Immoral to have children?

[Tis_Bearself]

Keep in mind, too, that the decision — be it sinful, or be it not sinful, to avoid having children for the entire duration of the marriage, and to use only moral means to avoid it — is something that could have only been seriously contemplated within the past 20 years or so.

Josephite marriages were not invented in the last 20 years.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I have known three Catholic couples who have gotten married with the hopes of not having to cross that bridge. I am not knowledgable with regards to the conversations they had with their priests before they married, but they are honest people. They made no point of hiding the fact from family and friends that they weren’t really too interested in having kids. I am willing to assume they were honest with their priest, as well.

The only time I have ever heard of this was, of all things, the characters of Gabrielle and Carlos Solis in Desperate Housewives, back when I watched that sort of thing. Gabrielle said that she had never intended to have children, and Carlos had an issue with this. The means they used to avoid this was never discussed. (In some of its themes, DH was a thinly veiled Catholic morality play. I wouldn’t use it as a catechetical tool, but there were some themes that you had to be Catholic to “get” fully, and this was one of them.)

For a Catholic couple to avoid entirely having children in a potentially fecund marriage, without the existence of grave medical or psychological reasons, using NFP to accomplish this, would be a very far-fetched scenario — in fact, it is so out of the ordinary, that I doubt the Church would even address it. And let’s not forget, NFP can and does fail. As Father @inthepew said, what then?

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Keep in mind, too, that the decision — be it sinful, or be it not sinful, to avoid having children for the entire duration of the marriage, and to use only moral means to avoid it — is something that could have only been seriously contemplated within the past 20 years or so.

I was referring to the improved effectiveness of NFP, not Josephite marriages.

 

[QwertyGirl]

I think it happens more often than you estimate.

Please read my original post. I said that if father had asked them that question, they would respond that they would welcome children as a gift from God, love them, and raise them as Catholic. Just because you don’t want children doesn’t mean you wouldn’t welcome and accept them.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I was referring to the improved effectiveness of NFP, not Josephite marriages.

Fine, but like several of the other statements you made, your statement is so broad that you’re not limiting it to people who are having regular sex but relying on NFP to prevent pregnancy.

You’re also including Josephite marriages, and also other marriages where the couple just isn’t having sex for the long term.

 

[InThePew]

Are you saying that a couple is required to have sex at certain times to try to conceive a child or else they’re sinning?
Because that is what Homeschool Dad was arguing. That if a couple entered a marriage and didn’t have sex and try to conceive, it was somehow sinful, wrong, invalid, etc.

I was never taught that there was a requirement for a Catholic couple to have X amount of sex at Y times of the month in order to avoid sin.

Marriage has two purposes - procreative and unitive (the two coming together as one). I was answering a specific question about a couple intentionally avoiding children altogether - I never said that couples were required to have sex at all, let alone at any given frequency. In fairness, I probably should have said “to inhibit it in this way” - apologies for my ambiguous construction. A couple who use NFP for the purposes of postponing (as opposed to avoiding altogether) are not sinning, and remain open to the generation of new life (even if not intending conception at that point in time).

Besides this, a couple can of course abstain from intercourse altogether and still have a perfectly valid marriage. While a marriage has to be open to children, we obviously accept that in certain cases (e.g. couples of advanced age) this realistically isn’t going to happen and there’s no expectation that they have to try and prove the point! Such cases aside, while they’re expected to be open to children how hard they try to make that happen is really a matter for them.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Thank you for the clarification.

We frequently get questions on here such as, “If a couple has a Josephite marriage, isn’t it invalid because they don’t have sex/ aren’t going to have children?”
Or, “Are Catholic couples required to try to get pregnant?”

So it’s important to be very clear, if discussing use of NFP, that the question is about the motivation, etc for using NFP, not about the Church requiring that married couples have sex.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Please read my original post. I said that if father had asked them that question, they would respond that they would welcome children as a gift from God, love them, and raise them as Catholic. Just because you don’t want children doesn’t mean you wouldn’t welcome and accept them.

That is not the way I read it, but thank you for the clarification. I have a very hard time getting my head around the mindset that says “we don’t want children, we don’t want to have them, but if we do, we’ll welcome and accept them”. Adding to this that the couples would use NFP (and you did not state this) is, to my mind, so far-fetched and eccentric that I am at a loss for words, a situation that does not happen often for me.

You’re also including Josephite marriages, and also other marriages where the couple just isn’t having sex for the long term.

I am not including Josephite marriages. I recognize that a couple could enter into such a marriage for reasons of piety. I suppose they could also do so for other reasons — simple companionship, mutual assistance, and so on. There are also asexual people who might wish nevertheless to marry. I wouldn’t be the one to tell them they couldn’t do it — asexuality is not impotence.

