Dear Sarah,
Just this morning I delivered some oranges to the good Dominican Sisters. The oranges were from the tree in my
mother-in-law’s front yard in Florida.
It’s a pitiful little tree, deformed by many years of persistent growth, sometimes in the face of adverse circumstances and household neglect. Its trunk is twisted and some of the branches have
died off, giving it a barren, tragic sort of look. The leaves are covered with sooty mold and so
are the crabbed fruits. As I handed them
to the Sisters this morning, my groom remarked, almost apologetically, that
they are full of seeds, too. At once
came the responses: I had one yesterday and it was so good! and I think fruits with seeds taste better, the
way God made them.
The Sisters are right.
These tiny little oranges, from an ugly little tree, neither tree nor
fruit beautiful by the standards of the world, are amazing. You’ll never see them in a posh, upscale gift basket, but you’ll never taste
anything better, either. And oranges
aren’t made for looks so much as for taste and nourishment.
Keep that in mind…
Which brings me to your discussion with the panel of
professors (may I call them the Pops?) Good
for you for getting athwart them on this topic! I
would be worried if you had not….
So they told you you can’t possibly understand that artificial
contraception is not only permissible but a positive moral good to be
encouraged because you haven’t yet had
to deal with the rigors of having a
family? I’m not sure you can appreciate
the irony of that statement. Those
Pops—of my own generation, I suspect—were the first when they were your age to
howl in outrage against anyone giving them advice out of life well lived: You
can’t possibly understand! You have no
idea how hard it is. You haven’t had to
live in my world….
Sigh. They really can’t
have it both ways. Maybe what you need
to tell them in reply is this: They haven’t had to be a young woman trying
to make her way in a world made a moral
cesspool by their wholehearted embracing of moral relativism and their establishment
of a personal magisterium. And a
good deal of it started when too many American Catholics (shamefully led by too
many American Bishops, priests and religious) rejected the
wisdom of Paul VI in Humanae Vitae.
If you haven’t read it, do.
In many ways it is a prophetic document.
Pope Paul VI predicted the moral mess we would find
ourselves in once we decided—yet again—to commit that age-old sin of pride,
become like God, and manipulate life to our advantage. Or what we saw as advantage. It wasn’t, of course. Not in the long run. It never is.
I lived through that time and only now, looking back, do I
see the many, many ways our embrace of artificial contraception distorted life,
mostly, I think, by changing our view of the goodness of family life from a
spiritual one to an economic one. From
an engagement of life to an engagement of commerce. From viewing children as a blessing to
viewing them as an inconvenience. And it
was such a lie, but it was one of the better ones the Father of Lies has ever told for it
has been embraced so completely and so unthinkingly by so much of the world,
even that world that calls itself Christian.
The rallying cry for contraception was freeing families from
the stress and poverty of having too
many mouths to feed. The Anglican
Communion was the first of the Protestant denominations to publicly endorse artificial
contraception in 1930—prior to that it was the Christian consensus that
artificial contraception was sinful. At
the Lambeth Conference that endorsed artificial contraception for the first
time, the Anglican Communion stated its opposition to contraception for convenience or luxury, though the discussion endorsed the use of it
in limited circumstances because of the need to limit family size for moral
reasons, including poverty. What we
forgot is that family size is not the cause of poverty. The failure to embrace our brothers and
sisters in Christ as brothers and sisters is.
There’s plenty to go around, just not enough will to share it.
That notion unleashed in the Christian community at the
Lambeth Conference—that artificial contraception would free us from poverty—has worked out
really well, hasn’t it? More contraception
and abortion than ever these days, and no less economic poverty. Perhaps even more than ever. Certainly greater spiritual poverty…
Now, Sarah, you and I both know that this is ultimately not
an argument to be made on social and economic grounds, but even there, it’s
pretty obvious that artificial contraception is a losing strategy. It cannot have escaped your notice that the economic
debt you will inherit from these Pops—due to Medicare and Social Security—is
astronomical. One of the many reasons
for our current fiscal crisis is the fact that we have contracepted ourselves
out of a workforce. When Social Security
was instituted, there were 24 workers for every retiree. Today, just
under 2. It doesn’t take a rocket
scientist to figure out that is unsustainable. And it is your future, not that of the Pops, that
is being mortgaged.
