Comments on: The Hour is Late

By: An exhortation to have larger families « A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

An exhortation to have larger families « A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 22:26:18 +0000

[...] it went over terribly well, but at a new website called integratedcatholiclife, a mother of 10 has written an exhortation for Catholics to not only have more babies, but to want to have more babies. Ladies and [...]

By: Patti Maguire Armstrong

Patti Maguire Armstrong — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:32:08 +0000

By the way, I would like people to know that with 10 kids (2 adopted) I’m not just all talk (well, my husband might want to argue that one:-) ). With 2 I thought I was sooo busy. And I was. I felt busy with three and definitely “done” with four–more than done. I was so “done” that I pressured my husband to have a vasectomy. Then, through the Holy Spirit waking us up, we realized our error, had the reversal and had four more. I cannot begin to tell you how much emptier our lives would have been had we not had the last four. My older children’s lives would have been so much emptier.

Sure, there’s the global viewpoint, but I’m telling you that on the home front, adding more blessings to your life is more valuable than anything else. Yeah, I’m so busy that at times I want to scream–okay it does occasionally go beyond just wanting–but that cross will take us a long way–all the way to heaven. But God loves us so much, he does give us a little heaven on earth through the love of our children.

If you want to hear Mark’s and my story, you can download it for FREE (just like God’s graces) on my website: raisingcatholickids.com.

Since many people have already read this article and moved on, consider passing on this FREE offer to them. Seriously, babies have been born as a result of this talk. Someone just sent us a photo of a precious little girl born thanks to her parents being convinced to get a reversal after this talk.

By: Deacon Mike Bickerstaff

Deacon Mike Bickerstaff — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 02:55:59 +0000

Hi Tony,

Good thoughts. While this is a multi-front problem, you are right – it does need to start in the home, beginning with the parents who must accept the call of Christ and strive for holiness. There is no more sure way to effectively teach and hand on the faith to our children than by them seeing their parents live it out daily in charity and fidelity.

Deacon Mike

By: Anthony Lynch

Anthony Lynch — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:28:17 +0000

Thank you Patti for such a well-structured and forceful article! To paraphrase Pope Benedict, he mentioned in one of his encyclicals that there is hope for each generation as each has free will and needs to make its own decisions. Our response to your challenge needs to be multi-generational. We can bring about most change by striving our hardest to teach our children and grandchildren that larger families is what God wills; within larger families a greater aggregation of love is brought into the world, where caring, sharing and selflessness are ingrained as a way of life. When this happens within multiple communities, society can change relatively quickly for the better. We have seen Western society move very quickly in the wrong direction – towards “mammon” – in the 60+ years since WW2, so we know that we can swing the pendulum back the other way just as quickly. It starts with us.

By: meteormike54

meteormike54 — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:01:05 +0000

View this eye opening video that supports your case regarding the Muslim population in Europe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU

Your other statements are right on the money too. World food production has continued to exceed world population growth despite misleading political propaganda intended to make us think otherwise.

In fact, it’s governmental policies that are the problem.
1. Our taxes fund the CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) to the tune of $1.8 billion dollars a year which pays farmers NOT to grow anything on some of their land:
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/25260459.html

2. Our taxes subsidize the “food for fuel” program to give incentive for farmers to grow corn for ethanol.
This means less food, higher prices, higher taxes and while using close to the same amount of energy it produces: http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/blog/_archives/2009/4/23/4162599.html

3. Extreme distortion of the true Climate Change picture. From the time God created this planet, the warmer it was, the more life it supported. The colder, the less life. CO2 rising from 280 ppm(parts per million) to 390 ppm over the last 100+ years has contributed to an 11% increase in world food (and all plants) production. Politicians and junk science label it pollution and so they can raise trillions by taxing it when it’s plant food and essential to all life on this planet: http://catholicexchange.com/2010/06/01/130901/

Thanks Patti for helping to open minds, hearts and sould to these truths, scientific, statistical, political and spiritual.
Mike

By: Tweets that mention The Hour is Late | The Integrated Catholic Life -- Topsy.com

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:04:43 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mark Armstrong, Catholic Exchange. Catholic Exchange said: If you read one article today, read this one http://www.integratedcatholiclife.org/2010/06/the-hour-is-late/ [...]

By: Mark Armstrong

Mark Armstrong — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:01:57 +0000

Great article Patti! Glad you donated so much sleep to write it. As we often say the only things we can take to heaven are children, the rest of the stuff stays here. And yet we seem to always want more stuff and less children in our materialistic world.

A good friend of mine often observes why is it in America where people could afford to have as many children as they want to have homes that often have more garage stalls than the kids in the family, choose to limit themselves? But in the third world, there are large poor families who don’t even have a car, running water or electricity? And when you go and visit these poor families they are happy, and in America ours are so sad?

Be fruitful and multiply America or surely you will perish and whither on the vine.

By: Carol Bush

Carol Bush — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:56:19 +0000

Thank you, Patti, for saying plainly something that needs to be said often. The “Population Bomb” was a myth. We are dying out. And, if truth be told, the birth rate among our immigrant population, documented and undocumented, is partially responsible for the higher birth rate in the US.

By: Deacon Mike Bickerstaff

Deacon Mike Bickerstaff — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:23:05 +0000

Patti, Especially noteworthy are: >>His Holiness claimed that any attempts to overcome the crisis by economic means only, without a spiritual component, are “doomed to failure since the sources of the crisis are not in purses, but in the souls of people.”<< and >>If our homes and hearts are not open to more children, then we need to go back and open them. We do this by putting God at the center. Whatever stands in the way of openness to life, needs to be pushed aside. Souls, life, God, eternity….these are of the greatest value. The rest will fade away, just as it should. For it is the world that should be fading away and not us.<< One of the recurring themes in my homilies and talks is that we are made for heaven, not this place of pilgrimage. We are here so that we might arrive there. All decisions and actions we take in this world should have that supernatural end as the primary consideration. And part of our obligation entrusted to us by our God is to cooperate in His work of creation, welcoming, caring, loving and raising the children with which He blesses us. Thanks for an important message. -Deacon Mike