Heading for Life, As Usual...
"Love begins where the reasons to love end," the teacher said. He liked putting things upside down in a paradox. In a way, he had partly gotten the habit of the thing by devouring the writings of his favourite author, G.K. Chesterton. On the other hand, G.K. Chesterton had become his favourite author because of his taste for paradox.
The advantage in a paradox is that it awakens the mind. Its disadvantage is that it appears to go against common sense. A girl in class objected: "If there is no reason to love, then loving is foolish. We don't love someone just for nothing. We see in that person some qualities and various other things that are pleasant. We are not masochists."
The teacher explained: "A person's qualities and attributes capture our attention. These are reasons to take interest in the person. But that is not yet love. It is only an invitation to love. Loving is answering the invitation. It is deciding to bring happiness to that person. Loving is not attaching oneself to the qualities and attributes of a person but attaching oneself to the person who has those qualities and attributes. And when these advantages or reasons to love lose their lustre, the responsibility towards the person remains.
"Think about it," said the teacher. "Would you consider a person to be in love with you who would speak words of love to you when you are lovely, full of fun and well-off and would leave you when you become ill, lose your looks, are depressed or broke? Isn't a person's true love proven by his fidelity in times of hardship?"
She accepted the idea. "But," she added, "it is not necessary to be badly off to love. You said ‘Love begins where the reasons to love end.’ Instead, isn't it true that love can start when there still are reasons to love even if it lasts after they have gone?"
"Certainly, one can love while the reasons to love, the invitations to love, are present. It is even more fun then. However, the pleasures that accompany love for a while are not love itself. Loving is not being attached to a person's charms. Loving is being attached to the person who has these charms whatever may happen to them. The kernel of love is the beloved person. That is where love properly starts. And the charms are not part of the deal. A paradoxical way of putting it: ‘Love begins where the reasons to love end.’ You and not your charms are the object of a person's love."
"O.K.", she conceded with some dissatisfaction because she had so often been told that pleasure and well-being are the reason to live.
* * *
Mireille's birth was without a hitch. A caesarean section, but without complication. Her brother Richard's birth had occasioned a lot of blood loss to his mother, which had somewhat weakened her. Then she had phlebitis in her leg. In other words, Richard had come in with a bang. In comparison, Mireille's birth had been a breeze.
As we contemplated our marvellous gem, the anxiety we suffered in deciding to invite her vanished completely. The fear of an uncertain future was blotted out by success.
The wisdom of our decision was also confirmed by the fact that Mireille had in sorts accompanied her oldest sister in the long trek allowing her to give Stéphanie a home. At the beginning, Mireille had proven that femininity can flower into motherhood rather than into a child's executioner. Then Mireille invited her to give Stéphanie a home like her own. Finally, Mireille could offer her some consolation in allowing her to give her a care forgone to the flesh of her flesh, the blood of her blood.
It must be hard for parents to teach the realities of the heart, the body and the mind to a teenager when the parents themselves keep at a safe distance distance from them. What parents can convincingly tell their teenager that the body is made for love, for the giving of life, whilst preventing their own bodies from giving life?
But was it necessary to keep proving our point? After all, the proof was in the crib. Was another proof necessary? Uncertainty was coming back. A pregnancy after a caesarean is a risky thing, we were told. So much more so after two caesareans!
In fact, we were not trying to prove anything. We were simply trying to be alive. Living is in the giving, isn't it? How much giving? Giving your all. But in what way? In all possible ways.
Possible! That was the point. Was it still possible to give ourselves by the life of another child? Richard had benefited from Mireille's birth. After receiving attention himself, he got the possibility of giving attention. Would Mireille be limited to receive and not be able to give? Of course, a necessity imposed by generosity does kill generosity. But did generosity compel Mireille to remain the perpetual baby of the family? Or did generosity invite her, instead, to become an older sister?
Our surgeon had said three caesareans were the most medical wisdom could allow to our folly. Of course, he had told us the story of the madwoman who had seven successful caesareans. But nobody takes madness as the norm of wisdom. We agreed with him on that point. Why? Because he should know.
