Pope Francis: ‘Large families are a gift from God’

[utunumsint]

Our experience at FSSP was that you could actually pray during the Mass. But our first attendance was kind of funny. It was Pentacost. Like good modern Catholics, my wife had us all dressed with some prominent red. I think I had a red shirt and she had a red dress. Well, the FSSP (and I think Opus Dei as well) tend to be very conservative in their dress. I think most of the men had stolen their suits from Ralph Nader in the 60s. Well, we stuck out like a red, sore thumb. Very awkward. In retrospect, very funny though. Have not had anything like that experience in other traditional communities.

LOL - very funny.

My first date with my wife was to my first Latin mass at the FSSP parish! It was a wonderful first date.

Interesting sociology. My experience in the modern church was that it was taboo to say anything about CINOs (I apologize for the term, but it fits, as does the analogy to RINOs), but in the modern church it is open season on traditionalists and people with large families. Then in an official traditional branch of the modernist church, FSSP, the pendulum seems to swing in the opposite direction. These folks, God bless them, are trying so hard to be good Catholics that they come across as wrapped too tight and susceptible to breakdown. Perhaps it’s because they still feel like there is a target on their backs. They are traditionalists at the mercy of the modern church. Their priests are called off willy nilly to perform the modern rite. And their churches are often closed on the whims of the hierarchy, despite stronger attendance and productivity in terms of vocations.

Agreed. That has changed a great deal since Benedict XVI, but I was attending that parish before Benedict’s changes. They certainly felt like they had a target on their backs.

If you want to understand Catholic morality, you have to know a little something about Aristotle. Virtue is almost always an issue of balance, but the golden mean is seldom in the middle of extremes. Rather, one extreme is usually much easier to fall into. It’s easier to be arrogant than humble, gluttonous than anorexic, and so forth. But it is possible to be too humble, too controlled with diet, and so forth. Jesus, however, did not speak like Aristotle. Jesus always criticized the easier vice, pride or gluttony, and urged people to strive for the opposite. Why? Most people will strive for the opposite, fall short, and accidentally fall somewhere close to the mean. It’s the same with the issue of fecundity. In modern times, it’s easy to just use birth control and have no children or a small family. But it is difficult to follow NFP or just be open to fertility. The vast majority (the 93% who reject the church’s teaching) will fall short. A few (some of the 7% who do follow church teaching) will hit the mark. And a few (the remainder of the 7%) may overshoot the mark and become what I call blue-ribbon Catholics. I happen to think that Jesus would have praised them. Today, we have a hierarchy that is critical of those who overshoot the mark, but silent on those who don’t even try. Seems to me everything is topsy turvy

Wonderful summary. I 100% agree. I think that is what rankles me about the Pope’s comments. He may be right, but does that fraction of a percentage of faithful catholics who go to extremes in their attempts to follow church teachings need to be called out? Especially when the question comes from the secular media who already think that family sizes more than 3 are large?

I would also go a step further and say, I think one of the main causes of confusion in the church post Vatican II was the rejection or abandonment of our Thomistic philosophical tradition. Not that Thomism is canonised, but in order to even understand the new theologies that emerged out of Vatican II or during Vatican II, you need that Thomistic starting point. We can’t even begin understand most of the last 800 years of church intellectual life without that grounding.

As for me, I don’t expect praise for having a large family. But I don’t accept criticism for the size of my family, not from fellow Catholics, and certainly not from the hierarchy. Likewise, I do not expect generosity from my fellow parishioners, but I am grateful when they are. And I do believe that this generosity is a mark of Sacramental Grace. Conversely, the lack of generosity leads me to suspect there is something amiss, perhaps something invalid, and denotes a lack of Sacramental Grace.

That is the truth. I know that I could not have made it very far in our large family without the generosity of faithful (and even unfaithful) Catholics.

God bless,
Ut

 

[LongingSoul]

Interesting sociology. My experience in the modern church was that it was taboo to say anything about CINOs (I apologize for the term, but it fits, as does the analogy to RINOs), but in the modern church it is open season on traditionalists and people with large families. Then in an official traditional branch of the modernist church, FSSP, the pendulum seems to swing in the opposite direction. These folks, God bless them, are trying so hard to be good Catholics that they come across as wrapped too tight and susceptible to breakdown. Perhaps it’s because they still feel like there is a target on their backs. They are traditionalists at the mercy of the modern church. Their priests are called off willy nilly to perform the modern rite. And their churches are often closed on the whims of the hierarchy, despite stronger attendance and productivity in terms of vocations.

