On babies

In a documentary on the Islamisation of Sweden, the speaker made the point that Islam wins by out populating the post-Christian West. Not his words of course.

This caused me to reflect on the degree to which the church broadly as bought into this. I look at my church. It is in a well-off suburb with many practicing or retired professional people, managerial types and academics. Happily we do see a good (but not good enough) number of children in the church.

But the Christian ethos tends not to dominate our lives. Self included.

I compare this with what I've seen of Roman Catholic practice as lived out. Two of my relations are priests and on the rare occasions I've participated in services they've been involved in I've been struck both by the simple courtesies of both clergy and 'laity' and the going out of the way concern for others. I noted particularly the concern for one disabled man who could not sit on the chairs available, so had to recline on steps to a podium at the rear of the ecclesium. One person offered to fetch him a chair, another a wheel chair, a group of clergy, all in their flashest PPE greeted him with a nod and a kind smile as they walked by.

I also saw lots of children; lots!

But we in the land of the well off seem to have 'just enough' children. The median number seems to be two. Three are rare. More is almost never seen. Yet, I would hope that we'd routinely see famlies of four to six children and middle-income pretensions be damned. But we don't.

The church has turned into a comfortable sermon club, neither engaged with (prophetically) the world, or a witness against its indulgent values.

Then I look at my own history. I have one child, and that in later life. I wanted to have a 'brood', but perhaps I was unconsciously wearing a 'not husband material' T-shirt, as I was also married later in life than...anyone else I knew.

Yet the environment seemed to be full of young women not so interested in marriage (except for one, who's companionship I fumbled badly), or to my mind 'not suitable' for me or 'out of range' in terms of age. Was I too 'picky'? Was I indeed not 'husband material'? To what extent had my church life led me unwittingly down the same path as the self-indulgent? Had it similarly led the women I mixed with?