Yes, you are right on the substantive issue, but Tax-chick used the exact buzz words under discussion.
Far be it from me to leave Hermann out of the well-deserved criticism. I find that Hermann gets some idea in his head and becomes a monomaniac on the subject and it's useless to debate with him. One example is when he carelessly tosses around numbers about baptisms, showing a lack of rigor with the statistics.
Another example is his 4-child rule. There's no such thing, one way or the other. The relevant moral principles are not based upon numbers. Hermann says "which I have brought to your attention before." Yes, you have Hermann, ad nauseum, but it's still just as bogus as the first time you mentioned it. He mentions the period 1860 - 1960, during which time the Vatican released "Arcanum," "Casti Connubii," "Allocution to the Italian Midwives" and "Address to Large Families" on the subject. None of them mention a 4-child rule. Neither did contemporary moral manuals of the time aimed at the average layman and woman. Several are available on EWTN, and the concept of a 4-child replacement rule is never mentioned.
I never said there was. I said clearly it was the near unanimous consensus of American moral theologians during the 1950's and 1960's in regards to this teaching. This number would necessarily vary society to society and age to age.
Anyone who has been to China or India, where 1 billion people are shoe-horned into an area smaller than the US east of the Mississippi could tell you there is no "need" for everyone there to have even four children anymore.
The relevant moral principles are not based upon numbers. Hermann says "which I have brought to your attention before." Yes, you have Hermann, ad nauseum, but it's still just as bogus as the first time you mentioned it.
Bogus for what reason? Will you actually address the arguments put out by the Catholic Moral Theologians? Or are you just another person who rejects guidance by the Holy See like the infamous busybody Mrs. Jeanne Dvorak?
He mentions the period 1860 - 1960, during which time the Vatican released "Arcanum," "Casti Connubii," "Allocution to the Italian Midwives" and "Address to Large Families" on the subject. None of them mention a 4-child rule.
Nobody ever claimed they did. What happened is that the Vatican clearly approved of periodic continence on five seperate occasions - rulings of the Sacred Penitentiary in 1853 and 1880, Casti Conubii in 1930, Pius XII's Allocution in 1951, and Humane Vitae in 1968. The four child rule is a practical application to modern America of when the obligation to have recourse to grave reasons ceases, i.e. when are the duties of marriage to society are fulfilled. The duty to have children is one of social justice, not sexual morality.
Neither did contemporary moral manuals of the time aimed at the average layman and woman. Several are available on EWTN, and the concept of a 4-child replacement rule is never mentioned.
This is like claiming that because Catechisms for the laity prior to the late 1800's did not commonly mention Baptism of Desire and Blood, it is therefore a false teaching. It doesn't really demonstrate anything.
Magisterium
Question: Certain married couples, relying on the opinion of learned physicians, are convinced that there are several days each month when conception cannot occur. Are those who do not use the marriage right except on such days, to be disturbed, especially if they have legitimate reasons for abstaining from the conjugal act?
Response: Those spoken of in the request are not to be disturbed, providing that they do nothing to impede conception.
-Sacred Penitentiary, Decree of 2 March 1853, Response to the Bishop of AmiensResponse: Married couples who use their marriage rights in the aforesaid manner are not to be disturbed, and the confessor may suggest the opinion in question, cautiously, however, to those married people whom he has tried in vain to dissuade from the detestable crime of onanism.
-Sacred Penitentiary, Decree of 16 June 1880Nor are those considered as acting against nature who in the married state use their right in the proper manner although on account of natural reasons either of time or of certain defects, new life cannot be brought forth. For in matrimony as well as in the use of the matrimonial rights there are also secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider so long as they are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved.
-Pope Pius XI, Encyclical "Casti Conubii", 59, 31 December 1930Today, besides, another grave problem has arisen, namely, if and how far the obligation of being ready for the service of maternity is reconcilable with the ever more general recourse to the periods of natural sterility the so-called "agenesic" periods in woman, which seems a clear expression of a will contrary to that precept.
