Babies, Babies, And More Babies

[marielapin]

Man I only talk to my Mom about once a week! - more than that when she (or I ) has a problem.

[Faithful heart]

do you talk to your mother EVERY day? I love my mamma, but there are only so many times i can hear about her adventures at the grocery store, and the endless updates on my siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles, she even gives me updates on my grandparents (my grandparents live accross the street from me, i see them everyday, in fact my ganny is making soup in my kitchen right now.)

That is so funny. You are blessed to have a Mother like that! 14 children wow!

[hyperdulia again]

yeah, i think she's a keeper!

[Donna]

Faithful,

It took a lot of courage to begin this topic.

Maybe... maybe a way exists for you to give birth without a c-section. The Web is yours (to look into it, just to see?) Maybe. Or a miracle.

Having said that, I have 7 children, and am ill now. This malady is a grave reason, and we have prayed, and discussed, with priests. We may have recource to NFP until things change. Or, "heroic abstinence".

St. Joseph will help you, your husband, and discerning the gravity or not of your situation, with good priestly counsel. Invoke him to pray for these things! I will, too.

Sometimes I think if we didn't have these children (or all these children) what would we instead have? A better car? A villa in Europe? Cello's? More Whiskey?

We would have more sleep.

All things must be looked at 'in the light of eternity'. And I can relate to baby fever; but when I was around your age, pre-conversion, and kept going back and forth pro and con, the cons drove me nuts. "How old will I be when they graduate?" and money and all the rest.

God has provided a little more money each baby. The children have godparents who are delighted in them (not to mention family, teachers, neighbors...and us, and their siblings! I am so glad they are all here!).

We should try to remember that whatever children we let (or fail to let) into the world does not end with us, but on the natural level, with all the generations to come from them. And on the supernatural level the impact is much greater.

(From the EWTN Library. My emphasis)

NATURE OF THEIR PROFESSION

Pope Pius XII

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allocution to midwives, October 29, 1951.

(only exceprts to follow)

[To Fathers}

Immediately after birth, be quick to place the child in the father's arms—as the ancient Romans were wont to do—but with a spirit incomparably more elevated. For the Romans, it was the affirmation of the paternity and the authority which derived from it; here it is grateful homage to the Creator, the invocation of divine blessings, the promise to fulfill with devout affection the office which God has committed him. If the Lord praises and rewards the faithful servant for having yielded him five talents, what praise, what reward will He reserve for the father, who has guarded and raised for Him a human life entrusted to him, greater than all the gold and silver of the world?

Your apostolate, however, is directed above all to the mother. Undoubtedly nature's voice speaks in her and places in her heart the desire, joy, courage, love and will to care for the child; but to overcome the suggestions of fearfulness in all its forms, that voice must be strengthened and take on, so to say, a supernatural accent. It is your duty to cause the young mother to enjoy, less by your words than by your whole manner of acting, the greatness, beauty and nobility of that life which begins, is formed and lives in her womb, that child which she bears in her arms and suckles at her breast; to make shine in her eyes and heart the great gift of God's love for her and her child. Sacred Scripture makes us understand with many examples the echo of suppliant prayers and then the songs of grateful happiness of many mothers who, after having longingly and tearfully implored the grace of motherhood, were finally answered.

[And Mothers]

Even the pains which, after original sin, a mother has to suffer to give birth to her child only make her draw tighter the bond which unites them: the more the pain has cost her, so much the more is her love for her child. He who formed mothers' hearts, expressed this thought with moving and profound simplicity: "A woman about to give birth has sorrow, because her hour has come. But when she has brought forth the child, she no longer remembers the anguish for her joy that a man is born into the world." Through the pen of the Apostle, St. Paul, the Holy Ghost also points out the greatness and joy of motherhood: God gives the child to the mother, but, together with the gift, He makes her cooperate effectively at the opening of the flower, of which He has deposited the germ in her womb, and this cooperation becomes a way which leads her to her eternal salvation: "Yet women will be saved by child bearing".

The order of values

"Personal values" and the need to respect such are a theme which, over the last twenty years or so, has been considered more and more by writers. In many of their works, even the specifically sexual act has its place assigned, that of serving the "person" of the married couple. The proper and most profound sense of the exercise of conjugal rights would consist in this, that the union of bodies is the expression and the realization of personal and affective union.

Articles, chapters, entire books, conferences, especially dealing with the "technique" of love, are composed to spread these ideas, to illustrate them with advice to the newly married as a guide in matrimony, in order that they may not neglect, through stupidity or a false sense of shame or unfounded scruples, that which God, Who also created natural inclinations, offers them. If from their complete reciprocal gift of husband and wife there results a new life, it is a result which remains outside, or, at the most, on the border of "personal values"; a result which is not denied, but neither is it desired as the center of marital relations.

According to these theories, your dedication for the welfare of the still hidden life in the womb of the mother, anti your assisting its happy birth, would only have but a minor and secondary importance.

