Thought For the Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Brilliant!
It should be obvious, to anyone who laments the shortage of answered vocations to the priesthood, that the Church’s failure adequately to support and enforce the teaching against contraception is at least partially responsible. The pool of potential candidates has been shrunk drastically as large Catholic families are now rare, rather than the norm.
Back of the envelope, it seems to me that annual ordinations to the secular clergy fell pari passu with Mass attendance. The catastrophic collapse in entry was in the religious orders, and, if anything, orders of women religious suffered more severely than orders of men. Not sure I’d attribute that to fertility patters. An elderly sister told me in 2001 that in her order (Congregation of St. Joseph), the collapse occurred between 1962 and 1970, and it was an actual collapse, a 97% decline in the number of women taking vows. The post-war decline in fertility began in 1958 and would not have been felt among the pool of postulants for another 20 years.
Catholic HS 2023
You’ll Learn theology @ a HS level…. go to a really expensive college.. and…
Blessed are those with money and no siblings (plural) – their’s is the kingdom of… contraception.
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