Or, “Are Catholic couples required to try to get pregnant?”

My understanding has always been “yes, unless they are voluntarily living in a Josephite marriage, or for seriously grave reasons (eugenic issues, severe disabilities, grave psychological imbalances of one or both partners, etc.) it is inadvisable for them to have children”. Even in the latter scenario, they must recognize that if they exercise conjugal rights, there is always the possibility, however remote, that the wife will become pregnant.

 

[QwertyGirl]

I have a very hard time getting my head around the mindset that says “we don’t want children, we don’t want to have them, but if we do, we’ll welcome and accept them”. Adding to this that the couples would use NFP (and you did not state this) is, to my mind, so far-fetched and eccentric that I am at a loss for words, a situation that does not happen often for me.

Not sure why this is so hard to wrap your head around. People do this all the time and post about it here at CAF. “We have 5 children and it is enough. We use NFP. We don’t know how we would take care of additional children but we would welcome them if it is God’s will”. I think you are thinking that is different from not wanting any children at all, but really it isn’t.

I know couples who believe, due to medical testing, that they are most likely infertile and they like it that way. They don’t really want any children, at all. But they marry, and they do so with the mindset that if they conceive they will make the best of it, welcome the child with love, accept it as a gift from God, raise it as Catholic, yadda yadda yadda.

These things are so personal between the two people who make up the couple. I would never presume to know what goes on between them. I only know what they care to share. Besides that, I would never say something is hard to believe.

Plenty of Catholics get married without much desire for kids. The kids come. It is the life they choose for themselves.

 

[halogirl]

I used to worry about things like this (more specifically, should we have more and more kids when the planet can’t sustain the population/carbon footprint ) but what helped me was that we need people who will solve those problems and bring balance and peace to the world. God works though people so we need to keep having people! You can’t worry about everything people will ever do or you will end up having serious anxiety. Just stay in your lane and love the people placed in your life including your kids and pray that others will use their free will wisely.

 

[AlNg]

I have tried thinking of it from that perspective, but consider how we’ve been told most of humanity will go to hell. Statistically speaking it’s much more likely our children will go to hell than heaven.

I have noticed that also being said by people on CAF.

 

[halogirl]

My priest very recently said ‘do you want your parents to be in Heaven?’ And I said ‘yes’ and he said ‘well why wouldn’t God want the best for them too and even more so ?’ He also prayed for me to not give in to negative thoughts which I am prone to. God will give us infinite chances to repent, as long as we are willing to meet him halfway (or not even halfway in most of our cases).

 

[littlebird]

If we stop having children there will be no human life left on the planet.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

My understanding has always been “yes, unless they are voluntarily living in a Josephite marriage, or for seriously grave reasons (eugenic issues, severe disabilities, grave psychological imbalances of one or both partners, etc.) it is inadvisable for them to have children”.

Father pretty much just said that Catholic couples are not required to try, as in make efforts, to get pregnant. Which is also my understanding. And which has been said on previous threads as well.

We are going in circles with this, and my impression is that you’re going to continue with your opinion that you think Catholic couples have some duty to make efforts to conceive children. Respectfully, that’s not correct. They simply need to not use any forms of prohibited contraception, and if they have sex, they need to be ready to welcome any children that might come along. This does not equate to “trying” to have a child. “Trying” suggests that they have to make sure to have sex when the woman might be fertile, or that if children are not coming along naturally then it’s off to the doctor to take pills etc. None of which is required.

So I will mute this now rather than continue to repeat myself in the face of misinformed opinion.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Not sure why this is so hard to wrap your head around. People do this all the time and post about it here at CAF. “We have 5 children and it is enough. We use NFP. We don’t know how we would take care of additional children but we would welcome them if it is God’s will”. I think you are thinking that is different from not wanting any children at all, but really it isn’t.

I think it is very different. Anyone who has already had five children — unless you go the route of some uber-traditionalists who want to “max out” their family, and I am not one of those — has clearly fulfilled God’s mandate to “be fruitful and multiply”, and can safely say “we’re done now, unless Our Blessed Lord decides otherwise, in spite of our use of NFP going forward”. All the difference in the world from going into marriage with the desire never to have children at all.

I know couples who believe, due to medical testing, that they are most likely infertile and they like it that way. They don’t really want any children, at all. But they marry, and they do so with the mindset that if they conceive they will make the best of it, welcome the child with love, accept it as a gift from God, raise it as Catholic, yadda yadda yadda.