All those big houses with empty bedrooms and too many baths
that we bought ourselves, now that we could afford them, given that we don’t
have so many children? Those nest-eggs
of bricks-and-mortar for the future that
kept appreciating? If the mortgage crisis
didn’t wipe them out, who, pray tell, will be around to buy them and at what
price? Laying up treasure in banks and
houses hasn’t served us well at all. But
then again, Jesus warned us about that.
Not only have we contracepted ourselves out of a workforce,
we have left ourselves at the political mercy of cultures that don’t embrace
out view of the primary value of a limited family size. Orthodox Jews have, by sheer dint of
demography, influenced the course of Israel.
In like manner, Europe is at great risk for becoming predominantly
Muslim in your lifetime; Muslims still believe in having babies. The next generation will shape the world and
the Pops haven’t left many in their stead to take up that task. The reality is this: if you want to help
shape the future, have lots of babies and raise them to be strong and secure in
the faith.
But I reiterate: it’s not about economics, it’s not about
politics and it is not about ecology. It
is about that faith. Our resistance to that faith all boils down
to pride and fear. Those two always go
hand in hand. They certainly did for
me. Pride—I can do it better than God can; fear—I don’t really believe God loves me and provides for me, no matter what seems to be going on at this very moment. For what it is worth, I still struggle with
these, but I think I am getting better at seeing them at work in my life. It’s a start.
One thing I have learned: Holy Mother Church has a better
grip on this than I do. She ought
to—she’s had a long time to work it out, and she is, after all, working it all
out for my good with the Father…and the Son…and the Spirit…in my old age I have learned how important it is to listen to the wisdom of my Mother.
When you get right down to it, I made too many choices as a
young woman not really thinking at all about what God wanted of me. I’m not sure I asked that question and if I
did, I did not, at that time, have the benefit of a loving Church who would
instruct me, raise me up in the way I was to go. And if I did given token consideration either
to God or to Church, I also made the mistake of listening to the culture around
me that said God wants you to be happy
and prosperous. Too often, that is
what I heard from the good Christians around me, too—who, like me, were bereft of a
Mother’s love and advice to tell them otherwise. Is it any wonder we made so many mistakes?
Well, yes, God wants me to use my gifts and be happy but on His terms and according to His plan,
not mine. Looking back, I realize that I
took it for granted that what I wanted was what God wanted and believed that
the things that maximized my personal potential
(the catch-phrase of the day) were in accordance with His will.
I forgot to look at the cross. I too often chose comfort over challenge;
too often took luxury over life. It was
easy to do. If you don’t remember anything
else about the Christian faith, remember this:
Christ on the cross is a happy man, because He is doing what God asks
with total abandonment. It turns out my
personal potential is not for me, it’s given to the world through me, for
everyone else. And it can only be
maximized by trusting God and doing as He asks with complete abandonment.
Happiness isn’t for wimps.
Anyway, too often, our decisions in life are made for the
present comfort: Making the mortgage
payment without concern and having a bit left over for that vacation home (that
I am too busy working to get to use). Saving
for college at Harvard (now there’s a
sound investment…). Having the personal satisfaction of being a big high
muckety-muck at work (which is ever so more rewarding than changing diapers and
cleaning house). Having nice vacations
and a new car, not to mention that stock portfolio (that did so very well in
the most recent crashes). Eating out
(because we’re never home to cook anymore).
I did it. We all do. It’s part of our fallen state. And these things-houses and bank accounts and vacations and cars-- are all good things that
have given me great pleasure and been
used at least now and again for the glory of God . But Sarah!
Please remember—chose life over all else! For things are just things and life is
life. Never confuse the two and never
forget their proper priority.
So let me give you the other side—the side your Pops don’t
seem to see. I do know how hard it is to
raise a family. I do know something
about dealing with children whose special needs take more time than is humanly
possible. I do know about the desire to
contribute to the financial well-being of the household and the ways in which
fortune can change in a minute. I do
know the itch to use my gifts in the marketplace of the wider world. I know
all that. And I know that there really
are families that can’t handle another child for a lot of reasons, financial or
emotional. But I also know that those
families are relatively few and far between and even those can deal better with
the challenges of family life when they are supported by us and by God than they can when they see themselves as
left to their own devices.
Most of us limit our families not because we can’t have
another child, but because we don’t even want to try. We have decided that we know better than God
how to balance all that we are and need and want. We want more than we need; we want that which
we do not need; and we need that which
we do not want.
