Posted on 05/23/2021 6:27:18 PM PDT by ebb tide
Slow, and then sudden, as all great demographic changes in history. The post-war generations' war on morals, marriage, and unborn babies has reached breaking point:
In Capracotta, a small town in southern Italy, a sign in red letters on an 18th-century stone building looking on to the Apennine Mountains reads “Home of School Kindergarten” — but today, the building is a nursing home.
Residents eat their evening broth on waxed tablecloths in the old theater room.
“There were so many families, so many children,” said Concetta D’Andrea, 93, who was a student and a teacher at the school and is now a resident of the nursing home. “Now there is no one.”
The population in Capracotta has dramatically aged and contracted — from about 5,000 people to 800. The town’s carpentry shops have shut down. The organizers of a soccer tournament struggled to form even one team.
About a half-hour away, in the town of Agnone, the maternity ward closed a decade ago because it had fewer than 500 births a year, the national minimum to stay open. This year, six babies were born in Agnone.
“Once you could hear the babies in the nursery cry, and it was like music,” said Enrica Sciullo, a nurse who used to help with births there and now mostly takes care of older patients. “Now there is silence and a feeling of emptiness.”
In a speech last Friday during a conference on Italy’s birthrate crisis, Pope Francis said the “demographic winter” was still “cold and dark.” [Source]
It's over. But a new beginning will rise from the faithful Catholic families we see all around us. Veni, Creator Spiritus!
It's the birth of an Islamic Europe with his relentless push for unlimited invasion by enemies of the Christian faith.
Ping
Too bad so few Catholics honored Humanae Vitae.
Socialism makes children too expensive to have, so people quit having children.
God is not mocked.
Demographic change is happening in Europe, the UK, Canada and America.
Large %’s of Christians are reaching the end of their life span and so are their churches.
The Church of England is declining faster than other denominations! If it carries on shrinking at the rate suggested by the latest British Social Attitudes survey, Anglicanism will disappear from Britain in 2033. One day the last native-born Christian will die and that will be that.
Then, some Episcopal Churches and its similar Christian church brethren may last until 2050.
We have siblings, cousins and friends from the East Coast to the Midwest to the Southwest to California. Mainline churches in their areas for the last decade have been closing, sharing ministers and sometimes hiring retired ministers for Sunday services. Basically no one is there for spiritual guidance, weddings, funerals and just general fellowship. They have “yoked” two churches together like a Methodist Church sharing a Baptist minister or vise versa. That usually/often has a short half life.
Churches are expensive re upkeep and major maintenance and salaries for good workers are often hard to meet as well as the salaries for clergy.
The words of that former maternity nurse brought me to tears.
> Socialism makes children too expensive to have, so people quit having children. <
That is a big piece of the puzzle.
Israel is the only Western nation with both healthy birth rates and strong respect for religion. Because Jewish traditions are passed on one generation at a time, one family at a time.
“World religions”, like Christianity and Islam, can only thrive if cultural institutions are promoting them to the masses.
Islam is strong because it’s being promoted in Muslim countries. Christianity is weak because it’s being denigrated in Western countries.
At the Calvary Chapel, by contrast, there are two services every Sunday, and hundreds are in attendance. There is no "social distancing" and only a few masks. Most of the parishioners are younger adults.
Incidentally, when it comes to politics, the Calvary Chapel is as red as a tail light while the Methodist church is as blue as a Bombay Sapphire bottle.
Is the healthy birth rate in Israel because of Arabs or Jews?
Amish Projected To Overtake The Current US Population In 215 Years, If Growth Rates Continue
The population of the Amish is projected to be greater than the current population of the United States in 215 years if the Amish growth rate, which has held constant for more than 100 years, remains the same.
Two modern, highly mechanized world wars caused complete generations to be lost after both. Those disasters led to nihilism, the belief that existence is pointless, and the growth of hedonism. Those in turn led to the collapse of fertility rates and the importation of “guest workers” across Europe. Socialism doesn’t help, but is not the root cause.
It is absolutely staggering to think that two full millennia of Christendom in Europe is tottering on the brink of extinction.
Surorise! No kids = No future.
When you tell women that it is sexist and unjust for them to remain home and raise children, that they need to get a career and work outside of the home like men, then they stop having children. If we are going to survive as a society we need to ditch feminism and reaffirm that men and women are different, that women have a unique role in bearing and raising children. Honor women for raising children and they will have them. Enough with the attempt to create an androgynous society.
Jews in Israel average close to 3 kids, and they marry young.
Thought this was a Babylon Bee headline...lol
.
215 years? Dont think the good ol USA will last that long...
.
So theres hope maybe... !
That doesn’t answer the question though. If the Arabs are averaging five or six children per family they are doomed. The culture will undergo the same type of change that Southern California, Detroit, France or Sweden are seeing...not good in other words.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.