Outside of having been sterilized (voluntarily ergo sinfully, or involuntarily as the result of surgery or disease), or being well into menopause with no possibility of ever ovulating again, absolute sterility is rather uncommon. There is always a possibility, remote though it might be. My cousin had been in an accident and thought he was sterile — he had lived a very dissolute lifestyle and had never gotten any of his consorts pregnant — yet he finally fathered a child. Another cousin had a serious illness in her teenage years and just assumed she couldn’t get pregnant. She did, twice — once by accident and a second time on purpose. She made an outstanding mother. So it does happen.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Plenty of Catholics get married without much desire for kids. The kids come. It is the life they choose for themselves.

That, too, is hard for me to get my head around. I always wanted several, yet for various reasons, some culpable, some not, I ended up just having the one son. We miscarried at least once, and probably several other times (late periods that may have been miscarriages).

Quite aside from any personal preferences, I have always understood traditional Catholic attitudes towards marriage to be something like this:

• If you’re going to marry, expect to have children, possibly more than you’d ideally like to have. That is ultimately God’s decision. Artificial birth control or sterilization aren’t an option.
• If you don’t want as many children, wait until later in life to marry, when the fertility window is narrower. (I’ve heard this referred to as “Irish birth control” — I have some Irish blood but I have never culturally identified as an “Irish Catholic”, it wasn’t part of my upbringing.)
• If you don’t want children at all, find a wife who can’t get pregnant — this might entail waiting until much later in life, and have your marriage in your senior years.

I realize that many contemporary Catholics have not been taught in this fashion.

 

[QwertyGirl]

Outside of having been sterilized (voluntarily ergo sinfully, or involuntarily as the result of surgery or disease), or being well into menopause with no possibility of ever ovulating again, absolute sterility is rather uncommon

I did’t say absolute sterility. Endometriosis and PCOS are just two conditions which can make chances of conceiving extremely low.

Also, many women with those conditions opt to perpetually take hormones (aka birth control pills) to keep their conditions manageable.

As I said, these are complicated situations and issues and best left to the couple. Some people choose not to actively try to conceive and know that unless they do the chances are slim to none that there will be children. And they are happy about it.

 

[Anicette]

Is it a serious question?

Do you want the human race stop to existing after your generation?

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Father pretty much just said that Catholic couples are not required to try, as in make efforts, to get pregnant. Which is also my understanding. And which has been said on previous threads as well.

We are going in circles with this, and my impression is that you’re going to continue with your opinion that you think Catholic couples have some duty to make efforts to conceive children. Respectfully, that’s not correct. They simply need to not use any forms of prohibited contraception, and if they have sex, they need to be ready to welcome any children that might come along. This does not equate to “trying” to have a child. “Trying” suggests that they have to make sure to have sex when the woman might be fertile, or that if children are not coming along naturally then it’s off to the doctor to take pills etc. None of which is required.

I didn’t get that from Father’s comments — “A couple who use NFP for the purposes of postponing (as opposed to avoiding altogether) are not sinning, and remain open to the generation of new life (even if not intending conception at that point in time)”. From this, I would read that couples are not allowed to avoid altogether conception for the entire duration of the marriage — from the wedding day to the day one of them dies — unless there is some grave reason, such as the eugenic or psychological reasons I alluded to earlier, or unless they both agree to a Josephite marriage.

As far as I am aware, a couple who cannot conceive naturally are not obligated to take medical treatments to make this more likely. That can backfire, with multiple simultaneous pregnancies occurring. Fertility enhancement should be approached with caution, and ideally, under Catholic auspices (a Catholic OB/GYN or similar) — secular fertility doctors typically have no compunction about reducing multiple pregnancies (i.e., aborting the “excess” children).

I am seriously considering approaching the Holy See directly and asking for clarification on the question of whether married couples in healthy, normal circumstances, unless they are seeking to live in sexless Josephite marriages, without grave reasons to the contrary, are obliged to attempt to conceive at least one child. I would also like clarification of whether “just not wanting any children at all” is a morally licit lifestyle choice for Catholic couples who, as I said, have no grave reason to avoid having children.

For that matter, I have even entertained the idea that the Holy Father, mindful of the serious and irreversible consequences that some claim will result from “climate change” and the impact of human activity upon that change, could call upon Catholic couples to limit the size of their families — using moral means — to replacement level or even below replacement level. If the “climate change” people are right, there might be a positive obligation to stabilize, or even reduce, the world’s population. I could accept that. Many of your more traditionalist-minded Catholics would scream bloody murder if the Pope made this kind of plea, but I wouldn’t be among them.

 

[Mrchatsworth]

I’m still waiting for a fertile catholic couple to live out this fantasy of a healthy active sex life and no kids.
LOL