(March 19, 2015 at 6:06 am)FreeTony Wrote: It just seems to be a tacit admission that the teachings are wrong, but they're not going to say it in case they get in trouble with those above them. Office politics on a grand scale. What is worse is that most richer Catholics just ignore these rules because they realise they are stupid and having ten children might not enable them to have a decent life.
The problem is twofold. For one, you have these societies where having many children basically meant being cared for when falling sick or getting old. That's no longer true in this day and age, but the traditional belief still sticks like glue. Btw, it's not so long that this was the case in our western societies too. Farmers tried to father as many as possible to have additional hands at their disposal. Especially when it was a given that some of the children died at a very young age.
On the other hand you have the church preaching that contraception is evil. So two poisons actually make up the cocktail of poverty.