Author from Catholic website shames women who choose to remain child-free

As a Christian feminist woman I can tell you that I have much love and respect for my Catholic brothers and sisters. It is true however that I not agree with some practices and beliefs of the Catholic church. This is just another example. I am a woman who does not want children. I do not hate children, in fact I think they are wonderful. I just have no desire to have any of my own. Author John B. Shea posted this entry at http://catholicinsight.com a website I was not familiar with until now. Below the article speaks about how women should feel some pangs of guilt for not wanting children or not having them even if they don't necessarily want them. The article also touches upon the Catholic's disgust with contraceptives. I am offended and hurt that the Catholic church would shame women so much. With that I should mention that I understand that not all Catholic individuals feel this way. This man does not speak for an entire community. Having or not having children By John B. Shea, MD FRCP(C) Issue: September 2009

“To be or not to be. That is the question,” for Anne Kingston, writing in Macleans magazine, July 24, 2009, and Corrine Maier, quoted by Natalie Alcoba, in the National Post, August 8, 2009. Their answer is in the negative with regard to having children. It was not that Anne and Corrine objected to their own existence. It is just the coming into being of others that bothers them. This is no surprise. Contraception has been the societal norm for over 50 years in our Western world.

Disturbed conscience

Lately, however, women who relish the thought that, through choice, they are “buoyantly childfree” are upset by the fact that other women denounce them as “bitter, selfish, unnatural, evil.” A society that no longer believes in God and his revelation, or in natural law, has chosen to live by a morality derived from a consensus of public opinion. A person who knowingly does something she realizes in her heart of hearts is seriously wrong is inevitably plagued by conscience. In an effort to avoid this plague, that person seeks relief by looking for and expecting moral approval from society and the law of the land. However, such sources are incapable of providing such assurance and so the anxiety remains for life. It must be particularly galling for someone to realize that a growing minority regard her as a “social misfit” or as “selfish.”

The poet, Lorna Crozier, writes, “Children are not a way of insuring happiness or endowing my days with meaning.” True enough, but this reflection merely indicates that our faithless, morally relativist Western society has, since the French Revolution, ceased to think seriously about such things as the truth about happiness and the meaning of life. It has settled for a hedonistic life of maximized pleasure and minimized pain, to be achieved by whatever means the law allows. The law of the land often is not consistent with natural law, but with the will of those who have power. Those without power, the unborn, the intellectually challenged and the chronically ill, have no say.

Negative attitude towards life

This negative attitude toward the life of others started with contraception and eventually led to international “population control,” the promotion of assisted suicide and euthanasia and, in practice, a subtle form of euthanasia called “comfort care” or “terminal sedation.” This is deprivation of fluid and nutrition, combined with opiates and sedation, which leads to death within two weeks.

In both Canada and the U.S., it has recently been proposed that the benefits of medical care be given mainly to those who are 15–40 years old, because they can be expected to pay back what the state has spent on them. At the same time, the cost of medical care to the young and to the old is to be minimized.

Why?

Why has this kind of world evolved? Two reasons are the loss of faith in God and the abandonment by the modern world of the philosophical investigation of being and of the fundamental truths about human life. The reason for this rests with human weakness or sin.(1) “The company of Christ was the saving event which redeemed reason from its weakness, setting it free from the shackles in which it had imprisoned itself.”(2)

As Catholics, we know through our faith that God created both the material universe and also human beings, who have both a material and spiritual nature. We are indeed children of God and our proper destiny is union with God in the next life, a life of eternal happiness, if we love God and do his will in this world. For human beings, this life is not all there is. God’s will was to grant that happiness to a multitude and He created marriage as a means of bringing that multitude of human beings into existence and of insuring their nurturing and education in the faith so that they could, with the help of his grace, live a life of joy and of virtue, carry the Cross as He did and eventually obtain their promised reward. Marriage was intended not only for the benefit of the spouses, but for the populating of heaven and the creation of the mystical Body of Christ.

Philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand said, “No natural human good has been exalted so high in the New Testament, no other good has been chosen to become one of the seven sacraments, no other has been endowed with the honour of participating in the establishment of the kingdom of God (as marriage) ... Thus it is that in order to preserve the reverent attitude toward the mystery of this union, the general connection between procreation and the communion of love must always be maintained.”(3)

No to contraception

The Church has affirmed that the illicitness of contraception is an infallible doctrine. “The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception; that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity, it is contrary to the good of the transmission of life and to the reciprocal self-giving of the spouses. It harms true love and denies the sovereign roll of God in the transmission of human life.”(4)

God’s will is that children, who are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” be conceived within marriage. For each child, He has a role that is meant to be fulfilled both on earth and in heaven.

Pope Paul VI, in Humanae vitae, stated that, “If, then, there are serious motives to space out births, which derive from the physical and psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from external conditions, the Church teaches that it is then licit to take into account the rhythms immanent in the generative functions for the use of marriage in the infecund periods only and, in this way, to regulate births without offending the moral principles which had been recalled earlier.”(5) Pius XII (1938-58) taught that unless some serious circumstances arise, spouses are obliged to have children. However, he also taught that it is moral for the spouses to limit their family size, or even to refrain from having children altogether, if they have sufficiently serious reasons.

The Church teaching clearly does not allow spouses to avoid having children simply because they don’t want them. “Reproductive freedom” is contrary to the teaching of the Church. Those unwanted children have great value in the eyes of God.