Contraception and the Vocations Crisis

Over @ Inside Catholic Fr. Longenecker has written an excellent analysis of how the "culture of contraception" (a subsect of the "culture of death") has played a huge role in the vocation crisis we a going through in the Catholic Church. Here is the start of the article. Follow the link for the rest.

Contraception and the Vocations Crisis
by Rev. Dwight Longenecker

A few weeks ago, a young man I'll call David dropped in to see me. David has been working with me discerning a vocation to the priesthood, so it was with some interest that I heard him announce that he had acquired a girlfriend. We discussed the possibilities and prospects for the future, and I came to realize that his expectation of marriage and family life was very different from my own. As a fairly new convert, and one who has had little experience of large Catholic families, David had a totally different expectation of what family life would be like.

It has often been observed that Catholics who have used artificial contraception have helped cause the vocations crisis, because there are simply not enough Catholic boys and girls being born to provide the next generation of priests, brothers, nuns, and sisters, but my conversation with David made me realize that the contraceptive culture has affected the vocations question in more subtle and powerful ways.

The first of these is in the Catholic boy's or girl's experience of marriage and family life. Before the sexual revolution, a young man or woman from a Catholic family was likely to have grown up in a large, local extended family. He or she would have been part of a network of brothers and sisters, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents who all lived within visiting distance. Within that context of a large family, the Catholic boy or girl would have seen first hand the joys and sorrows of family life.

If he felt called to the priesthood or religious life, a boy would most likely have entered the local diocesan seminary or entered a religious order with houses in his diocese. A girl would most likely have entered a religious house in her locality. They would have lived the celibate life, therefore, within the larger context of that supportive extended family and Catholic culture. In other words, they would be living within community, not just in their religious order or diocesan presbyterate, but within their own natural extended family.

Artificial contraception changed all that. "Reproductive freedom" allowed women to enter the workplace. Families enjoyed a double income. Increasing affluence and fewer children meant the smaller families were more manageable and less dependent on the extended family. As a result, the nature of the American family changed.

The large extended family, with all its joys and opportunities, was replaced with the American "nuclear family," in which one man and one woman exist in isolation in a home in the suburbs with 2.5 children, a dog, a cat, and a double income. Increased mobility meant that this nuclear family could exist in the same sort of anonymous suburb anywhere in America.

Suddenly, being a priest, brother, nun, or sister meant you were not only isolated, but isolated without the consolation of spouse and small family. Furthermore, the celibate would naturally be cut off from all the cozy support systems that proliferate in American suburbia. The old, localized extended family always had room for the spinster aunt, the cousin who was a religious sister, or the uncle who was a priest. But who wants a single person at a dinner party, the PTA, or the country club -- especially a single religious person?