By John M. Grondelski
Pope Leo XIV has joined the chorus of voices lamenting the implosion of global fertility levels. After a visit to the President of Italy, the Pope called for action on the collapse of birth rates, and—encouragingly—highlighted the value of gendered family names: «‘Father’, ‘mother’, ‘son’, ‘daughter’, ‘grandfather’, ‘grandmother’… are words that in the Italian tradition naturally express and evoke feelings of love, respect, and self-giving—sometimes heroic—for the good of the family, of the community, and therefore of the whole society». Moreover, he noted, these terms express what is necessary for procreation and what results from it, something that “progenitor one” and “progenitor two”, as some countries now designate parents, do not express at all.
The remedies proposed for this situation usually focus on social reforms: parental leave, subsidies and tax deductions for families, daycare, etc. Indeed, there are elements in our socioeconomic structures that hinder family life, and it is positive that the Pope has pointed them out. But perhaps his attention is directed to something deeper.
As his predecessor observed, St. John Paul II (elected forty-seven years ago today), culture comes before politics and the economy. And our “blessed sterility” is, first and foremost, a cultural problem, both in society and within the Catholic Church. In Love and Responsibility, he wrote:
«Neither in man nor in woman can the affirmation of the value of the person be separated from the conscious recognition and acceptance that he can become a father and she can become a mother. […] If the possibility of fatherhood is deliberately excluded from the marital relationship, the character of that relationship automatically changes: it ceases to be oriented toward union in love and becomes a mutual, or rather bilateral, search for pleasure».
Human societies have always recognized that marriage and fatherhood, though distinct, are normally united. In the natural course of life—barring illness, advanced age, or other impediments—, spouses become parents. This is not an “esoteric” Catholic doctrine, but a reality of natural law recognized from time immemorial. That is why procreation was understood as united to marriage, at least until the appearance of the oxymoron of “same-sex marriage”.
This natural fact, however, reaches its fullness in Catholic theological teaching. The Second Vatican Council taught:
«Children are in fact the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of their parents» (Gaudium et Spes, 50).
The Council also affirmed that the spouses’ cooperation with the Lord through fatherhood is part of the work of Creation and Salvation. That is why the nuptial blessing in the sacrament of Marriage includes the invocation that the spouses, if their age permits, “be blessed with children and prove themselves virtuous parents, who live to see their children’s children”.
Now, when was the last time you heard a priest—or a bishop—talk about this?
Our secular society has broken the bond between marriage and fatherhood, considering the latter not so much as a vocation, but as what the emeritus Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, calls a “parental project”: an optional element of a couple’s “identity package”, adjusted to their desires and achieved by any means they consider appropriate.
The widespread social tolerance toward births outside of marriage, surrogacy, “homosexual adoption” and similar arrangements attests to a broader cultural acceptance of the idea that children are not necessarily linked to marriage—and far less to the conviction that every child has a right to be conceived, born, and raised in a stable marriage.
If you doubt it, think if affirming that right of the child would not sound scandalous to modern ears.
This general cultural disconnection is also reflected within the Church. Catholics immersed in this dominant anti-culture—breathing, so to speak, the vapors of its toxic vision of society—need help to avoid assimilating its ideas by osmosis. And yet, when does a common parish talk about fornication or surrogacy? The silence suggests either that the Church no longer considers these issues important, or that they are so common that they are not worth mentioning. Neither is true.
That is why, although it is good for the Church to collaborate in the promotion of social policies that favor fatherhood and family life, its essential work is in another realm.
The Church’s mission is the long-term formation of minds and hearts, beginning with the fundamental truths that generations of Catholics learned from their fathers and mothers (along with the Our Father and the Hail Mary):
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Marriage is a natural, normal, and good part of life, toward which most adults should be oriented, and which should be promoted by families and by the Church.
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Marriage precedes fatherhood, but fatherhood flows naturally from marriage.
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Although intellectually distinct, they are not usually separated in practice.
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The normal human being should not consider fatherhood as an “optional extra” of marriage. The normal thing is that marriage leads to fatherhood, not that it must be justified separately, even within marriage.
Stated clearly: the average Catholic, who does not discern a vocation to the priesthood or religious life, should marry and form a family.
It would be a good thing if ecclesiastical lobbies pressured parliaments to pass economic measures that favor marriage. But it would be much better if pastors, especially those who say they want to “smell like sheep”, began to speak frequently and clearly about marriage and fatherhood.
There is a reason why demographic decline threatens many nations today. If a culture is oriented toward sterility, sterility is what it will produce. The time has come to change course, for the good of our societies and our souls.
About the author
John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) was associate dean of the School of Theology at Seton Hall University (South Orange, New Jersey). All opinions expressed are exclusively his own.