Ashamed to ask the question, oh anonymous one?

ALCON: Please do not respond to this OP unless/until they put an account behind it.

Today, Many Catholics morality is no different than their secular  and nonreligious counterpart.  False teachers
such as Paul Ehrlich beginning in the 1960's encouraged Americans to reduce their births because of the danger of over
population. Many Americans especially Catholics fell for the propaganda because the clergy and the Bishops
did not put a strong fight against these false teachings.  These sins lead to contraceptives, abortion, ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity, and
pedophilia and host of sins.

When I received my First Communion in 1957 their were over 200 children in my First Communion Class.
In a First Communion photo taken in 2012, their were only 15 children.

Catholics have access to the graces necessary to overcome the sɛҳuąƖ urge (2 Cor. 12:9: "My grace is sufficient for thee."), so why do married Catholics have so many children? Why do they take on such responsibilities for more souls, bringing more sinners into the world, and why are they willing to account for a share in their entire descendants' sins at the Last Judgment? Aren't children a hindrance to Catholics' spiritual life (cf. 1 Cor. 7:33: "But he that is with a wife is solicitous for the things of the world: how he may please his wife. And he is divided.")? Are parents of large Catholic families ashamed that they were not able to control themselves and spend more time on prayer (cf. 1 Cor. 7:29: "…the time is short; it remaineth, that they also who have wives, be as if they had none.")?

You are twisting Scripture into serving a non-Catholic premise. Those quotes were never meant to be used in this way.

You might personally be called to celibacy, and perhaps you've even gotten "good at it" but don't let pride puff you up (Pride is a capital sin as well as Lust) to the point that you're adding and subtracting things from the Catholic Faith.

There is no pre-Vatican II Catholic doctrine, no Saints, no Popes who preached the doctrine you are putting forth here. It is a novelty, albeit a novel "defect" compared to the usual "excess" of today's hedonistic world.

...but it is an error nevertheless!


Once you have chosen marriage, you have chosen to deal with the whole "being divided" thing. It's not the end of the world, as you suggest. How many Catholic laity have "dealt with" this downside over the past millennia? And how many saints survived this downside as well?

St. Catherine of Siena was part of a HUGE family. Were her parents wicked? I seriously doubt it. And there are many Catholic saints who were married.

You seem to have an unhealthy fascination with sex, not unlike a certain "Heitanen" who started a whole website to preach his heresy. He is a single man, a recent convert (he was a protestant just a few years ago) and his new doctrine is that sɛҳuąƖ pleasure is forbidden even to the lawfully married. He teaches that "what must be done" must be done as quickly and efficiently as possible, with no undue incitement of the passions in the process. In the dark, completely utilitarian, etc. In a word: Puritan. But we all know that Puritanism is a condemned heresy.

By the way, a fascination with something doesn't imply that you are "on its side" so to speak. Some people are superstitious and obsessed with the devil and things demonic. Of course virtually all of them would consider themselves enemies of the Evil One. But they would very accurately be described as being "fascinated by" the devil or obsessed with him.

Again, this is Puritanism with a Catholic veneer. You can always recognize it by the primary idea: that sex is something bad, something dirty, something to be avoided for its own sake. On the contrary, sex in itself is something GOOD, having been created by a perfect God. He designed it. It is good and beautiful. It is only the devil's warping of marital love into selfish lust, promiscuity, and other degradations (ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity, etc.) that is evil.

Anyhow, I don't see a whole lot of difference between Heitanen's heresy and what you are spouting in this thread.

Also, I detect a bit of The World (circa 2017) in your thinking. Namely, you imply that there's ANY RELATION WHATSOEVER between A) the number of children you have and B) how many times per month you have sex. You need to turn off the TV, man! That's the oldest joke in the book (coming from various non-Catholic quarters, of course) -- that parents of big families "don't know what makes babies keep coming" or they "have too much time on their hands" and so forth.