You are expected to be well informed, from the medical point of view, in regard to this new theory and the progress which may still be made on this subject, and it is also expected that your advice and assistance shall not be based upon mere popular publications, but upon objective science and on the authoritative judgment of conscientious specialists in medicine and biology. It is your function, not the priest's, to instruct the married couple through private consultation or serious publications on the biological and technical aspect of the theory, without however allowing yourselves to be drawn into an unjust and unbecoming propaganda. But in this field also your apostolate demands of you, as women and as Christians, that you know and defend the moral law, to which the application of the theory is subordinated. In this the Church is competent.
It is necessary first of all to consider two hypotheses. If the application of that theory implies that husband and wife may use their matrimonial right even during the days of natural sterility no objection can be made. In this case they do not hinder or jeopardize in any way the consummation of the natural act and its ulterior natural consequences. It is exactly in this that the application of the theory, of which We are speaking, differs essentially from the abuse already mentioned, which consists in the perversion of the act itself. If, instead, husband and wife go further, that is, limiting the conjugal act exclusively to those periods, then their conduct must be examined more closely.
Here again we are faced with two hypotheses. If, one of the parties contracted marriage with the intention of limiting the matrimonial right itself to the periods of sterility, and not only its use, in such a manner that during the other days the other party would not even have the right to ask for the debt, than this would imply an essential defect in the marriage consent, which would result in the marriage being invalid, because the right deriving from the marriage contract is a permanent, uninterrupted and continuous right of husband and wife with respect to each other.
However if the limitation of the act to the periods of natural sterility does not refer to the right itself but only to the use of the right, the validity of the marriage does not come up for discussion. Nonetheless, the moral lawfulness of such conduct of husband and wife should be affirmed or denied according as their intention to observe constantly those periods is or is not based on sufficiently morally sure motives. The mere fact that husband and wife do not offend the nature of the act and are even ready to accept and bring up the child, who, notwithstanding their precautions, might be born, would not be itself sufficient to guarantee the rectitude of their intention and the unobjectionable morality of their motives.
The reason is that marriage obliges the partners to a state of life, which even as it confers certain rights so it also imposes the accomplishment of a positive work concerning the state itself. In such a case, the general principle may be applied that a positive action may be omitted if grave motives, independent of the good will of those who are obliged to perform it, show that its performance is inopportune, or prove that it may not be claimed with equal right by the petitioner—in this case, mankind.
The matrimonial contract, which confers on the married couple the right to satisfy the inclination of nature, constitutes them in a state of life, namely, the matrimonial state. Now, on married couples, who make use of the specific act of their state, nature and the Creator impose the function of providing for the preservation of mankind. This is the characteristic service which gives rise to the peculiar value of their state, the "bonum prolis". The individual and society, the people and the State, the Church itself, depend for their existence, in the order established by God, on fruitful marriages. Therefore, to embrace the matrimonial state, to use continually the faculty proper to such a state and lawful only therein, and, at the same time, to avoid its primary duty without a grave reason, would be a sin against the very nature of married life.
Serious motives, such as those which not rarely arise from medical, eugenic, economic and social so-called "indications," may exempt husband and wife from the obligatory, positive debt for a long period or even for the entire period of matrimonial life. From this it follows that the observance of the natural sterile periods may be lawful, from the moral viewpoint: and it is lawful in the conditions mentioned. If, however, according to a reasonable and equitable judgment, there are no such grave reasons either personal or deriving from exterior circumstances, the will to avoid the fecundity of their union, while continuing to satisfy to the full their sensuality, can only be the result of a false appreciation of life and of motives foreign to sound ethical principles.