We were now looking at our possible third caesarean. More to the fact, we were envisaging the possibility of another child, the third to be born by caesarean section. And menopause seemed to be some way off. We had been warned that during menopause, determining the moment of fertility might be hard. This allowed for an unexpected pregnancy. Shouldn't we keep our third caesarean as a safekeep for that time? Danielle's fertility was presently easily identifiable. If we decided to refrain from using it, it assured an absolute infertility.
We knew how to refrain from using it. We did it the year that followied a caesarean. But should we refrain after that? There were benefits for doing so. There were reasons to back up backing away from another child in the near future. But was this loving? Hadn't the teacher said: "Love begins where the reasons to love end"?
I was that teacher. And this wasn't true because I had said it. I had said it because it was true. Our flesh had confirmed it many times. I hadn't made the thing up. I had seen the facts. I had seen this in the heart, body and mind of my wife in fusion with me as one flesh.
* * *
"What is the risk for the rupture of my uterus now that I have had two caesareans?" Danielle asked our family doctor.
He didn't readily know the answer. Statistics are not facts. Only the successful pregnancy and the ruptured pregnancy are facts. Possibilities are estimates. Our fears before Mireille was conceived had given way to a 100% success. If the uterus had ruptured and the child had died, it would have been a 100% failure. A probability does not exist like a person or a thing exists. The doctor knew that.
If he had had his way, he would have stuck to the only certainty in the matter: no pregnancy means no rupture of the uterus. He would have been content that we stop once and for all giving life, which appeared to him as a fancy, undoubtedly generous, but one that had nothing to do with the necessities of love.
He tried to shy away from answering. In vain. My wife wanted an estimate to help us evaluate our situation. We had a decision to make and she wanted knowledge pertaining to it.
Danielle insisted that he give a number. "There is about a 25% chance for a rupture of the uterus."
In fact, he didn't know. In theory, he conjectured it. Indeed, how many cases did contemporary medicine study in which a woman faced a third caesarean section after giving birth to eleven children? At best, medical studies could remember the numerous pregnancies of big families in the olden days, when medicine was young and could observe contemporary sterility through the eyes of a more sophisticated medicine. Our doctor was therefore obliged to get his answer from medical opinion rather than from health science.
Of course, the idea of having one chance in four of losing my wife wasn't particularly enticing. She herself wasn't afraid to be expatriated to Heaven. It seems people are better off there. But she winced at the idea of leaving us on our own.
Not very many people encouraged us to leap forward towards life. To be exact, there were none. On the other hand, advice to be careful came by the bucketful and unsolicited. The opinion of those who had, for any reason whatsoever, "closed shop" and ended the love of their love didn't weight much on our scale. But we were ready to talk things over with those whose home was still alive and growing. They too were also in favour of being careful. At least, we were sure that what they said did not simply mirror their own desertion. They believed in a responsible fertility.
After conversing with a friendly couple, I summarised our problem thus: Please allow the husband to become his wife's spokesman: "Quote John Paul II to them," she said, "when he says that Every man is always the product of God's creative love." — Well, that's done. The subject is my dear wife's past and possibly future fertility. — There is no doubt that the matter is of some concern to us. We still do not have a clear answer. Are we facing overwhelming evidence? The following are elements you might consider one-sided… because the other side is found everywhere.
I wrote (with my wife's consent) to a friar that a deliberation on this matter must start with: "Let the children come to me" (Mt 19:14). Then there is "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Mt 25,40). Then, planning done generously must be a planning for the greatest generosity. — Added to that, each new life is a life for eternity, an infinite love and, if there are risks to be taken in this life, there is no better reason to risk one's life. If one wishes to view the thing with morbidity and pronounce a death sentence, then must we say that it must be nobler to die from giving life than to die because of some silly illness. — Also, in the worst-case scenario, we are confronted by three risks: poverty, death and orphaned children. But (1) since in no other time in the past has the human society been better organised to help people in need, the relative poverty that menaces us would have eliminated the human race long ago had our ancestors backed away from it. In comparison to their situation, we will always be rich. Then (2) death: the risks facing Danielle's life, with the medical attention presently available, are less than the ordinary risks faced by all pregnant women even a short time ago. A few years ago, a woman with no foreseen difficulty was more at risk in becoming pregnant than Danielle would risk in her present state. Should we be less generous than our ancestors? For what reason? Finally, (3) our children will get better help today with the present social security than did those who lived in previous times off their parents' meagre means. Of course, the plight of losing one's mother is hard, but it is an ordeal that can be borne with love. Would we show greater love towards our children by shutting ourselves up with them rather than inviting them to have open hearts with us and love someone else? — On the other hand, there remains the question: would we be tempting the Lord in continuing our venture or would we be putting our faith in him? What bothers us is that nobody gives us reasons to stop from the perspective of a boundless love. If somebody in authority in the Church could speak to us like Christ speaks and tell us, at the same time, that the present difficulties are divine indications to stop rather than indications for the modern mind to do so, we could more easily consider this as a possibility.
