And “spacing the births of children” sounds like it means “trying to avoid Irish twins”. Most people who are using any kind of contraceptive method are going further than that: they’re either trying to not have a kid yet, or trying to not have more children. It’s one of those cases where the language used in the official documents (which in this case does use that expression) often makes it clear that the documents were written from a different planet than the one most members of the Church live in.
Many priests, bishops, and cardinals grew up in families. . . often large families, and experienced at first hand what family life was like, whether with many . . . or just a few brothers and sisters. Many priests, bishops, and cardinals are extremely close to these brothers and sisters of theirs, many of whom have families of their own, sometimes large ones. And many priests, bishops, and cardinals are very close to parents of their schoolchildren, and to parishioners who are parents, sharing in their daily joys, happiness, sorry, and troubles.
Results of surveys on weekly church attendance among Catholics vary considerably; an estimated 40% seems a fairly reliable mean number. Which points to the unfortunate conclusion that approximately 60% of people who self-identify as Catholic don’t make it to Mass each Sunday. And if a Catholic is not attending Mass and (presumably) not receiving the Sacraments regularly, then I would agree that he or she is, indeed living on a planet different from the one that the “regulars” - including members of the clergy - live on.
And that is the number attending on any given week, not the number attending every week. I can’t find a number for that, but it is impossible for it to be higher, and I would say it is likely much much lower. I’d say you are probably looking at more of a 75% to 80% or greater of catholics that don’t make it to mass every sunday.
If the vast majority of people in a religion are not attending church every week, is it really the people that are attending every week who are better in touch with the catholic community?
It is now usually agreed that Americans overestimate how often they go to church. A little over 40% of them say that they go to church in any given week when asked on a survey. However, recently there have been detailed experiments in which a team of researchers go to every church in an area and count the number of people in the congregation. They find that a little less than 20% of the population of that area are in church that week. So Americans tend to overestimate by a factor of at least 2 how often they go to church when asked on a survey:
I can’t answer questions about a catholic community; I know nothing about it.
The Catholic Church has always believed and taught that the Eucharist - Jesus Christ Himself present among us, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity - is the Source and Summit of the life and mission of the Church.
Where Jesus Christ is present in His Eucharistic celebration, there the Church is to be found.
No cite available, but here’s an anecdote: in 1968, my RCC mother gave birth to her eleventh child; upon the advice of her gynecologist, she requested and received dispensation from the Archbishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles to use “The Pill” to prevent pregnancy for several years (she subsequently went off the Pill, when her doctor judged that it would be safe for her to give birth again; in 1972, she gave birth for the twelfth time, after which she underwent a hysterectomy).
(I hope the other readers will bear with me if make a personal reply - I hope not to break the rules by doing so)
Twelve children. Amazing. I hope that your Mom’s health recovered, and that she and your Dad were doing well and able to enjoy their family until the end of their days.
One interesting feature of so large a family is that often there can be a gap of 20 or more years - a generation - between the oldest and youngest children. So that the oldest are sometimes up and out, even married and starting families of their own, before the youngest is even born. When we were in our late 20s and still single, a friend, who was the youngest of a very large family (I think 10 or 11), and whose oldest sister’s daughter had married young, and just had her first baby, lamented to me, “I’m 28 years old! And don’t even have a steady boyfriend. And I’m a great-aunt. A great-aunt!” Poor thing, she was so upset. One of her sisters used to host a family dinner at her house every Sunday evening. It wasn’t a very large house, and the number of people there was on the order of a town hall meeting. But everyone always seemed to be having a grand time, and they so generously welcomed friends and other visitors. “Always room for one more!” was the sister’s watchword, always delivered with a wink of the eye.
Anyway, I’m rambling on too long. I hope your folks did OK, was my point. Thanks for your indulgence.
In my earlier reply, I realize, I omitted to respond to the substance of kaylasdad’s comment.
It was not until the year 1930 that any Christian community officially approved the use of any contraceptive method; until that time, all officially disapproved, or at least discouraged, the use of chemicals and apparatus to prevent conception. By the late 1960s The Pill had been on the market for some three to five years, not a very long proportion of the Catholic Church’s 2,000 year history.
Among Catholic circles, study and debate about the moral implications of the Pill’s use had not yet been concluded; even after the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical that classed the Pill among the contraceptive methods long-held to be illicit, debate continued. Some pastors and bishops, certain that official approbation for its use among Catholic couples was only a matter of time, had begun to give their individual permission to couples, and continued to do so, even after the publication of Humanae Vitae. (And some continue to do so this very day.)
Some Catholic couples who had been using (what is now the obsolete) “Rhythm Method” for some time, experienced little or no success; it had been observed that the naturally-occurring cycles of fertility/infertility were, among some women, following upon one another in unpredictable ways, thus rendering the Rhythm Method not helpful. Medical science discovered that the administration of lower-dose versions of the Pill might for some women, regulate these cycles, providing, it was hoped, greater success for such couples. Whether ecclesiastical permission was needed to have recourse to the lower-dose version of the Pill, is difficult to discover today; such questions were most likely left to the discretion of the individual bishop. (Since the Rhythm Method has long been supplanted, the need for low-dose versions of the Pill for this purpose no longer exists, and has not existed for some time.)
In such cases, the Church would have understood the couple to be using the Rhythm Method, which although previously found in their case to be useless, now, aided by medical science, to be of an efficacy enjoyed among other couples - Catholic or non-Catholic.
Discussions of birth control, while interesting, are not germane to this thread.
Please take those discussions elsewhere.
[ /Moderating ]
Roger that, Moderator tomndebb; will comply.
Back to the main part, but also generalizing, some organizations are very top-down, some not so much; some which look completely top-down to an outsider aren’t so much to a person on the inside. The biggest reformers in the RCC have rarely been Popes, and I’m adding the “rarely” because since even I know about John XXIII I’m assuming he wasn’t the only one to start cleaning house when his direct subordinates saw no need.
There is change happening in churches and parishes all over the world, but it’s part of a huge social change. Last week I read an article about a couple who wanted to get married / renew their vows in each of the 22 (now 25) countries where SSM is legal; they’ve had to abandon the project because one of them has brain cancer 
That’s 1 in 8 countries. 1 in 8 is not much, really: any of us would freak out if our salary got chopped down to 1/8 of its current value. But compared with the 0 countries where SSM was legal in 1999, the ratio is infinity. Most of those countries where SSM is legal are, if not officially majority Christian, countries with a Christian background. There is right now a case in the European Court requesting that SSM be recognized by every EU-member country, whether their own legal system allows their celebration or not: the process has received a positive preliminary report, and in general the Court’s decisions match those.
NYT link
Euronews
EU Law Analysis (a blog)
The times they are a-changing’. It will take a while, and I understand it’s frustrating. But a lot of us are your allies, not your enemy.
My mother may appear as an enemy insofar as she represents a challenge to my way of life. But if she challenges me in a way that ultimately helps to direct me to the Master, and to draw me closer to Him, then in the end, I will know that she has acted as a true mother. And, even though she challenged me in certain ways, yet she was far from an enemy.
And the Church is known as our mother.
That is a really, really bad image to use with someone whose mother happens to be abusive, Euphrosyne.