We have more now, even among those who consider themselves poor, than even royalty of previous generations could have dreamt of. But we have replaced material destitution with spiritual poverty.
By Sarah Cain
Crisis Magazine
April 22, 2026
Some of the erroneous ways of viewing children and familial relationships within the secular world are beginning to seep into the Catholic colloquial understanding, causing a fracturing of what it means to be part of a family and fostering a materialistic understanding of bearing children.
Emblematically, a priest was speaking to women about motherhood when he opined that those who cannot afford to homeschool or send their children to Catholic school should use Natural Family Planning to prevent children.
It's a surreal expansion of the definition of poverty to include at least the lower 70 percent of the American socioeconomic strata-significantly more, by some accounts. We might legitimately ask when it is prudent to have children in times of economic hardship, but if we are drawing the line in a place above the standards of every parent throughout most of history, then we might consider that something is amiss.
The worldview presented mirrors the thinking of the secular world, which sees children not as an end unto themselves but as a mere choice among many, a status symbol, an indicator of financial stability, or simply the means of happiness for unfulfilled couples. In this understanding, children become merely useful or not, timely or not, wanted...or not.
Many couples have looked upon the brokenness of the world and pondered whether it can be fair to bring the innocence of children into it. Potential parents have quivered at the thought of their hearts being made so vulnerable by the fragility of a child that is theirs to protect from the darkness. They have witnessed evil-in others and themselves-and they cannot bear to subject the one that they love so purely to that reality. Yet, if nonexistence were preferable, God would not have chosen each of our existences. He did not merely create us. He holds us in existence, just as He held in existence the very nails we used to crucify Him. He knows goodness in a way that we cannot.
In each of our choices, we actualize what we believe to be true. By bringing forth children and raising them to know God, we act as co-creators and provide thanks for what we have. We engage in a living acknowledgement that because God is good-and because we are grateful-we want others to know and love Him too.
When we attempt to control every variable before begetting children, we engage in both presumption and despair simultaneously. In the hitherto mentioned callous pronouncement, the engineering centers around access to schooling. Yet, it is not the case that Catholic schools must produce Catholic children. Over half of those who graduate from diocesan schools leave the Faith before they turn 23.
For the sake of argument, what if Catholic schools were as they should be: if they embraced the classics of the Great Books programs, had regular confessions and Mass built into the curriculum, and helped students to learn about Christ's role in times of hardship instead of emphasizing the Resurrection and minimizing the Cross ? Would we then expect that every child would keep the Faith ? It's a presumption that denies our capacity for free will, the effects of concupiscence, and the very real tendency for us to say to God, "No, my will be done."
Then let us now examine the reverse so that we can understand how the thesis inhabits despair. If a devout Catholic family believes that they have no choice besides sending their child to public school, do we really mean to assert that God is unable to work therewithin ? Are we so certain of the impotence of the home life (the primary educators of children), the inadequacy of an active parish community, and the neglectfulness of God that there is no hope to be found ? On this view, we treat God not as a loving Father of adopted sons and daughters but as a disinterested authority whom we worship only as a bribe. If we have no reason to trust Him, or if we place limits on where He can act, then every gesture of our worship is merely a platitude rather than an act of love.
Fortunately, we know that such a worldview is demonstrably false. The litany of converts who enter the Church each year did not go to Catholic schools. Archbishop Fulton Sheen was known for how many souls he helped guide to the Faith, about which he wrote,
Years ago souls were brought to a belief in God by the order in the universe. Today souls are brought to God by disorder within themselves. It is less the beauty of creation and more the coiling serpents within the human breast which bring them to seek repose in Christ.
Those who have lived in the darkness can sometimes have the greatest clarity about why they need the Light.
If we exercise sincere hope, then we can know that even in the most challenging of circumstances, we are not alone. Moreover, we can be assured that because we find God in the present (not in tomorrow's hypothetical battles), we do not have to answer questions that will only present in 5-6 years (like schooling). We must do the good today simply because it is good, and that is how we are called to live.
This is how we live differently from atheists—because though we accept that we cannot control (much less predict) every piece of our lives, we rest in the knowledge that we do not face the battles alone or abandoned. This has been our understanding throughout the history of the Faith. The persecuted early Christians never stopped having children, even when so many were martyred terribly. Even in the catacombs, people decided to reproduce. In the coldness of the USSR, where Catholics so often celebrated Mass in hiding, communicating via whispers, they never despaired such that they decided that it would be better to cease having children.
We live in an age and place in which we tend to overstate our own poverty, when clean water, air conditioning, heating, and food are not in question. We have more now, even among those who consider themselves poor, than even royalty of previous generations could have dreamt of. What threatens us is that we may too easily engage in an unspoken trade. We have replaced material destitution with spiritual poverty.
To make decisions because of an absence of trust in God is spiritual poverty of the worst sort—a true destitution of our own making, in which we will find true misery. Our own pitiful attempts to overplan our lives will be reduced to naught, and we will never see true happiness or peace because we do not make room for God's hand therewithin. Instead, we will find ourselves aged and isolated among the ruins of our own decision-making because we tried to build on an impoverished foundation.
Cardinal Sarah, who was born in one of the most poverty-stricken countries in the world and served throughout Africa after his ordination, noted,
As I traveled to the most afflicted countries in our time, I very quickly understood that the greatest misery is not necessarily material poverty. The most profound misery is the lack of God. He can be absent because people are too much imprisoned in their materialism and profoundly desperate...
How then ought we to live?
As people of Faith, not as spiritual orphans. As those who do not mistake fear for prudence but who bear their trials gladly for the sake of the Kingdom of God and who are fruitful in all the ways to which they are called. Because we neither despair of God's care nor presume of our own strength, we live by choosing the highest good in each of our duties. Thereby, we live lives of love, which is always fruitful.