-Pope Pius XII, Allocution to Midwives, 29 October 1951Now as We noted earlier (no. 3), some people today raise the objection against this particular doctrine of the Church concerning the moral laws governing marriage, that human intelligence has both the right and responsibility to control those forces of irrational nature which come within its ambit and to direct them toward ends beneficial to man. Others ask on the same point whether it is not reasonable in so many cases to use artificial birth control if by so doing the harmony and peace of a family are better served and more suitable conditions are provided for the education of children already born. To this question We must give a clear reply. The Church is the first to praise and commend the application of human intelligence to an activity in which a rational creature such as man is so closely associated with his Creator. But she affirms that this must be done within the limits of the order of reality established by God.
If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which We have just explained. (20)
Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the later practice may appear to be upright and serious. In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the latter they obstruct the natural development of the generative process. It cannot be denied that in each case the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure that none will result. But it is equally true that it is exclusively in the former case that husband and wife are ready to abstain from intercourse during the fertile period as often as for reasonable motives the birth of another child is not desirable. And when the infertile period recurs, they use their married intimacy to express their mutual love and safeguard their fidelity toward one another. In doing this they certainly give proof of a true and authentic love.
-Pope Paul VI, Encyclical "Humane Vitae", 16, 25 July 1968
Popular Theological books. I'll provide one simple example.
It is a popular misconception that the Church requires Catholic parents, under pain of sin, to have large families; the only thing insisted upon is that they should not exercise the marriage act in a sinful manner. If, for any reason whatever, married people agree to live in mutual continence, they commit no sin and their restraint may even be virtuous. It is also the considered judgment of the Church that married persons may be prudently allowed to use their marriage rights at those times when conception is less likely. ("The Teaching of the Catholic Church", [Fr. E.Mahoney] Fr. G. Smith, Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1956, p 1091)
Specific teaching from Moral Theologians
MORAL THEOLOGY: A Complete Course * Based on St. Thomas Aquinas and the Best Modern Authorities * By JOHN A. McHUGH, O.P. And CHARLES J. CALLAN, O.P. REVISED AND ENLARGED BY EDWARD P. FARRELL, O.P., Vol. 2"PART II SPECIAL MORAL THEOLOGY (Continued)
THE DUTIES OF MEMBERS OF SOCIETY
Art. 2: THE DUTIES OF MEMBERS of DOMESTIC AND CIVIL SOCIETY ...2622. Is Birth-Control Ever Lawful? -- (a) If this refers to an * end * (viz., the limitation of the number of children or the spacing of their arrival), it is not unlawful in itself (see 2617) ; and it is sometimes a duty, as when the wife is in very poor health or the family is unable to take care of more.
But in view of the decline and deterioration in populations today, it seems that couples who are able to bring up children well should consider it a duty to the common welfare to have at least four children, and it should be easy for many to have at least a dozen children. The example of those married persons of means who are unable to have a number of children of their own, but who adopt or raise orphaned little ones, is very commendable. ...
Since the * Allocution *, the more common opinion in this country asserts that the Holy Father taught: 1) that married people who use their marital right have a duty to procreate; 2) that this duty is binding under pain of sin; 3) there are, however, reasons that excuse the couples from this obligation and, should they exist for the whole of married life, the obligation does not bind them at all; 4) the sin does not consist in the exercise of marital rights during the sterile periods; but in abstention from intercourse during the fertile periods precisely to avoid conception, when the couple could have and should have made its positive contribution to society. Sin is present when the practice is unjustifiedly undertaken; 5) the formal malice of illicit periodic continence is not against the sixth commandment; i.e., against the procreation of children or the use of the generative faculty, but against the seventh commandment, i.e., against social justice. The couple is not making its contribution to the common good of society; 6) from 4 and 5 above, it follows that the individual acts of intercourse during a period of unjust practice of rhythm do not constitute numerically distinct sins. Rather, granting the continuance of a single will act to practice rhythm, there is one sin for the whole period of illicit abstention during the fertile periods.
