Where are all the children?

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MomaMary8 said:
Fear of seeking support is not the same as refraining from grumbling.

Good thing you cannot see the blood dripping from my tongue as a bite down. That emoji is not an option.
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It doesn’t count if your emoji grumbles for you?
 
Xiantippe and Allegra,

I will pray for you. You are very poor souls in deep need of healing.
 
Jennifer132 said:
Hello, I am a Protestant, looking into converting. We have five children. We visited Mass (and this was no small parish by any means) and we were the largest family there. We even got a few “large family” comments, even the priest himself seemed a little surprised that we had five kids. Given the teaching on contraceptives, where are all the large families? And if it is a mortal sin to use contraceptives, aren’t devout Catholics worried about that?
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Hi Jennifer,

If you are still around reading this, I want to say I am sorry for what has happened to your thread. This has to be one of the ugliest thread hijacks at CAF that I have ever seen. You have received some good advice here to try different Masses and to ask around to see if you can locate the other large families in parishes near you. As you have seen in this thread, many of the large families that are there are often just not all at the same Mass time, and they tend to seek each other out and cluster at certain parishes.

With regards to your last question, well yes, devout Catholics are extremely worried about that. But we each deal with that modern crisis in our own way, within our own marriages. Until we start hearing homilies on the intrinsic evil of contraception, and have better pre-marriage faith formation, as a Church, we are going to have people violating this teaching either out of ignorance or rebellion.

On a personal note, I found the best way to find other large families was to get involved in parish life, with vacation bible school and religious education and to start asking around. I was able to find a homeschooling group full of families large and small who were devout and outspoken about the need to be obedient to the teachings. I don’t know if you homeschool so that might be irrelevant to you, but I just mention it because it did help us to find “our people”.
 
MomaMary8 said:
Xiantippe and Allegra,

I will pray for you. You are very poor souls in deep need of healing.
Click to expand...
I always appreciate it when people add me to their prayer list. Who doesn’t need more Jesus, right? However, you might want to consider before going straight into your intentions for people who aren’t as good as you, asking the Lord how he feels about condescending insults that are disguised as prayers, and whether or not that might be considered a form of taking the Lord’s name in vain. Once you’ve cleared that up, I sincerely hope you will add me to your intentions.
 
jmjZelie said:
Hi Jennifer,

If you are still around reading this, I want to say I am sorry for what has happened to your thread. This has to be one of the ugliest thread hijacks at CAF that I have ever seen.
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There were a lot of tightly on-topic answers in the first several pages, but there’s really not a lot to say to the exact question beyond “Don’t go to the 5 PM Saturday Mass with little kids!”
 
MomaMary8 said:
Xiantippe and Allegra,

I will pray for you. You are very poor souls in deep need of healing.
Click to expand...
If this isn’t a passive aggressive post, I don’t know what is.

Hmmm, just curious, you are standing in judgement on the spiritual state of two of the posters here. Based on what evidence is your judgement based?
 
This stuff really needs to stop. What’s the point of purposely trying to hurt people?

If someone asks for advice it isn’t the same as just complaining. Asking advice is actually working on finding a solution but just complaining does nothing to solve anything at all. Getting frustrated should spur a person into action not spur a bunch of whining unless you simply enjoy the attention of whining so you decide to remain in a cycle that allows for it. There’s no reason to “silently suffer” either. You have a problem, you find a solution. There’s no reason at all to silently suffer through anything. But speaking of silently suffering and denying problems, ABC is one that is causing our faith to suffer in large numbers but many posters on this thread have opted to deny it exists. There is glaring evidence of it. There are polls proving it. Many Catholics openly state they use it. Some are regretful but most have no shame. Of course there are many reasons for 0-3 kids and no one should just make assumptions about why anyone has a certain number of children. That doesn’t negate the fact that a large percentage of practicing Catholics are using one form of ABC or another. It’s not helping to solve a problem by denying it exists. It’s not helping to solve a problem by complaining it makes infertile couples look bad or NFP successful couples look bad or whoever else look bad, crazy or weird to simply acknowledge and draw attention to a very real problem.

Momamary8 is a very good poster that offers great advice whenever anyone asks for it. It is always refreshing to hear from someone that is not jaded, who carries herself with grace even during extremely hard life events. People would be wise to listen to her. The messages she posts are full of very good advice.
 
Sarcelle said:
If this isn’t a passive aggressive post, I don’t know what is.

Hmmm, just curious, you are standing in judgement on the spiritual state of two of the posters here. Based on what evidence is your judgement based?
Click to expand...
Considering what she had tossed at her she showed very good restraint. She wasn’t casting judgement on a single person in her posts. However, a lot was being cast at her
 
jmjZelie said:
Hi Jennifer,

If you are still around reading this, I want to say I am sorry for what has happened to your thread. This has to be one of the ugliest thread hijacks at CAF that I have ever seen. You have received some good advice here to try different Masses and to ask around to see if you can locate the other large families in parishes near you. As you have seen in this thread, many of the large families that are there are often just not all at the same Mass time, and they tend to seek each other out and cluster at certain parishes.

