Children: A Great Good

Yesterday, a friend gave me a stack of old Catholic magazines (along with a few other things). Today, in the stack of magazines, I found a few copies of Nazareth: A Catholic Family Journal. I started to skim through these magazines and in doing so I came across an article by Anne McNeely, entitled, "The Joys of a Large Family". I stopped skimming and started to read. I am still reading, but I felt compelled to record the following:

Father Ted Colleton once spoke in a sermon about his life among the African tribal peoples with whom he had worked. He mentioned that they had no word for abortion because the very thought of it was completely foreign to them; among these people, many of whom were not even Christian, children were recognized as such a great good that the idea of destroying them was inconceivable. This particular remark made it absolutely clear to me that the culture in which we live is not just mistaken, not just heading in the wrong direction, but is one in which our very nature as human beings is being attacked. Except in the most degenerate societies, people have naturally thought of children as a great good -- and, generally, the more the better. It is only in a society like our own which has made material wealth, success, and the pursuit of pleasure the primary aims of existence, that the great good of new life can be forgotten. (Fall 1995, p. 8)