What “Future” without Children?

What “Future” without Children? Robert Royal: At the Synod on Youth, there's much talk about the “future.” But unless young people marry and stop contracepting, what future will there be? The “future” has been a hot topic at the Synod on Young People. Virtually everyone, bishops and lay people alike, works hard to find reasons to believe that, despite the dismaying statistics about young people turning their backs on Christianity and the mostly tepid stance of most of those who have not left, we should not give into pessimism or, worse, the sin of despair. There’s “hope” – they say – for the “future.”             But there’s a telling omission. Yes, adolescents and young adults represent the immediate future. Still, if they don’t start having children in greater numbers than the generation or two before them, “the future” is going to hit a demographic wall. And not all that far in “the future.”

           All of this is connected, of course, with a topic that Archbishop Bruno Forte – author in 2014 of the scandalous passage in the mid-term report at the Synod on the Family about “valuing” homosexual relationships – said yesterday has not been discussed explicitly in the first ten days: Humanae Vitae, whose 50^th anniversary the Church is not exactly celebrating, but kind-of-sort-of remembering this year.

            How can you talk about marriage, family, and sexuality and not mention the most salient tool of destruction wielded against them all: contraception? Most bishops and even the pope himself avoid the subject as much as possible – for the obvious reason that it automatically puts you at odds with one of the deepest beliefs in the modern world: the right to childless sex. And there are few willing to suffer the shunning and criticism that will bring.

Click here to read the rest of Dr. Royal’s report from Rome . . .https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/10/12/what-future-without-children/