A few weeks ago, I explained to Johanne, Claude and Philippe that the best gift we could give Johanne had been a little brother to love. Same for Claude. Etc. And Richard now has lovely Mireille to love. — Will we leave Mireille in the cold?
The couple we wrote this to answered immediately. Their answer was kind and affectionate and respected the elements of the problem, seeking in the trust of God reasons for caution rather than foolhardiness.
As was to be expected, we remained uncertain. Maybe because God was moving us elsewhere. Probably more, people thought, because we lacked imagination and knew how to do nothing else except have children. As if children were things.
Anyway, in order to get on ahead, we had to clarify things. I summarised on my computer the reasons against the coming of a new Allaire and the answers that came to our mind: On Parental (Ir-)responsibility?
Against:
If the risk of dying is at 25%, it's already too much … considering the consequences … for the children, especially the younger children: social welfare may be well organised in our times but it does not take care of all the needs of the children, only of the material needs.
We shouldn't minimise the grave ordeal of children suffering psychologically, morally and even spiritually.
[In a way, it is] tempting the Lord. … Can one ask the Lord to decide in our place?
"… There can be some circumstances when parents must give up having more children. Guided by the concern for the well-being of their family and by their sense of responsibility towards the life and education of their children, the husband and wife then limit their conjugal relations, forgoing them during the times when these might produce a new conception counter-indicated by the particular conditions of their family" (Karol Wojtyla, now John Paul II, in "Love and Responsibility").
Answers:
What difference is there between tempting the Lord and putting our trust in him? A person tempts the Lord by not using the means at his disposal to do the Lord's work. That person then wants the Lord himself to do what can otherwise be done with the means given by the Lord. For instance, a person refuses to use some medicine or medical treatment available through nature and human ingenuity, seeking instead to force the Lord to a miraculous cure. That person refuses a gift from God in the name of God.
To put one's trust in the Lord means to do the Lord's work to the best of one's capacity, using all the means given by the Lord and trusting that the Lord will either give the proper means to make a success of it or will make a better use of its failure. For example, Mother Teresa founded a world-wide begging organisation. The Lord's work done by its members consists in giving themselves totally to the ill and the destitute without having adequate means. It would be tempting the Lord to refuse the gifts that people send to help the needy because God could always send a legion of angels to build the necessary lodging and send manna from heaven to feed everybody. It is putting one's trust in God to live a life of charity confident that the Lord will direct natural and supernatural means their way.
To tempt the Lord is to make a servant out of the Lord. To trust the Lord is to become ourselves the servants of God. To tempt is to scorn the means; to trust is to love the goal. A misjudgement here would have the goal serve the means, limit generosity to insure the means, and, for example, shy away from the Cross in order to be available for the Apostles (who were psychologically, morally and spiritually tormented by Our Saviour's untimely demise).
Of course, there is no obligation to risk everything in the foolishness of love. Nobody is obliged to quit his job and his goods to give himself totally to the poor. Nobody is obliged to choose consecrated celibacy as a way of life. Nobody is forced to leave his country and live in exile as a universal Pope. But is doing so tempting the Lord? Or is it putting one's trust in the Lord?
+
If a 25% risk of mortality from pregnancy is too great a risk for parents responsible to care for their children that are already born, then our ancestors must have been a bunch of irresponsible people. It has only been a short time that even an ordinary pregnancy carries a lesser risk for the mother. And our mothers accepted the risk.
