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William Grimm, a native of New York City, is a missioner and presbyter who since 1973 has served in Japan, Hong Kong and Cambodia.
Raising saints, not rabbits
Published: February 17, 2015 05:18 AM
Raising saints, not rabbits

When Pope Francis commented that people should not reproduce “like rabbits,” some who read his comment were upset that he seemed to be attacking large families even though he was raised in one himself.

That is probably one reason that lately he has extolled the wonders of large families and criticized the “selfishness” of some who choose to be childless.

What might seem to be mutually contradictory positions are accurate, in fact, when viewed in a larger context because, ultimately, family size is not a matter of arithmetic.

Celibates who “have no children to speak of” are too often prone to view human reproduction in ways that seem more like animal husbandry than a sharing of human life.

Insisting that every act of coitus must be open to the breeding of children while ignoring the fact that human reproduction entails much, much more than simply the production of fetuses smacks more of the barnyard than of human society.

Human reproduction is not simply biology. Giving birth is the beginning of a process that takes years, even decades. Children must be fed, housed, socialized and educated. They must have access to an environment in which their health and safety are protected. They must be equipped to one day take their places as members of society, and even as parents themselves. In short, they must be enabled to exercise their dignity as children of God.

There is no ideal size for a family that will enable children born into it to achieve that dignity. Size is not so important as quality. Much depends upon what counts as a dignified life in particular societies and circumstances.

When food and access to medical care are severely limited, giving birth to more children than can be supported is, in many cases, simply condemning babies to a short life of suffering. Those who survive are often handicapped intellectually and physically by deprivation in infancy and childhood.

Even in situations where biological life is not threatened, there are still the demands of social life. If, for example, a family has too many children to provide them with an adequate education, then, though they may manage to stay alive, their quality of life compared to the opportunities their society offers and the expectations it will place upon them will be compromised.

However, the biggest challenges that parents and guardians face are not material.

Raising children from bawling infancy through exhausting childhood and frustrating adolescence to the point where they have children of their own requires the sacrifice of parents’ or guardians’ time, energy, interests and personal comfort until the day they can say, as my mother once did, “Grandchildren are a mother’s best revenge.”

Until then, there are intellectual, emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual demands involved in child rearing. The rewards of being a parent or guardian come precisely in responding to those demands.

The limits of what a family can manage differ from case to case. Some families are joyfully, healthily large. Others are joyfully, healthily small.

Caring for a child with special physical, emotional or psychological needs may compromise the care provided to his or her siblings. In such cases, the sacrifices the entire family makes can be a source of growth in love and virtue for all. For other families, though, responding to the needs of one child requires limiting the number of others.

But even when no child in the family has what are generally called “special needs,” the usual needs of children can exhaust the limits of their parents’ or guardians’ or siblings’ ability to provide for them.

In many situations, families can rely on relatives and friends or organizations or governments for assistance, but that is not always the case.

Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae (called by the irreverent “Paul’s Epistle to the Fallopians”) proscribes certain methods of birth control, but also recognizes that circumstances may make such control necessary.

“With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time.”

I once heard a speaker ask, “If you die tonight, will your children go to heaven?” That is the glory and responsibility of being a Christian parent. We must not reproduce like rabbits, but like men and women who will raise up saints.

To do that requires the humility to know our limitations, the intelligence to not attempt more than we can handle, and the faith to know that God will work with us in fulfilling our humbly intelligent choices.

Maryknoll Fr William Grimm is publisher of ucanews.com, based in Tokyo.

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