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Often, at least a couple families will arrive with four, five or even more children, signaling their adherence to the church’s ban on contraception, which most American Catholics have long casually ignored.

They make it sound like the "virtue signaling" of folks who put a coexist sticker on the car. If God sends children, Catholics aren't signaling. They are accepting gifts. My wife and I follow Church teaching, and it was God's Will that we didn't get any in the ordinary manner. We prayed and adopted three children, and it WAS NOT to "signal".

BTW, some of those German-Irish families in the Midwest are good not for four or five children, but 12 and more. The status symbol being a 15 passenger van.