Since the Pope abstained from an explicit statement on the gravity of the sin, the controversy of whether the practice intrinsically is a mortal sin or not continued. The opinion in this country which holds the greatest authority states that mortal sin is involved in the ease of continued practice with a total exclusion of children and frequent use of marital rights during the sterile period.
Diversity of opinion has arisen as to the means of estimating when a serious sin has been committed. Some have used a temporal norm, e.g., unjustified use of rhythm for five or six years would constitute a serious matter. Undoubtedly most of the proponents of this norm would not accuse a couple of certain mortal sin if they already have one or more children; after that, indefinite use of the practice without excusing causes would not be a mortal sin. (This is admitted by most theologians.) Others have proposed a numerical norm as a basis to determine whether or not a couple has made its contribution to the conservation of the race. Concretely the proponents of this theory regard four or five children as sufficient to satisfy the obligation in such a way;
a) that the use of rhythm to limit the family to this number is licit provided the couple is willing and morally able to practice it;
b) that the limitation through rhythm to less than four requires a serious justifying cause. The intention involved to prevent conception would be seriously sinful in itself, since it causes great harm to the common good and involves in practice subordination of the primary to the secondary end or ends of matrimony. At the present time this opinion seems to be more favored in America than the first which places the gravity of the sin in the unjustified practice of rhythm for five years. (For a survey of recent opinion, see * The Conference Bulletin of the Archdiocese of New York *. Vol. XXXIV, No. 1, pp. 36 ff.)
On the other hand, some European theologians have denied that the practice constitutes a mortal sin in itself, independently of circumstances such as injustice and danger of incontinence.
A final summation showing how widespread this teaching was:
Rather the problem arises with those who try "to impose an obligation on all married couples that is not to be found in the teachings of the Church, viz., that unless prevented by nature or emergencies, all married couples ought to have large families; and, correlatively, no couple should make use of NFP, except in very rare cases...."(1)In the first place, let us consider the traditional primary end of marriage. As put in a standard pre-Vatican II theological manual, "Finis principalis Matrimonii est generatio et educatio prolis,"(2) that is, "the principal end of marriage is the procreation and education of children." Now the important thing to note about this for our purposes is that the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of children. And of course education here means much more than schooling. Perhaps it could best be rendered as formation, the entire spiritual, moral, intellectual, social and physical shaping of a child, so that he can serve God in this world and attain eternal life in the next. Obviously in order to be educated a child must first be generated and born. But, as we see too evidently around us, not all children who are procreated are educated. And if parents are indeed the first and primary educators of their children,(3) then the state of their health, both physical and psychological, has a great impact on their ability to educate their children. Thus if parents are stressed or constantly tired or overworked, they are not apt to be the best educators of their children. I am not speaking of their ability to ferry their children around for the latest in art or music lessons or sports camps or whatever. No, I am thinking of the daily interaction of parents and children and the strength needed by parents for the sometimes arduous task of rearing their children. It does not conduce to forming children psychologically if their parents are frequently irritable or overly critical. Yet, as is obvious, fatigue and stress tend to bring out such negative qualities in human beings.
Of course, one might argue that the best lesson that parents can give their children is that of generous sacrifice to God. And I certainly do not deny the value of this lesson. But I question the ability of anyone to look into anyone else's heart or into the privacy of any other family and pronounce whether those parents are living up to the high calling of the sacrament of matrimony or yielding to self indulgence and taking the easy way out.(4) Everyone knows mothers who bear eight, ten or twelve children and who manage such large households with aplomb. But not everyone has their emotional and physical resources and no one else can rightly criticize those who do not have such physical and emotional gifts.
The second line of argument I want to pursue involves a discussion of the purpose of child bearing in conjunction with God's original command to Adam and Eve, "Increase and multiply" (Genesis 1:28). One of the chief insights in the Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophic tradition is that every action has an end. Things exist for a purpose. God's command to Adam and Eve was to bring about the peopling of the earth. And certainly the birth of every human being is a good. But the duty of married couples to have children is rationally related to the population needs of the world and the Church.
