Memories of pre-contraception Catholicism

[anglomedved]

More from last Sunday’s visit to Leuven.

 

This lovely old medieval church near the centre of Leuven has been mothballed since 1968 – in other words, closed to the public and given just enough attention – keeping the roofs intact against rain and the doors against tramps ­– so as to be reusable at same unspecified time in the future.

 

Later I found this touching plaque near the main hospital, "in thankful memory of the Hospital Sisters, who between 1184 and 1999 took responsibility for the sick and travellers", that is until they shut for lack of vocations.

Why the closed church, the death of the nursing community? The reasons are many and complex. But one of the biggest and simplest is, very prosaically, contraception.

Without it, the norm in a Catholic family was between four and six kids. And in a reasonable pious household, you could expect at least one, if not two, to go into the Church as a celibate priest or nun, often abroad, in Belgium’s African colonies or to South America. Add to this infant mortality and the odd war, it kept the population kept pretty constant without condoms or the pill. 

I’m not saying the level of piety or education was that high. In particular among the women’s communities it could be pretty basic, the more so because, with a shortage of men after World War I, for a woman to enter a convent was often the only socially acceptable alternative to being 'left on the shelf'. And for working class boys, too, seminary was often the only way to get a decent education.

And if you have six kids, and not much else to do on a Sunday morning, it does not take many families to fill a church building.

Much was wrong with this Western European Catholicism - the dying days of which I remember as a teenager in the 1960s -, but there remains a regret for certain things that were good in it: especially a sense of decency, intact families, and an understanding that there were other things more important in life than wealth or pleasure.

Comments

[olafr-yngvarson.livejournal.com]

As far as I know Catholic Church prohibit contraception now. Do you mean that laypeople don't follow the rules?
In our parish families have 4 or 5 children as a rule and that lads even don't think about vocation of monastic life. At least I don't know their internal thoughts. I hope with the lapse of time somebody will have become a monk.

[ursusanglicanus.livejournal.com]

You are correct: the RC Church forbids contraception, but I doubt whether one in ten families follow it. The one exception I know is Opus Dei, which continues to preach it, and provide at least moral support to poorer families where having a large family is a real sacrifice (in particular with the cost of rented housing). But otherwise it is pretty much 'We don't ask, you don't tell'.

I am surprised that your parish is so dull of children. As I understand it, the average in most Russian parishes is a lot lower, perhaps at most one child more than the Russian average of about 1 1/2.

[olafr-yngvarson.livejournal.com]

I live in Fastiv small town near Kiev. In my parish laypeople have conservative views. But families in which only one partner is Orthodox Christian have 1 or 2 children.
In Kiev many Orthodox families have 2 - 3 children and they say that they want no more. But I have no trustworthy statistics of number of children in Orthodox families.
When I visited parishes in Kiev I had seen few children (roughly one fifth of all).

[ursusanglicanus.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether, if the Russian Church had been more free and more monasteries had been open, there would not have been a rush to the monasteries in the late 1940s and early 1950s of women unable to find husbands because of wartime casualties.....

[olga-1821.livejournal.com]

There is a rush to the monasteries now, of women unable to find husbands for lack of non-drinking, working and matrimony-oriented men (this is why the number of nuns in the ROC considerably exceeds that of monks). But I haven't yet seen this rush bear any really godd fruit. Perhaps I simply haven't been in the country long enough, but... :-/

Sorry again

[olga-1821.livejournal.com]

*good fruit*

[ursusanglicanus.livejournal.com]

The flip side to the coin is that there must be an awful lot of men in what is fact a very shoddy state.

[olga-1821.livejournal.com]

The worst thing is that too many of those women, despite having entered a convent, continue to nurse a grudge against "that bad world full of bad men". That is why convents in Russia often become hotbeds of completely non-Christian ideas (such as aversion to marriage as "legalized lust"), fears, superstitions, and many other unpleasant things. You may have heard about the scandal with the Bogolyubovo convent. Well, child abuse was only the tip of the iceberg.

[mmekourdukova.livejournal.com]

Впечатляющая табличка.
Вот я думаю - сколько таких надо в России повесить?

[olafr-yngvarson.livejournal.com]

Много!!!
Хотя, мой преподаватель по Электродинамике говорила: "Когда я говорю "во много больше", я имею в виду "в 2-3 раза больше""

[overtakenbyjoy.livejournal.com]

Спасибо, отец Майкл. Интересно и трогательно.

[olga-1821.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that contraception is a consequence rather than cause. In South Africa, for example, the white population is mostly Protestant (Dutch Reformed, Baptist, Lutheran, etc), and contracepton is not prohibited in their denominations. Yet most families have at least 3 or 4 children, and families with 5 or more children are not uncommon. Greek Orthodox families in SA are usually large, too, but I have not ever heard a word, either good or bad, about contraception from our priests and bishops.

There must certainly be other reasons behind people's having or not having children...

[ursusanglicanus.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree, but would sugeest that other than with committed Christians of any denomination, where other facts come into play, including a certain degree of readiness to behave more 'sacrifically', in most cases economics and personal comfort are the primary considerations.

Am I right that in South Africa, whites generally have i) space ii) domestic help?

[olga-1821.livejournal.com]

Yes, you are right about space, although not as right about domestic help (not everyone, white or not, can afford a servant nowadays, and there are many poor whites, too). And I completely agree with your about economics and comfort. But, do educated people in Belgium have problems with accommodation or domestic help (such as hiring a baby-sitter or getting someone to clean your house)? I may be totally wrong, but I've always had the impression they don't (at least it was not a problem for my relatives in Germany, and I supposed there shouldn't be much difference). Please correct me if I am mistaken.

[ursusanglicanus.livejournal.com]

Finding people to clean your house is relatively simple and not too expensive on a double income. Babysitters are more difficult. The real problem is ferrying children back and forward to school - you can leave them at most schools till 18.00, but not 18.05, and business meetings get nervous after 16.00 if you have women needing to pick up kids. The real difficulty is a sick kid if both are working. And the woman who a generation back would have been a 55-year granny and could have stood in may well now be a business executive....

[olga-1821.livejournal.com]

Oh I guess those are worldwide problems. At least in SA many (if not most) families have to solve them, too. Jokes about "Dad's taxi" or "Mum's taxi" are very popular :)