The Pill, The Pope and The People: Humanae Vitae at 35

American Life League ^ | Judie Brown

[Polycarp]

Health costs are another matter if all your children aren't healthy and if you don't have insurance.

We have not had health insurance for years.

[RaginCajunTrad]

My daughter is now 25 and her and her husband have 5 children. He has an associate degree and is a warehouse foreman making maybe 30-35K per year. They get by OK. Yes, it's tight and they can't keep up with the Joneses. My daughter homeschools. She sews clothes and buys other clothes at the Goodwill stores. I think the lack of more bothers my son-in-law more than my daughter. They may have some small govt bennies. If they didn't have any, I think they'd still get by OK.

I see other families like this too.

Bottom line: It can be done. Sometimes a little help is needed from family and friends. In the vast majority of cases where family & friends are helping, govt assistance is not needed either.

My wife and I wish we had had the other 4-8 children we should have had. But for the contraception mentality...We could have gotten by with no problem, just would have had to give up a few things...designer clothes, satellite TV, nights out clubbing, new cars sooner than necessary, college or professional sporting events. It can be done and what is given up normally is not missed.

[Aliska]

My wife and I wish we had had the other 4-8 children we should have had. But for the contraception mentality.

Know what you mean. I grew up in it, not being catholic. What bothers me the most is could I have done it? Would I have done it? I became mentally ill after my first child and had two more.

Knowing what I know now, I probably wouldn't have married and had any children so I wouldn't have had to deal with the conflicts.

It's one thing to govern your own life, but I could never presume to tell your daughter or anybody else they should or shouldn't use artificial birth control.

I think I was a selfish person the way I lived my life, wanting nice stuff for the house, etc., and I wanted the best for my kids because it was a status thing. I would like to think I wouldn't fall into that mental trap again.

Our values are all screwed up. Sometimes I think the love and attention we lavish on our pets is indicative of a deeper ill. Don't get me wrong. I love pets. But we should value people and children more.

Blessings to your daughter and son-in-law and family. In the long run, families like that are stronger and the kids learn to be responsible towards the younger ones and not so selfish. I'm afraid for my granddaughter. She wants lots of children. If I thought she could pull it off, I'd support her 100%. I don't like to think of the sorrows she could have if she has too many kids and can't cope with it all for whatever reason. The best I could advise her was that if she wanted all those children, she'd better figure out a way to raise them all by herself if something happens with the husband.

[Aliska]

We have not had health insurance for years.

I didn't either and it is scary if you have any assets. One hospital bill could wipe you out and you might never get back on your feet.

I'll bet you pray a lot that you won't have something you can't pay for.

[Polycarp]

if you have any assets

What's an asset? (I mean that only rhetorically.)

[Aliska]

Rhetorical: asked merely for effect with no answer expected (finally looked that one up).

I'll answer it anyway.

b. (a concerned a deceased person)the entire property of a person, association, corporation, or estate applicable or subject to the payment of debts (looked that up, too, just to be precise).

[Polycarp]

I think I knew what assets were, mine was rhetorical from the standpoint of "I haven't got any! Wouldn't know one if I saw one." ;-)

[Hermann the Cherusker]

12 children may be too many, but three or four are healthy. (2 seems the best for wealth.)

Catholic Moralists state that families should have at least four children. This isn't a matter of sexual morality but of justice towards society.

If no one has more than two or three kids, its unlikely we'll have priests and religious because of family pressures, and the population will not be able to make up for those who never marry or marry to late, and those who are sterile.

So four children is a matter of ones duties towards society. After that, it is up to your free choice.

Anyone can manage with four kids today if they really wanted to.

[Polycarp]

Well said, thank you.

Lo, Children are an Heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. Psalm 127:3-5

To the Israelites, a full quiver contained 12 arrows ;-)

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Within decades, European civilization will be in ruins, if something doesn't change fast, because no-one is having babies.

Not so. The liberal atheistic section of Europe is killing itself off. Catholics around Europe excepting Italy, Poland, and Spain, are currently averaging 3-4 infant baptisms per marriage depending on the country. This includes Ireland, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, Britain, etc.

For example, Catholics in France had 125,000 of the 250,000 marriages in 1995, but 400,000 of the 700,000 children. The France has been trending at 3.2 Catholic children per Catholic marriage for the past decade.

The people driving Europe towards ruin are the non-Catholics.

At current birth rates, the population of Italy in 2300 will be THREE!

That seems like an extremely unlikely trend. The Italian Catholic family is averaging two infant baptisms per marriage, and these make up over 90% of the births. The portion of the population not even reproducing their own replacements is the suicidal atheistic portion.

There are 280,000 marriages in Italy in 1995, and 245,000 were in the Church. There were 520,000 births in total, and 480,000 were Baptised. Non-Catholics are averaging one child per famiy, Catholics are averaging two.

[Conservative til I die]

I can understand your thinking, but what you are doing is still creating a situational morality.

I'd also ask if the Vatican's (and up until 1930, all of Christendom's) teachings are such a disaster in the making, how we've managed to get this far in spite of them.

[Conservative til I die]

Your #14. Is that how you live personally? You sound highly educated and I'll bet your standard of living is way above average.

Right, but I'll bet that he's not living beyond his means.

I think what he's saying is no one is entitled to 5 TVs in their house and 3 $30,000 cars in the garage, nor are they a necessity, so when one takes on added responsibilities such as children (or less, as in the case of someone deciding to retire from their job or take a new job at less pay), one's spending habits should follow accordingly.

[Conservative til I die]

We have not had health insurance for years.