A very interesting discussion of this question took place in the 1950s and early 1960s by moral theologians entirely orthodox and loyal to the Church's Magisterium. In particular, let us look at a work written by Jesuit Fathers John C. Ford and Gerald Kelly, volume 2, Marriage Questions, of their Contemporary Moral Theology, published in 1964.(5) Frs. Ford and Kelly opine that, even with absolutely no excusing cause based on health, economics, etc., no married couple is bound by the law of God to have more children than is necessary for the general conservation and gradual increase of the human race. They state, "There may be difficulty in determining the exact limit for various countries; but certainly today in the United States a family of four children would be sufficient to satisfy the duty."(6) Such an approach to the question of use of natural family planning was not limited to these two authors. As they state, "Verbal acceptance of the theory was expressed by a great majority of some thirty moral theologians who discussed it at Notre Dame in June, 1952, on the occasion of the annual meeting of the Catholic Theological Society of America."(7) I am not here holding up the minimum as an ideal. But we have no right to criticize someone else for what is in fact not a sin. Nor can we confuse a counsel of perfection with a duty or expect others to achieve what might be for them heroic virtue.
-Thomas Storck, Marriage and the use of Natural Family Planning, the University Concourse, Volume VIII, Issue 1, September 30, 2002
I think I've adequately answered your objections on this topic, especially your assertion that the modern increase in the baptism to marriage ratio is based on Hispanic influx. As I pointed out before, most Hispanics in this country are not registered Catholics, and the numbers of Catholic Hispanics are declining as a percentage of the total even as the numeric total increases. It is relatively straightforward to show that many Hispanics are not Catholic by comparing Catholic registrations in their neighborhoods versus the total population. Look here at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as an easily demonstrated example.
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/a.PDF
Archdiocese - 182,727 Hispanics, 44,819 registered Catholic
The City of Philadelphia Parish clusters below encompass 95%+ of the city's Hispanic population. ~34,000 of 116,000 are registered Catholics.
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/14.PDF
Parish Cluster 14 - 5,966 Hispanics, 384 registered Catholic
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/15.PDF
Parish Cluster 15 - 13,850 Hispanics, 2,298 registered Catholic
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/16.PDF
Parish Cluster 16 - 18,367 Hispanics, 1,533 registered Catholic
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/19.PDF
Parish Cluster 19 - 50,100 Hispanics, 23,344 registered Catholic
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/20.PDF
Parish Cluster 20 - 3,278 Hispanics, 797 registered Catholic
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/22.PDF
Parish Cluster 22 - 7,774 Hispanics, 1,012 registered Catholic
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/24.PDF
Parich Cluster 24 - 2,837 Hispanics, 407 registered Catholic
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/25.PDF
Parish Cluster 25 - 14,448 Hispanics, 4,337 registered Catholic
Out in Chester County, where there is a large Mexican farm worker population, the situation improves somewhat for that area, but not for the Hispanics of the steel town of Coatesville or in the county seat of Norristown, Montgomery County.
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/41.PDF
Parish Cluster 41 - 8,031 Hispanics, 5,625 registered Catholic
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/42.PDF
Parish Cluster 42 - 2,330 Hispanics, 400 registered Catholic
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/52.PDF
Parish Cluster 52 - 3,605 Hispanics, 691 registered Catholic
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/clusplan/cr2/72.PDF
Parish Cluster 72 - 4,569 Hispanics, 706 registered Catholic
These data are also broken down by Parish. They utterly demolish the unfounded assertion by some, such as some HLI spokesman, that you seem to join yourself to, that the Hispanic immigrants are "replenishing" a "dying" American Catholic population.
If you feel you have some actual contribution to make, as opposed to gratuitous and unsupported assertions, I would be interested in hearing it. I may try to publish the findings, so I am interested in all valid and factually supported criticism.