Even though they probably have LESS sɛҳuąƖ experiences than the average D.I.N.K. (double-income-no-kids)

You seem to have an unhealthy fascination with sex, not unlike a certain "Heitanen" who started a whole website to preach his heresy. He is a single man, a recent convert (he was a protestant just a few years ago) and his new doctrine is that sɛҳuąƖ pleasure is forbidden even to the lawfully married. He teaches that "what must be done" must be done as quickly and efficiently as possible, with no undue incitement of the passions in the process. In the dark, completely utilitarian, etc. In a word: Puritan. But we all know that Puritanism is a condemned heresy.

 You can always recognize it by the primary idea: that sex is something bad, something dirty, something to be avoided for its own sake. On the contrary, sex in itself is something GOOD, having been created by a perfect God. He designed it. It is good and beautiful. It is only the devil's warping of marital love into selfish lust, promiscuity, and other degradations (ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity, etc.) that is evil.

. . . 

Anyhow, I don't see a whole lot of difference between Heitanen's heresy and what you are spouting in this thread.

I have noticed over the years that this has been a consistent position of yours when someone takes a more rigorist view of sɛҳuąƖity you post about it opposing it. I sympathize with such people. I remember it was recently claimed on another forum that the Church used to teach that married people should not receive the Blessed Sacrament after having marital relations so married people were not supposed to be daily communicants and this was also one of the reasons the Eastern Churches with married priests did not have daily Divine Liturgies.
One of my favorite things taught in a private revelation comes from Anne Catherine Emmerich. I was told about this and did not read it from the source myself. But she claimed that the Blessed Mother's parents did not have normal relations when Our Lady was conceived but that they only hugged and embraced and that was all but somehow Our Lady was conceived and her mother became pregnant in this way. Then it was said that before the fall this was how all children were supposed to be conceived and that what we now see as normal intercourse was only a corruption that was a curse of Adam's sin and was not the original intention of God in his creation.

Of course the reaction to this was that Anne Catherine Emmerich's idea was crazy and perhaps it was not from her but from her ghostwriter who they say changed her revelations when he wrote them down, but nevertheless I was intrigued.

A few observations:

First of all, the OP seems to have the unspoken premise that marital relations are a temptation to be avoided, and that failing to do so indicates a rejection of grace and embrace of concupiscence.

But that's not right at all.  Catholic theology (based on St. Paul) on marriage, also reflected in the Church's own canon laws, is the giving up of the body to one's spouse.  Refusing the marital debt without a grave and sufficient reason is actually a mortal sin.  St. Augustine, in his commentary on St. Paul, shows how St. Paul's permission to marry and engage in marital relations can hardly be sinful, for how could the Apostle approve of sin?

A distinct question is whether or not it is possible to sin against chastity within marriage, and it certainly is possible.  When the motive of lust is exclusive, at least venial sin is committed.  Or, as St. Thomas puts it (when discussing the husband), one is to treat his wife as his wife, not as any woman.  I know that some traditional Catholics have taken this (possibility of sinfulness in principle for the relations between husband and wife) to essentially mean that married couples should have relations maybe half a dozen times in their life, once every year and a half or so, and never after the age of forty (that's hyperbole on my part, mind you). 

Next, the OP sounds like a Manichean!  The Manicheans argued exactly as the OP did, claiming the flesh evil, and therefore the marital union to be a great evil, enslaving souls to the destitution of the flesh.  But this is an error that was overcome nearly two thousand years ago by St. Augustine. 

As to children being a hindrance to the spiritual life, the world is a hindrance to the spiritual life.  That's kind of the point of it.  This life is preparation for the next.  Surely the great missionary priests had their spiritual lives hindered by constantly being exposed to abominable pagan orgies and cannibalism.  We are tested very frequently in this life. 

Next, the OP sounds like a Manichean!  The Manicheans argued exactly as the OP did, claiming the flesh evil, and therefore the marital union to be a great evil, enslaving souls to the destitution of the flesh.  But this is an error that was overcome nearly two thousand years ago by St. Augustine.  

I had the same thought.