[Topics]

Christianity and procreation

Written: 2019-07-22
Addition: 2019-09-16
Addition: 2019-12-22
Addition: 2020-12-27 (small addition [St. Chrysostom]; typo fixed.)
Addition: 2021-09-08

Some claim that the absence of religion in the West is what is causing low birth rates. Unlike Islam or Judaism, Christianity actually does not teach that one has to marry. There are many verses in the New Testament—in the Epistles as well as in the Gospels—that actually praise celibacy.

However, the religion of the West has always been what the Church taught. While the Catholic Church placed celibacy above marriage, it also made marriage into a sacrament. The lives of many early Christians was a lot more ascetic than when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. (St. Chrysostom damaged his kidneys, for example, because of how often and much he fasted; he would also sleep standing.)

Yet, from the Council of Trent:

CANON IX.-If any one saith, that clerics constituted in sacred orders, or Regulars, who have solemnly professed chastity, are able to contract marriage, and that being contracted it is valid, notwithstanding the ecclesiastical law, or vow; and that the contrary is no thing else than to condemn marriage; and, that all who do not feel that they have the gift of chastity, even though they have made a vow thereof, may contract marriage; let him be anathema: seeing that God refuses not that gift to those who ask for it rightly, neither does He suffer us to be tempted above that which we are able.

CANON X.-If any one saith, that the marriage state is to be placed above the state of virginity, or of celibacy, and that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity, or in celibacy, than to be united in matrimony; let him be anathema.

The Orthodox Church does not even see procreation as the highest purpose of marriage.

To quote from Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the Orthodox Church: Economia and Pastoral Guidance

Orthodox Church on marriage

3. THE PURPOSE OF MARRIAGE

Here it becomes evident that the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church differ in their understanding of the purpose of marriage. In orthodox theological thinking this is firstly the reciprocal love, the relationship and the help between the marriage partners with view to their completion in Christ. Only subsequently comes the restraining of their sexual passion[7] and the reproduction[8] of the human race. It is remarkable that in the New Testament we find no reference relating marriage to reproduction. In the Roman Catholic Church it is evident that the ultimate purpose of marriage is procreation or reproduction. To see reproduction as the principal purpose of marriage is a narrow perspective on the conjugal life of man and wife. What value does sexual intercourse have between man and wife in the case of sterility or after the menopause, or if the wife is medically unable to have any more children? It is certain that the married couple have precedence above the family, however praiseworthy the purpose of family is.[9] The story of the establishing of marriage is found in the second chapter of the book Genesis, which deals with the fact that “a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2, 24), without mention of reproduction. The Holy John Chrysostom refers to this: “There are two reasons for which marriage was established …to cause the man to be satisfied with one single wife and to give him children, but it is the first which is the most important… As for reproduction, marriage does not necessarily include this…the proof is to be found in the many marriages for which having children is not possible. This is why the primary reason for marriage is to regulate the sexual life, especially now that the human race has already populated the whole world".[10]

[…]

[7] The physical unity — of which the apostle Paul says that they are “temples of the Holy Spirit — is a great deal more than simple pleasure or a remedy for the sexual urge! See Ign. Peckstadt, in Het orthodox huwelijk in Een open venster op de Orthodoxe Kerk, (The orthodox marriage in An open window on the Orthodox Church), Averbode, 2005.

[8] Ch. Catzopoulos, The holy sacrament of marriage — mixed marriages, Athens, 1990, p.39 (in Greek). See also Ch. Vantsos, Marriage and her preparation from an orthodox pastoral point of view, Athens, 1977, pp.83-99 (in Greek).

[9] Ign. Peckstadt, Het orthodox huwelijk in Een open venster op de Orthodoxe Kerk, (The orthodox marriage in An open window on the Orthodox Church), Averbode, 2005.

[10] Speech on marriage. See P. Evdokimov, Le sacerdoce conjugal — essai de théologie orthodoxe du mariage, in Le mariage – églises en dialogue, (The conjugal priesthood – essay on the orthodox theology of marriage, in The marriage – churches and dialogue), Paris, 1966, p. 94.

Marriage is not sin, though the above seems to suggest that Christianity itself is not responsible for higher birth rates. It also shows that it is highly dubious to claim that marriage is a duty, which is neither backed up by Holy Scripture and often not even by Church history or theology.

Apart from St. Jerome, St. Aquinas and St. Augustine place virginity above marriage – without condemning it, of course, since even Kierkegaard knew that the Bible does not teach marriage being a sin, though he knew it recommends celibacy. Augustine even goes so far as to speak positively about humanity disappearing if it were done out of love and a pure heart (in De bono coniugali and De bono viduitatis).

After all, Japan has a low birth rate, too, and never was Christian. My guess is that the modern world is so awful that many people see no point or value in it.

(2019-12-22): [Topic]

(Adding to the above, a duty it can never be, since how would this work out in reality anyway? Force men and women to marry each other? Christians who claim that to be fruitful and multiply is a commandment are insane.)

(2021-09-08): [Topic]

The protestant William MacDonald published a small book about living single as a Christian. He, too, acknowledges that the Bible actually does not require or even assume that a Christian would marry.

To quote Don Colacho:

Leftists and rightists merely argue about who is to have possession of industrial society.
The reactionary longs for its death.

A decent man is one who makes demands upon himself that the circumstances do not make upon him.

The temptation for the churchman is to carry the waters of religion in the sieve of theology.

The modern world will not be punished.
It is the punishment.

The modern world demands that we approve what it should not even dare ask us to tolerate.

Adapting to the modern world demands the hardening of one’s sensibility and the debasing of one’s character.

The soul becomes desiccated when it lives in a world that is almost exclusively manufactured.

The technification of the world blunts one’s sensibility and does not refine one’s senses.

The modern world is condemned precisely by all that with which modern man seeks to justify it.

The sight of the modern world is so repugnant that ethical imperatives are becoming certainties in the indicative for us.

One could object to science that it easily falls into the hands of imbeciles, if religion’s case were not just as serious.

The two most insufferable types of rhetoric are religious rhetoric and the rhetoric of art criticism.

The impertinent attempt to justify “the ways of God to man” transforms God into a frustrated schoolmaster who invents educational games that are both cruel and childish.

When the theologian explains the reason for some act of God, the listener wavers between indignation and laughter.

The heart does not rebel against the will of God, but against the “reasons” they dare attribute to it.

The enemies of the modern world, in the 19th century, could trust in the future.
In this century there only remains bare nostalgia for the past.