With regards to your last question, well yes, devout Catholics are extremely worried about that. But we each deal with that modern crisis in our own way, within our own marriages. Until we start hearing homilies on the intrinsic evil of contraception, and have better pre-marriage faith formation, as a Church, we are going to have people violating this teaching either out of ignorance or rebellion.

On a personal note, I found the best way to find other large families was to get involved in parish life, with vacation bible school and religious education and to start asking around. I was able to find a homeschooling group full of families large and small who were devout and outspoken about the need to be obedient to the teachings. I don’t know if you homeschool so that might be irrelevant to you, but I just mention it because it did help us to find “our people”.
Click to expand...
This is a very good post. I agree with all you said.
 
I’m in Minnesota and there are plenty of big Catholic families here. I’m from a family of 8 children!
 
bitterhope said:
Considering what she had tossed at her she showed very good restraint. She wasn’t casting judgement on a single person in her posts. However, a lot was being cast at her
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Actually she did cast judgement on the spiritual state of not one but two people on this thread.

I am bowing out. This thread is becoming too much like a high school girl fight.
 
bitterhope said:
This stuff really needs to stop. What’s the point of purposely trying to hurt people?

If someone asks for advice it isn’t the same as just complaining. Asking advice is actually working on finding a solution but just complaining does nothing to solve anything at all. Getting frustrated should spur a person into action not spur a bunch of whining unless you simply enjoy the attention of whining so you decide to remain in a cycle that allows for it. There’s no reason to “silently suffer” either. You have a problem, you find a solution. There’s no reason at all to silently suffer through anything. But speaking of silently suffering and denying problems, ABC is one that is causing our faith to suffer in large numbers but many posters on this thread have opted to deny it exists. There is glaring evidence of it. There are polls proving it. Many Catholics openly state they use it. Some are regretful but most have no shame. Of course there are many reasons for 0-3 kids and no one should just make assumptions about why anyone has a certain number of children. That doesn’t negate the fact that a large percentage of practicing Catholics are using one form of ABC or another. It’s not helping to solve a problem by denying it exists. It’s not helping to solve a problem by complaining it makes infertile couples look bad or NFP successful couples look bad or whoever else look bad, crazy or weird to simply acknowledge and draw attention to a very real problem.

Momamary8 is a very good poster that offers great advice whenever anyone asks for it. It is always refreshing to hear from someone that is not jaded, who carries herself with grace even during extremely hard life events. People would be wise to listen to her. The messages she posts are full of very good advice.
Click to expand...
  1. Another problem with “silent suffering” is that (as Allegra and I were suggesting) there may be self-deception involved. The person’s “silent suffering” may be audible to everybody within a city block. Take, for example, the classic Jewish mother joke.
Question: How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: None. I’ll just sit here in the dark.
  1. It’s quite right that a lot of Catholics use contraception or sterilization.
However, it is uncharitable to assume that a) any particular family is using contraception or sterilization and b) that any particular couple does not have serious reasons to use NFP. And there was a whole bunch of that on this thread. (I cannot even begin to address the weirdness of telling other married people when they have to have sex.)

Unfortunately, it sounds like many of our sisters with serious health and fertility problems also get to bear the cross of getting regularly beaten up by fellow “devout” Catholics who aren’t (and shouldn’t be) privy to every nuance of their gynecological and obstetrical history.
  1. I also think there’s a basic logic problem in criticizing the fact that so many families at church have “only” one or two children. And that problem is that normally, large families start as small families. Any small family is potentially a larger family. It makes no sense to beat up on small families, as if being nasty to them will make them have more kids to please us.
  2. When you talk about complaining versus action, I think you’re missing an important intermediate step, namely “thinking.” A lot of people do their thinking out loud and it will look a lot like complaining to people who don’t do it that way.
Edited to add:
  1. I think people do not give enough credit to the impact of later marriage on family size.
For instance, it just dawned on me that (if I have the figures right), you got married at 18. I got married at 22 (but very close to 23). I’m remembering correctly, you had 5 kids at the same age when I was unpacking in my newlywed apartment. I then went on to have three living children, just as you went on to have three more living children.

So, if we lop off those first 4/5 years, our stats are actually surprisingly similar. And at 22 (almost 23) I was still quite a young bride by national standards. Lots of women these days are marrying substantially later.
 
On a lighter note, I keep subconsciously adding the name, “Miss Mayella” at the end of the thread title…🤓 #AtticusFinch #MayellaEwell #BookNerdMaryGail36 😉
 
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