St. John Vianney and the Mom of Many

Once upon a time, good St. John Vianney, the Cure D’Ars in France, gave counsel to a married woman regarding childbearing. I found the context and quote in its entirety from a reliable source.

This is from the book The Cure’D’Ars St. Jean-marie Vianney by Abbe Francis Trochu

This book is described thus:

The Cure D’Ars – Trochu. The definitive life, based on the official “Process of Beatification and Canonization,” and thus totally factual and documented. Of humble education and assigned to a forgotten farmers’ village, he attracted the whole world to Ars and was proclaimed “Patron Saint of Parish Priests” in 1929. He ate one meal a day, slept only a few hours a night, heard confessions up to 17 hours a day, converted thousands. His body remains incorrupt. A grace-filled story of total love of God!

Page 311-312
Married people were shown the nobility of their calling and he exhorted them to fulfill holily its duties. A lady of the name of Ruet, of Ouroux, in the department of the Rhone, had already a large family and was about to become a mother once more. She came to Ars in order to seek courage at the feet of its holy Cure. She had not long to wait, for M. Vianney summoned her from amid the crowd. “You look very sad my child,” he said when she was on her knees in his confessional. “Oh! I am so advanced in years Father!” : He comforted, “My child… if you only knew the women who will go to hell because they did not bring into the world the children they should have given to it. Come now my little one,” he said with fatherly kindliness to the woman who confided to him her anxiety because of her large family. “Do not be alarmed at your burden. Our Lord carries it with you. The good God does well all that he does: when he gives many children to a young mother it is that he deems her worthy to rear them. It is a mark of confidence on his part.”

St. Jean-marie Vianney by Abbe Francis Trochu

Note what he is not saying.

• Father John is not saying that infertile women through no fault of their own are going to hell.
• Nor is he saying that women who for grave and serious reasons who have practiced marital chastity with their spouses are going to hell.

Those two mischaracterizations of what the saint said are simply wrong. He said nothing of the sort.

So why would a woman who does not bring children into the world possibly be damned to hell for it?

First let’s look at what the church actually teaches:

1034 Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost.614 Jesus solemnly proclaims that he “will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire,”615 and that he will pronounce the condemnation: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!”616

1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.”617 The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.

1036 The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”618

Since we know neither the day nor the hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when the single course of our earthly life is completed, we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire, into the outer darkness where “men will weep and gnash their teeth.”619

1037 God predestines no one to go to hell;620 for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:621

Father, accept this offering
from your whole family.
Grant us your peace in this life,
save us from final damnation,
and count us among those you have chosen.622

So what did St. John really say?

• He affirmed that hell exists. The church teaches this.
• He affirmed that it is possible to go there and that in fact, hell is not empty. The church teaches this.
• The church teaches that to die in a state of mortal sin dooms one to hell.
• The church teaches that contraception is an intrinsically evil act and in fact could be mortally sinful.
• Abortion is murder and likewise could be a mortally sinful act. The church teaches and affirms that as well.

What St. John said in his own way, was absolutely solid Catholic teaching and absolutely true.

But I also see something else besides the teaching on birth control and abortion. Having a lot of children wears you down, literally. It takes your time, your energy, your body etc and while it does that, at least in my experience it allows the mother to be molded and more pliable in a special way to becoming holy! Yes, there are opportunities for other sins, like impatience, but in a special way we can see the simplicity of what God wants for us in the faces and lives of our children as they grow from babies to adulthood. And I think in particularly tough cases… like me!! it takes a lot of children to wear away that stubbornness, willfulness, and selfishness. The physical act of giving birth to the recovery to dealing with a teenager who has willful issues of his own, it all works together to make me a better person!

I realize that all of that might be foreign to a “once saved, always saved” variety Christian, but that is what I believe St. John Vianney was saying, I think that’s what he meant, and that is why I love that particular quote.

Related Tags: St. John Vianney, Feast Day, Catholic, motherhood