it.

People used to give to the parish, not as an afterthought.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
  • Larger families (and by this I mean more than the “two or three and we’re done” mentality) begin to emerge as the faithful welcome children on God’s terms, not their own.
  • Families begin to live much more simply (they pretty much have to), and more and more women stay at home.
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The modern U.S. economy would not allow this family to survive. Consider my family of four… mother stays home to tend to the children; father has a relatively high paying job for the area. They struggle to pay bills, keep food on the table, have to depend on charity for medical expenses, and narrowly avoided foreclosure. Another child would be their downfall. We simply don’t live in that era anymore, nor does our government / business leaders show any interest in supporting the working class in their efforts to make this lifestyle survivable.
 
This is not what I understand about Catholic families: for example, Irish and Italian. Is it not considered a great honor to have a son who is a priest? Or is this old-fashioned?
 
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