And so, we decide to limit our family size with chemicals
and barriers and surgeries rather than acting sacrificially in accordance with
God’s design not because it works better (it doesn’t) but because we are
lazy…and we do not trust Him. His system is, after all, so obviously flawed that we
must correct it. We are still reaching for that apple.
The reality is that life might well be very different for me
had I been more open to life instead of drawing back in fear after two
kids. I’d probably not have such a big
house or that vacation home. We
certainly would not have traveled as much.
I’m guessing that college would have been a different experience for the
offspring. Certainly I would not have
worked out of the home as much. I might
have had a child—or children—with serious health problems given the age I started
having a family. I might have one or
another with serious social problems—that seems to be the lot these days. Who knows?
It’s that uncertainty that makes people say I have two beautiful kids —why tempt fate? I’m done.
In a way, they are right.
Having more kids definitely means great risk and the certainty of more
suffering—and take it from me, there is no suffering like the suffering of a
parent for a child. Ask God if you don’t
believe me.
But there is no joy like the joy of a parent for a child,
either. And no greater gift than life
and no greater privilege than coopering with God in bringing into the world a
life that will never end. And there is no
way to holiness without suffering somewhere along the way. It seems to me Christ promised that as
well. No cross, no crown. No Good Friday, no Easter Sunday. And if I recall correctly, that cross, the
one that leads to glory, is real and present and personal and has to be
embraced not just once by Christ, but daily by each of us.
We are called, not to business or economic success, but to
holiness. The goal of life is not just to be a physician or businessman or artist or theologian. It is to be a saint and that is a supernatural calling. The argument that the
Christian life is too hard is laughable because it is in some measure so true.
Of course it is hard. And as
Chesterton said: The Christian ideal has
not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. It is hard to trust God in the most intimate
business of our lives, this having of children.
But if we cannot trust Him there, why bother to trust Him elsewhere?
It’s all a risk,
Sarah, the greatest risk of all, to trust God at the same time it is no risk at all. God designed a world in which—if we trust
Him and cooperate with His will and His gifts—great good, beyond our wildest
dreams, comes about. I began to learn
this lesson—I have not mastered it—late.
But I can tell you it is true.
The Church in her wisdom teaches us how to go about this if we are humble enough to
submit to what she teaches. And remember:
God’s first recorded commandment to us was “Go forth and multiply.” In other words—cooperate with My grace, and I will bring forth new life, life you cannot even imagine, external and
internal.
My challenge, now that I am past the years in which I can
bear children of my own, is to take my
life and by it to help make easier life for those still in the business of having
children.
We tend to think of having children as an individual act, but no mother ever conceived a child alone. The very act of conception is a corporate action....and then, the mother who conceives a child in her body brings him into the greater Body, the Body of Christ. It’s up to the Body of Christ to nourish
and support that vocation of parenthood as surely as any other. We are not in this alone. We are never in this life alone. That realization is both comfort and duty.
My call to holiness now is to use my gifts,
personal and material, for the good of the Body, and the new members that faith
will bring forth, not just to keep them to myself. That selfish call to comfort is still there
but now it says You’ve done your
part. Time to kick back and relax. Let them manage their own kids…you deserve a
break… you have earned it….
Maybe. But then I
look at that cross again…and ask God what He wants me to do. This time, instead of telling Him what my
plans are and asking Him to ratify them, I sit as quietly as I can and I
listen. Then I try to do whatever He
asks, no matter how odd it may seem at the time. That’s one reason the family bedrooms these
days are generally filled with life; not life I bore but life I am called on to
nurture. Give God and opening and He’ll
bring you life. I promise. And what else of value is there?
Back to those oranges.
That gnarled little tree with its sweet little fruit would
never make it in our market economy. It
would have been cut down long ago to make way for a bigger tree with better
oranges, ones designed by man, not by God.
Oranges, you see, are supposed to be big and round and bright and
without blemish. They should be
seedless, because those seeds are an inconvenience. It’s too messy to eat an orange with seeds. It’s too hard to make juice from them. Better just to get rid of them and so we did,
we bred the seeds out. We improved the oranges and maximized
their individual potential.
The only problem is: no seeds, no life. You cannot grow fruit from a seedless orange.
Always go for the oranges with seeds. You’ll never regret it, I promise.
In His hands and service and with love,
Your Bonus Mom
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