Rhythm Method otherwise known as "Keep Your Fingers Crossed"

I’m not gonna talk about abortion today but I am still pretty confident that this will generate our usual exciting discussions!

A relative of mine lives in Tennessee.  He is 31 years old, has a lovely wife and makes a good living as an attorney for a big law firm.  He and his wife are very devout Catholics and faithfully adhere to all of the rules and regulations, including the one that basically says you should only have sex to procreate.  They say they use the “rhythm method,” which I frankly don’t know if the church condones or not.  But, basically, that’s their form of “birth control.”

Well, it ain’t working very well because in the last 6 years, they’ve had four children.  And I just learned that they are now expecting baby number five!  But when I saw them this weekend, I could not bring myself to congratulate them because I believe that producing five children is a very selfish act.

Now, they have enough money to raise the kids in a nice setting.  We do not have to worry about them sopping off the public dole.  And the kids will probably grow up to be productive citizens, although – yes – it is possible that one or two of the five might wind up being drug dealing psychopaths.  But, let’s be optimistic and say that they will all grow up to be wonderful pillars of society.

Here’s the problem.  The Catholics who read and comment on this blog believe that their religion is “the word,” that all of the other religions don’t have much to offer and, indeed, are way off base.  This not only relates to the issue of abortion, but to so many other issues that the church pokes its nose into.  But if it were up to many Catholics, we would all sign up with their church and join them in following the dictates of the Pope, like lemmings to the sea.  And, if we all did that, we’d all be producing 5, 6, 7 kids.

And while each one of those kids might be a “blessing,” as many suggest, I still think that having that many kids is a selfish act.  Many years ago, when we had an infinite amount of resources and it actually was helpful to have a crap load of kids

Catholic Model

working the family farm.  But that’s not the world we live in anymore.  We are using up all of our food, our water and other natural resources at an alarming rate.  Oh sure, those of you reading this might be sitting in a nice comfortable heated house but take a minute and read about the rest of the world, especially the Third World countries.

The point is that if every woman becomes a breeder reactor, the plethora of children they produced will be adversely affecting the world that my TWO children are living in.  That’s because we share the same planet, we breathe the same air.  We can just simply no longer afford to be propagating at a pace like this young couple.

And, let me throw in this wrench:  if I told you the same story and the woman was an illegal immigrant and crack addict living on welfare in the Bronx, would you still be saying that her sixth child was a “blessing?”