Yes, I sure am. He’s
a wonderful, holy man. He’s doing
wonderful things for the Church. He’s
bringing people of all faiths together in a way that was overdue. But the Holy Father needs some discretion
with the media.
I’m talking about his recent comment that Catholics don’t
need to “breed like rabbits” in having children. He was speaking of a mother he’d met, one who
had seven children and, after being told that it was dangerous to her health,
was pregnant with an eighth. I get it, I
really do. There are cases – plenty of
them – where having more children is unwise and should be avoided. But rabbits,
really? I don’t know any Catholic parent
– especially parents of large
families – who doesn’t enter into the responsibility of each child with a
tremendous amount of prayer, thought, consideration, and discussion with their
spouse.
Rabbits plays
right into the hands of an anti-Catholic mainstream media. It backs up their erroneous claim that this
Pope represents a culture change within the Church, and not just in the way the
Church presents Herself to the world. The
Church has never said that Catholics
should breed like rabbits, despite the world's misconceptions. Folks on the
outside have looked at large Catholic families and made remarks like “wow,
those people breed like rabbits” – but that’s not Catholic, that’s just a
disparaging flippant remark.
And there are some Catholics who think that large families =
good Catholics, and small families = bad Catholics, but they’re just not
right. That’s missing the whole
discernment part of parenthood, and is awfully judgmental of people they
probably know little about.
In fact, the Church – in documents that are far more
authoritative than the Pope’s media interview – has time and time again written
that people should not breed like
rabbits. That every month couples should
discern, prayerfully and with great thought, whether they have a serious reason
to avoid pregnancy. That couples
carrying the awful cross of infertility should not use all of what medicine has
come up with to produce a biological child.
That parenthood goes far, far beyond having children and encompasses a
lifetime of raising them – in hands-on, deeply involved ways that go beyond
what other, more “mainstream” religions espouse.
The key – and what doesn’t come across in a soundbyte, and
what isn’t being said here – is that while Catholics (the practicing ones, that
is) are supposed to discern parenthood, the default position is that children
are always to be welcomed. A practicing
Catholic couple does not enter into marriage deciding how many children they’d
like to have, or thinking about when a good time is to have children. Rather, one discerns when it is a poor time
to have children – and the reasons for that need to go beyond convenience and
wants centered on the self. If it’s not
a poor time to have children, then they are to be welcomed. Since most middle-class practicing Catholic
families don’t really have serious reasons to avoid having children – they are
in decent health, aren’t in danger of not having enough to eat, and can educate
their kids – then most middle-class practicing Catholic families are larger
than average. That’s hardly breeding
like rabbits.
And although you don’t hear a lot about it at Sunday Mass,
Catholics who are using artificial birth control, or who are using NFP with a
“contraceptive mentality,” or to prevent pregnancy without “serious reasons,”
are sinning. That’s not popular, and if
priests started talking about it they’d probably lose a lot of people who don’t
like it. But it’s what the Church
teaches, it’s the truth, and being Catholic means you don’t get to pick and
choose what you follow. Since no one
hears about it on Sundays, I’d guess that the majority of American Catholics,
at least, are largely ill-informed about what their Church teaches. If they get all of their information from the
mainstream media and “what Father says,” then how on Earth are they supposed to
know any different?
We need more Catholics who are engaged. More who have read Humanae vitae and Gaudium et
spes and Theology of the Body. More who realize that there is a difference
between Church teaching and pastoral decisions made by their local priest to
emphasize – or not – certain elements of that teaching. The Church is run by human beings, who are
ministering to human beings, and who are all going to make a lot of human
mistakes.
And the Pope knows that, of course, and knows the difference
between being pastoral and being theological, and in his longer writings and
statements – one the very next day after his unfortunate comment, in fact – has
shown himself to be a champion of those large families that were the target of
his offhand remark. As he should be, as
that is the teaching of the Church – one which won’t change. But the problem isn’t Church teaching, it’s
that it isn’t being taught at all in many cases. And a flip comment about rabbits isn’t
helping.
Jesus showed mercy to the woman caught in adultery. He saved her life. But he didn’t then give her a hug and ask how
she was doing, and tell her it’s okay, she’s trying to be a nice person. He said go
and sin no more. Get outta here, and
don’t let me catch you doing that again.
There was mercy, but there was also tough love. Maybe the Church needs more tough love.
In the long run, it’s not Earth-shattering. But as someone who is trying their hardest –
and admittedly often failing – to live those encyclicals, to live the teaching,
I cringe to hear an offhand remark made to the media, by the Pope no less, knowing it will be picked up and repeated
thousands of times, and increase the gleeful finger-pointing at those
rabbit-breeding Catholics, and form the basis of millions of Catholics
justifying their decision to not
follow Church teaching on what is one of Her biggest and hardest issues.
It ultimately comes down to the responsibility that every
Catholic, parent or not, married, single, or religious, has to let go of the
control that we cling to so tenaciously.
That, ultimately, is what we
admire about Mary – she was the handmaid of the Lord, she let go of all the
control she had in her life in order to do His will. And that’s incredibly terrifying, and means
letting go of the dreams and ambitions that we have for ourselves and being
open to following what God is calling us to do.
But once you let go of that control, it’s amazing how much lighter you
feel. You’re still responsible for your
choices – but the direction doesn’t need to come from you.
If you had asked me 15 years ago what I thought my life
would look like, I never in a million years would have said that I would be a
mother of a large family. I never would
have told you I’d be Catholic, either – I was a pretty committed agnostic. I even taught courses on Nietzsche – Mr. “God
is dead” himself - at a major university. And I would have laughed at the thought that
either of those things would be an improvement on the happy, independent,
intellectual, self-sufficient life I was living. But those things have brought incredible graces
and blessings to my life. And I am 1000%
happier now than I was then. And so,
whether or not people out there think we’re breeding like rabbits, we will
continue to remain open to life throughout our marriage, prayerfully discerning
whether at any particular time we have serious reasons to not welcome a new child to our family. And quite honestly – and I would have been
astonished at this fifteen years ago, too – I hope that we never decide that the
time is not right to joyfully welcome
a new life.