YMMV, but that's a dangerous game to play. I've always relied on employer provided coverage, and when I got laid off last July, I figured I'd just pick up coverage at my next job for the usual $60-100 a month. My thought was, I'm a young, healthy, virile male, I'll get by for a few months. Then I got the lump on my neck. Five doctor's visits, one visit to a specialist, and one CT scan later, I was out $1500 cash, and that was after they cut me a break since I was paying cash. Soon after I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Thank the Lord that I had a new job and my insurance kicked in retroactively a week before my official diagnosis. I also thank the Lord for my doctors doing what they could to fudge and hold off the results so that the insurance company couldn't deny me coverage because of my "pre-existing condition."

$70,000 of medical treatment later ($69,000 or so paid for by my insurer) and I'm doing OK, but I've learned my lesson. You never know when you're gonna get hit with something out of nowhere. And you never know when the insurance companies will be complete pricks and withold coverage from you.

[Polycarp]

Its not a game. I'm a self employed businessman, a solo practitioner, and the costs of keeping this young practice afloat preclude any possibility whatsoever of being able to afford health care. Reality stinks. But God Provides.

[Aliska]

I can understand your thinking, but what you are doing is still creating a situational morality.

I'm trying very hard not to do that. I look at my own life and don't think I could have handled any more children without doing something terrible to myself, not because I didn't want the children but because I could barely cope with the ones I had under the circumstances.

You would have told me God would provide, better I die than cheat God out of more babies, I will go to hell if I use artificial birth control, but you would never have believed that God would heal me so I could have as many children as He saw fit to give me and raise them happily. You would not believe that God would heal my son's wife of her Huntingdon's disease which she may not have but her mother and lots of her family have it. You would have condemned her to hell for having her tubes tied. I would never have encouraged her to do that but neither would I encourage her to produce baby after baby knowing the family history. I tried to keep out of it. I would not do that to anyone over artificial birth control, although I do believe certain forms are not good for your health, and if you are healthy and able, better not to use any of it.

Sometimes desperate people use situational ethics to survive.

That's why I think it is a bad thing for people to try to impose their values on weaker people. That's what I don't like about it and that's what I don't like about the right-to-lifers. They want to fix the symptom and don't have the answers to fix people and society. Sure, they could force everybody to be moral, but they cannot force people to be healthy and able to work and support their families.

how we've managed to get this far in spite of them.

There are lots of reasons. People used to live on farms and grow their own food and make their own clothes like the Amish. I don't know any catholics who want to live like the Amish. Secondly, never in history have people had to live their whole lives like people have to live them today.

I just wish Jesus would come back and make things possible for people to live the way the church teaches us we should. We need more help than we are getting from the church or anywhere else. Do this. Don't do that. But nobody can or will help anyone but their own in a significant way to make the difference. I haven't seen it.

All this poverty and struggling is all right if freely embraced and so long as it isn't forced on others.

One more thing. The genetic pool is deteriorating, in part due to modern medicine. Darwin's law took care of the weak in times gone past and genetically defective people didn't live long enough to reproduce like they do now to pass on genetic defects to their offspring.

But there are no excuses. Better have a bunch of autistic kids, Down's syndrome kids, kids with genetic heart defects and all the other terrible things kids have now that they don't have polio, typhus, cholera, diptheria, tetanus, rabies, than to tie your tubes after you find out you are passing on defects.

I just don't think it is right for people who have all the blessings in life to preach down to people who don't.

[Aliska]

I think what he's saying is no one is entitled to 5 TVs in their house and 3 $30,000 cars in the garage,

I'm with you on that.

[RaginCajunTrad]

I'm in your court on this. I can fully empathize with the difficulty of raising children. The first 3 were exposed to a very materialistic life. The last two as they were becoming teens saw my return to the Church. They have been much easier to raise.

I am the oldest of seven. For much of my childhood, we were just getting by. Never suffering, but just getting by. We lived in an old big drafty frame house that my dad just kept adding on to. After I left home, my dad's income exploded. He built a new house and the spending went wild. Well, the family was not near as close-knit during that time. I recall families with 6, 8, 10 or more children living in 3 br houses of maybe 1500 sq ft. They all got by. Children went to college w/o govt assistance.

We can do it again.

I understand your concern about telling someone not to use birth control. We can never make that decision for them. We can only explain birth control is an objective evil. That certain methods are never permissible. The choice from that point is theirs.

[Aliska]

thank the Lord for my doctors doing what they could to fudge and hold off the results

Don't you think that is a sin? Deceiving the insurance company? I don't mean that to bash you, but isn't that dishonest? My son sells insurance and I've seen a lot of fudging.

Well, you have a serious disease so scratch some of what I said regarding you. Thank God that it is treatable now. I wish God would heal you. I hate it when people have these terrible illnesses. That's one problem I have with Christianity. God doesn't heal very many people any more. They just have to live with it. St. Peter's shadow healed all who came under it. I wonder and wonder why that gift was lost or withdrawn.

[Aliska]

We can do it again.

I hope so. I grew up pretty conservative in a very modest neighborhood and I loved it. Everybody lived about the same except when I went to school, I saw lots of the kids were worse off than that. People tried harder then and didn't give up on their marriages like they do now and they made it.

Even so, I had a lot of extra things because there were only two of us children. I used to wish for more (a brother). I don't think my mother wanted any more because she was almost menopausal when she married and having two kids with the father away defending the country for four years, her health started to deteriorate rapidly. But nobody talked about those things then. I never knew about lots of things because people didn't talk about it.

That was one of the few things my mother said bad against the church. Priests tell you how many children to have. That was a euphemistic way of putting it, I now understand. Some of her friends were catholic. We weren't. Some times I think it was a good thing. I was a happy child and didn't have a lot of guilt piled on me about my sins. That came later and was self-induced :-). It got really bad after I became a catholic. The guilt. Not that I didn't carry a lot before that.

I'll bet you have a lot of happy family memories even if your parents had to struggle while you were growing up.