Now, if this relative evaluation were merely to place the emphasis on the personal values of husband and wife rather than on that of the offspring, it would be possible, strictly speaking, to put such a problem aside. But, however, it is a matter of a grave inversion of the order of values and of the ends imposed by the Creator Himself. We find Ourselves faced with the propagation of a number of ideas and sentiments directly opposed to the clarity, profundity, and seriousness of Christian thought. Here, once again, the need for your apostolate. It may happen that you receive the confidences of the mother and wife and are questioned on the more secret desires and intimacies of married life. How, then, will you be able, aware of your mission, to give weight to truth and right order in the appreciation and action of the married couple, if you yourselves are not furnished with the strength of character needed to uphold what you know to be true and just?

The primary end of marriage

Now, the truth is that matrimony, as an institution of nature, in virtue of the Creator's will, has not as a primary and intimate end the personal perfection of the married couple but the procreation and upbringing of a new life. The other ends, inasmuch as they are intended by nature, are not equally primary, much less superior to the primary end, but are essentially subordinated to it. This is true of every marriage, even if no offspring result, just as of every eye it can be said that it is destined and formed to see, even if, in abnormal cases arising from special internal or external conditions, it will never be possible to achieve visual perception.

It was precisely to end the uncertainties and deviations which threatened to diffuse errors regarding the scale of values of the purposes of matrimony and of their reciprocal relations, that a few years ago (March 10, 1944), We Ourselves drew up a declaration on the order of those ends, pointing out what the very internal structure of the natural disposition reveals. We showed what has been handed down by Christian tradition, what the Supreme Pontiffs have repeatedly taught, and what was then in due measure promulgated by the Code of Canon Law. Not long afterwards, to correct opposing opinions, the Holy See, by a public decree, proclaimed that it could not admit the opinion of some recent authors who denied that the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of the offspring, or teach that the secondary ends are not essentially subordinated to the primary end, but are on an equal footing and independent of it.

Would this lead, perhaps, to Our denying or diminishing what is good and just in personal values resulting from matrimony and its realization? Certainly not, because the Creator has designed that for the procreation of a new life human beings made of flesh and blood, gifted with soul and heart, shall be called upon as men and not as animals deprived of reason to be the authors of their posterity. It is for this end that the Lord desires the union of husband and wife. inDouche, the Holy Scripture says of God that He created man to His image and He created him male and female, and willed—as is repeatedly affirmed in Holy Writ—that "a man shall leave mother and father, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh".

Edited November 14, 2003 by Donna

[hyperdulia again]

Donna...you amaze me a lil' more every day.

[Faithful heart]

To Fathers}

Immediately after birth, be quick to place the child in the father's arms—as the ancient Romans were wont to do—but with a spirit incomparably more elevated. For the Romans, it was the affirmation of the paternity and the authority which derived from it; here it is grateful homage to the Creator, the invocation of divine blessings, the promise to fulfill with devout affection the office which God has committed him. If the Lord praises and rewards the faithful servant for having yielded him five talents, what praise, what reward will He reserve for the father, who has guarded and raised for Him a human life entrusted to him, greater than all the gold and silver of the world?

Your apostolate, however, is directed above all to the mother. Undoubtedly nature's voice speaks in her and places in her heart the desire, joy, courage, love and will to care for the child; but to overcome the suggestions of fearfulness in all its forms, that voice must be strengthened and take on, so to say, a supernatural accent. It is your duty to cause the young mother to enjoy, less by your words than by your whole manner of acting, the greatness, beauty and nobility of that life which begins, is formed and lives in her womb, that child which she bears in her arms and suckles at her breast; to make shine in her eyes and heart the great gift of God's love for her and her child. Sacred Scripture makes us understand with many examples the echo of suppliant prayers and then the songs of grateful happiness of many mothers who, after having longingly and tearfully implored the grace of motherhood, were finally answered.

[And Mothers]

Even the pains which, after original sin, a mother has to suffer to give birth to her child only make her draw tighter the bond which unites them: the more the pain has cost her, so much the more is her love for her child. He who formed mothers' hearts, expressed this thought with moving and profound simplicity: "A woman about to give birth has sorrow, because her hour has come. But when she has brought forth the child, she no longer remembers the anguish for her joy that a man is born into the world." Through the pen of the Apostle, St. Paul, the Holy Ghost also points out the greatness and joy of motherhood: God gives the child to the mother, but, together with the gift, He makes her cooperate effectively at the opening of the flower, of which He has deposited the germ in her womb, and this cooperation becomes a way which leads her to her eternal salvation: "Yet women will be saved by child bearing".

Ok Donna now I am crying (lol) Thank you for that wonderful post.

[IcePrincessKRS]

Amen to that.

Donna, that was beautiful. :)

[Donna]

Ellenita, if you are reading, maybe you know why so many of us have become Catholic?

It makes me cry, too. And I should read it every day.

It'll be OK, Faithful Heart.

:)