If you want to understand Catholic morality, you have to know a little something about Aristotle. Virtue is almost always an issue of balance, but the golden mean is seldom in the middle of extremes. Rather, one extreme is usually much easier to fall into. It’s easier to be arrogant than humble, gluttonous than anorexic, and so forth. But it is possible to be too humble, too controlled with diet, and so forth. Jesus, however, did not speak like Aristotle. Jesus always criticized the easier vice, pride or gluttony, and urged people to strive for the opposite. Why? Most people will strive for the opposite, fall short, and accidentally fall somewhere close to the mean. It’s the same with the issue of fecundity. In modern times, it’s easy to just use birth control and have no children or a small family. But it is difficult to follow NFP or just be open to fertility. The vast majority (the 93% who reject the church’s teaching) will fall short. A few (some of the 7% who do follow church teaching) will hit the mark. And a few (the remainder of the 7%) may overshoot the mark and become what I call blue-ribbon Catholics. I happen to think that Jesus would have praised them. Today, we have a hierarchy that is critical of those who overshoot the mark, but silent on those who don’t even try. Seems to me everything is topsy turvy

I’ll just try and ignore those grating terminologies: the ‘modern’ Church. The ‘modern’ rite. It’s all just ‘the’ Mass as far as I’m concerned and I won’t be drawn into the false dichotomy. :bible1:

I completely disagree with you regarding Jesus focus. He spoke forcefully about sin and its roots especially in the deadly sins but His harshest admonitions were for the sins of the Pharisees and Scribes. They were the blue ribbon Jews you could say. Religious hypocrisy and judgement are generally concealed sins with toxic capacity and in the end… it was those concealed sins that led them to cooperate with ‘the enemy’ in the death of the Saviour.

It follows from the principle… “The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." - Luke 12 47-48

The Church has never set down a blueprint of the family outside of mother, father, offspring. As a matter of fact she has strongly esteemed the sacred nature of mans powers of reasoning and free will as being very important to both the natural and divine order.

“On the contrary, It is written (Sirach 15:14): “God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel”; and the gloss adds: “That is of his free-will.”” - Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica

For Jesus to have elevated the large family to an esteemed spiritual high ground would have been to devalue His own dear Mother and father and family.

As human beings we are called to cooperate with both God and nature and in doing so, discern Gods will for us. Aquinas reminds us in a number of his writings “For just as grace presupposes nature, so must the Divine law presuppose the natural law.”

In that light, the Church could never claim to hold family size to any arbitrary rule since fecundity primarily serves the needs of the species which is not always served by limitless progeneration.

 

[dad_o_six]

“For Jesus to have elevated the large family to an esteemed spiritual high ground would have been to devalue His own dear Mother and father and family.”

Not sure what logical fallacy this is, but I think your logic is flawed. Clearly, the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph are an extraordinary examples par excellence. Though in many ways they are models for us to emulate, in other ways their examples are beyond our grasp. My wife, though a beautiful woman, was not conceived without original sin. Furthermore, she delivered all of our children vaginally, not preternaturally passing through the wall of the womb, foreshadowing how Jesus would leave the tomb. There are reasons they only had one child, which is by the way something we reason as Catholics from our beliefs about her, and a real bone of contention to Protestants.

Perhaps the discussion of this issue should be confined to general theories, not individuals. When you infer that I’m a pharisee, I think perhaps you are not understanding what I am saying. I am not commenting that this individual or that person should follow the rules. I am speaking more in general. I am talking about principles.

Look at Europe today. The Germans and French are becoming fervent Islamophobes. Why? Because the Arabs and North Africans are immigrating to those countries because their economies are unsustainable without immigration. Why? Their birth rates are appallingly low. We face a similar situation in America, except our immigrants come from Latin America. One of the biggest problems we are about to face is the bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security. Why? Because we are not sustaining or growing our population. Surely, Catholics are not buying into the Malthusian doctrines that have intoxicated the rest of the world.