The Panacea to the World's Problems: Having Kids

The population of the Catholic Church thrives on infantilism. The ideal Catholic is happily told what to do and how to think. That's how Rome likes its children, seen and not heard, following without question. Nurturing for the never-to-happen day when it will be set free into the world to think on its own and makes its own decisions. Like the adult child that the mother coddles, doing more harm than good. In this case, Mother (which is an interesting term in lieu of the fact that women are 2nd class in this hierarchy) is pointing out -- yet again-- what is wrong with you. This time, you are not having enough children.

Forget that the earth's population has more than doubled since 1920. You are not having enough children. Forget that the stability of the economy is questionable in terms of cost of living for small families as it is. You are not having enough children. Forget that there are numerous abandoned and orphaned babies in the system waiting for someone to adopt them into loving homes. You are not having enough children. Forget that divorce rates only increase as the stress of children enter the home, so forget about this being a possibility in your future. You are not having enough children. Forget that families will barely be able to put their children through college at the rate of rising tuition, therefore the educated populous at large will continue to tip in favor of the upper class. You are not having enough children. Forget that poverty will only repeat itself until education can occur. Education must be a priority in all countries for all economic classes, but especially the poor. Education must occur before children can be reared correctly. Who cares if you can't read. You are not having enough children. Who cares if you will be on welfare because you cannot afford to have another child. You are not having enough children.

Honestly, would a kind an loving Jesus wish for you to suffer under the strains of stress of not being able to fully support, provide for, love and correctly raise another human being? The God I have come to know would not rejoice in such suffering, rather, would encourage you to follow your heart and know your limits. To nurture the quality of the life for your existing children and forget about the quantity and meeting a status quo for an institution of celibate men. Let's face it, the more children that are in the family, the more the parents need to divy up their attention to each one. Now imagine having more children than patience and those poor parents cannot be there fully --emotionally-- for ANY one of their children. Jesus never turned to Mary his mother or Mary Magdalene or any of the women he came in contact with and said, "Woman, you haven't had enough children - get to it!". The "be fruitful and multiply" statement in the Bible is applicable today, just not in the fundamentalist terms. I would read it as a blessing - a blessing to multiply and share the gifts which you have been blessed with, not just in terms of peopling the world.

Here is an article about how the Pope recently chastised Europe for not having enough children.

Pope blasts Europeans for not having enough
children

By Sim Sim Wissgott Sat Sep 8, 3:27 PM ET Source: Yahoo!

MARIAZELL, Austria (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI blasted Europeans for being selfish and not having enough children, in a sermon on Saturday at the 850-year-old pilgrimage site of Mariazell in Austria. "Europe has become child-poor. We want everything for ourselves and place little trust in the future," the pope told a crowd of faithful from his canopied area at an open-air, afternoon mass that took place under heavy rain. But Benedict held out hope, saying: "The earth will be deprived of a future only when the forces of the human heart and of reason illuminated by the heart are extinguished . . . Where God is, there is the future." The pontiff had slammed abortion upon arriving in Austria Friday as the "very opposite" of human rights. "The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself," he told members of the government and the diplomatic corps at the Hofburg, the seat of the Austrian presidency in Vienna. Austrian Defence Minister Norbert Darabos said in a state televisin interview however Saturday that the Austrian government would not call for a change in the country's law which allows abortions. Meanwhile, in evening prayers at Mariazell the traditionalist Pope defended chastity for religious orders as a way for them to become "men and women of hope." Celibacy is not "individualism or a life of isolation" for priests, nuns and other religious orders but "unreservedly" serving God and having "deep relationships ... which they accept as a gift." The Austrian Church has been wracked by several sex scandals involving priests and in an open letter to the pope the liberal Austrian movement Wir sind Kirche ("We are the Church") has called for the end of celibacy. Despite the bad weather that has dogged the visit so far, thousands stood in the rain at Mariazell backed behind crowd barriers, with many wearing yellow raincoats and some waving blue scarves, the traditional colour of Jesus's mother Mary. The pope, who had arrived in Mariazell from Vienna by car instead of by helicopter due to the weather, waved to the crowd through the windows of the Popemobile as he made his way to the centuries-old white and pink basilica in Mariazell. People who had been sheltering under doorways rushed towards his motorcade as it passed, even as the rain increased in intensity. Organisers said 33,040 free tickets had already been distributed for Mariazell and that the pilgrims would include 70 bishops from central and eastern European countries. The Austrian archbishop, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, told the crowd that two pilgrims had died from health problems, and the Pope said a prayer for them. On Friday, the pontiff said he intended his pilgrimage "to be a journey made in the company of all the pilgrims of our time." He said Mariazell "symbolizes an openness which... transcends physical and national frontiers." The main pilgrimage site in the Danube region, some 110 kilometres (70 miles) southwest of Vienna, the basilica was founded by Benedictine monks. The site, which is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and celebrates its 850th anniversary this year, welcomes around a million pilgrims every year from Austria, neighbouring Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia as well as Poland, Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Pope arrived in Vienna Friday morning and addressed a crowd of thousands at Am Hof square before making a silent tribute to the victims of the Holocaust at a nearby monument. The pope's visit has been greeted with some criticism in a country where the traditionally powerful Catholic Church is waning in influence. Statistics show the Austrian Church has lost about one million followers since 1983, and only 67 percent of Austrians are still officially Catholic, compared to almost 92 percent in 1900. On Sunday, the Pope will celebrate a morning mass at Vienna's St. Stepheon's Cathedral and visit the Cistercian monastery in Heiligenkreuz, before flying back to Rome.