Treatment of single parents?

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angell1

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I’ve encountered with more increasing frequency, catholics who believe in publicaly shunning single parents who have gotten pregnant out of wedlock, excluding them from social life of the parish, kicking them out of schools and colleges, saying that they have no right to parent their kids and should be forced to give them up for adoption, no government assistance or employer benefits, ETC…

the justification is that it is a constant source of scandal and there is no benefit of an unmarried parent taking care of their kids and apparently in an ideal cahotlic society, this is how things used to be done in order to deter people from fornication. I’ve tried to study the issue but it is never so black and white throughout history as some try to suggest

how would one refute this? what is the official church teaching in dealing with the sin of fornication and its consequences? I don’t agree with the views presented above, by the way, I find it quite excessive especially if the person has repented. and in this day and age, most people are not well catechized and very confused about the rold of sexuality
 
Christ ate with prostitutes. He washed sinners’ feet. I’m shocked this needs to be refuted.
 
At least for the children’s sake they should help out.
 
St. Margaret of Cortona of the 13th Century was a single mom through fornication before eventually becoming a Saint.
 
A good friend of mine had her baby out of wedlock about 25 years ago. She was raised Catholic. I Don’t know where the father of the baby was, but
I Don’t think she was with him. She wanted to have her daughter baptized
in the Catholic Church and at first the priest refused to baptize her. I Don’t know if she had to look around to other parishes or if the first priest finally relented. Her daughter was eventually baptized in the Catholic Church though.
 
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They sound like Pharisees. I imagine Jesus would see them that way too.
 
Shunning a single parent is a great sin against charity.

That being said, there are many people (single parents or otherwise) who pridefully want to supplant the Gospel with their own pretend gospel with its own set of values and morality and demand that things which are evil to be taught to be good, and things which are good to be taught to be evil.
 
7_Sorrows said:
What would the different reason be?
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The woman may have said something in the conversation with the priest that made him think she was not fully committed to raising her child in the Church.

Unfortunately, since we don’t get the priest’s side of the story, it’s impossible for us to judge these alleged situations of “25 years ago a priest wouldn’t baptize this child and it was so unfair” blah blah. The priest might have been wrong, but it might also have been a big misunderstanding, or the mother might have gone in with an attitude and a chip on her shoulder. Who knows.
 
This happened to my brother and my nephews. Brother and his fiancée wanted to baptise my nephews in my mother’s Methodist church. They met with the minister and obviously I wasn’t there but he said he could bless them but not baptise. My theory was that at the time they were unmarried, she was a lapsed Catholic and brother non believer. Neither of them attended church and the minister felt that they wouldn’t be able to uphold the baptismal promises. Eventually my mother persuaded him (she was a church steward). For the record, I can see both sides. I am glad they are baptised but yeah the family never goes to church and have no interest. So this stuff does go on but what impact it has on encouraging people to get right with God I think is questionable.
 
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angell1 said:
I’ve encountered with more increasing frequency, catholics who believe in publicaly shunning single parents who have gotten pregnant out of wedlock
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I’ve honestly never encountered any Catholics of this type in the modern post-1970s era. I don’t doubt that they might exist somewhere, given that there are purported Catholics right on this forum who seem to enjoy looking down on people, but it’s not a very Catholic thing to do.

The official Church teaching is that if a person has repented, confessed and been absolved, that’s the end of it and there is no continuing scandal provided that they are now trying their best to live by Church teaching, in other words not continuing to engage in illicit sex. And in any event it’s not the child’s fault and there should be no repercussions on him.

Having said that, I know there’s a concern from some Catholic parents that their kids not get the idea that it’s okay to have sex out of wedlock, or okay for a father to abandon his family. In my high school class there were several girls who got pregnant and my mom didnt think they should be bringing their babies to school events because to her it sent a message that teen girls having sex was okay. (I didn’t see it as a big deal myself but i waa a kid, not a parent.) There’s probably also some concern, rightly or wrongly, about including a single into events designed for married couples and kids. Will she be stealing anyone’s husband, how will the stuff for married people apply to her, etc. And if she’s receiving some kind of extra help, such as economic aid, some people will be resentful at having to foot the bill for someone else’s behavior. I’m sorry that some people are judgy and not inclusive and it’s definitely not supported by Church teaching, but I can see it happening.

I don’t know if they’re still around, but when I was young there used to be chapters of “Parents Without Partners” where single parents could get some support and meet other parents in the same boat, and some of the chapters were Catholic.
 
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7_Sorrows said:
She told me it was the fact she was unmarried though.
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Again, we’re only getting one side of the story, and it’s 25 years old to boot.

I have friends who tell me priests said all kinds of things to them or their parents decades ago. Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. Maybe my friends misunderstood.

You can choose to believe what you’re told or remember there are three sides to every story like this: the person telling you, the priest, and the truth.
 
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@TrumpTrain
That is a very strong feeling. I don’t know what her circumstances were. She was a well
educated African American woman who was an elementary teacher. She was a very good single mother all of the years I knew her.
 
Well, I wasn’t a Catholic in 1984 or 1985 when her daughter was born, so I don’t know how the Catholic Church felt about unmarried single mothers wanting to baptize their children. It was my understanding she was not with the father and had no plans to marry.
She is still not married.
 
7_Sorrows said:
That is a very strong feeling. I don’t know what her circumstances were. She was a well
educated African American woman who was an elementary teacher. She was a very good single mother all of the years I knew her.
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Well, I was speaking in general, about women who purposely get pregnant without getting married because they feel they don’t need a husband. I think such women are selfish and despicable. I don’t know about this particular woman you speak of.
 
Why is the not need husband part not bolded?
 
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TrumpTrain said:
I despise women who purposely get pregnant without getting married because they feel they don’t need a husband. I think such women are selfish and despicable. Having said that, I would not deny the child any services or funding that they need. After all, its not the kid’s fault.
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That’s going to cover a lot of categories.

My understanding is that women who intentionally get pregnant without intending for the father to be in the child’s life are very rare. Of the few cases I have heard of, also, most tend to be upper middle class women with access to artificial insemination, not poor women on welfare.

It’s more common for a dating couple to be of the opinion that they don’t need marriage. Many secular folk view marriage as a meaningless ceremony. So they may intentionally have a child out of wedlock, but with the intent that both father and mother will raise the child.
 
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