One may be tempted to answer: "That was the condition of a time prior to the pill or even ‘natural’ family planing. The spouses, in those days, who had legitimate sexual relations together couldn't prevent the ensuing pregnancy." That would imply that the husbands were then insensitive brutes who deliberately accepted risking a wife's death in order to get their (legitimate) tender fornication with her. Indeed, that argument makes having sex an absolute and a wife's life something relative. — Of course, if the mutual giving of the spouses to each other happened also to be their mutual giving of themselves to the life of a new child in a total generosity, then their relationship might have been generous and trusting in divine providence instead of being male boorishness.
Next, there is the responsibility for the children's education. What is the better education: parents cocooning with their first children or inviting these children to participate with them in the gift of life? Does education come mainly from what the parents say or from what the parents do? And what better to give children: a passing attention and consumer goods or a person to love now and forever in eternity at the cost of some time and consumer goods? Is there a better gift for a child than the loving invitation to give oneself to someone in family and divine love?
There are risks. Isn't that when trust in divine providence comes in? If the venture of a love without measure has been accepted as the measure of love, will God abandon "the least of these [his] brethren"? What's the idea behind the suggestion that a mother could be indispensible and God could be dispensible? What mother has not known by experience how little she is of use if the Holy Spirit does not allow her generosity to sprout in her child's heart? How can a child's generosity be better awakened than by his mother's total generosity? And if God loves us as a Father, better than any human father or mother, how could we not trust him to give overabundant grace to those who accept the sacrifices he sends them? Seeing how little power we have on human hearts during our life, should we believe that our lives are more efficient when we keep them safe rather than when we let them be consumed by generous self-giving?
A new life is a priceless infinite love. It is not compulsory to procreate unconditionally. But is it tempting the Lord to do so?
As for probabilities. A probability is only a way to try to seize the unseizable: the future. To suggest that there is a 25% chance of mortality in a venture, simply means that we do not know what will happen, but that we are fretful. If the venture is worthwhile, the consequence should be to try to minimise the risk rather than to desist from the venture. — Finally, the medical opinion concerned the possibility of the rupture of the uterus and not of death. I should hope that contemporary medical practice can cut by half the probabilities of death following the rupture. That would bring it down to 12.5%. In other words, there would be 87.5% chances of survival. And these chances are calculated according to nature. Would it again be tempting God to ask for his help in making a success of a generous act? What should be the answer of the imitators of Christ?
This brings us back to the character of our discussion. There is no mechanical solution. But we are looking for an answer in line with a fervent love for the personal love of "the least of these my brethren" as shown by Jesus himself.
* * *
When the lives of strangers are concerned, it is fairly easy to expound clear ideas. But when one's own life is at stake, the matter can appear more complicated. In times of trial, one is easily tempted to consider oneself as the exception to rules one would impose upon others.
Also, in our youth, the loss of courage, cheered on a sexual liberation, was accompanied by contempt for those who, till then, had put such a courage into practice. I guess it was a matter of saving face. What is certain is that our liberated teachers and fellow intellectuals had explained to us how yesteryear's big families had been the result of ignorance and irresponsibility. First, people were ignorant of the sterile pleasure now called birth control. As Chesterton summarised it: "birth control simply means no birth and no control." Secondly, people were irresponsible because they endured poverty and risked their lives, which is contrary to having fun. Nearly all of the new morality ("the old immorality under a new name", said Bishop Sheen) tried to send virtue on a guilt trip, and partly succeeded in its enterprise.
Nowadays, people having the means to have fun without risk, wasn't it immoral to irresponsibly give life within risk? Hadn't the previous generations, in harder times, been immoral in persevering with life rather than comfortably settling into the coffin and letting time entomb us all?
Of course, to consider dying, and living without an indispensible mother, wasn't cheery. So Danielle decided to talk it over with a young priest who appeared to have dodged the temptations of ease and to have kept his faith within the Universal Church.
"Tell me, Father," she asked. "Is it a sin to give life to a child when there is risk of death?"
"Never," he answered. "It is never a sin for the spouses to give life."
This was in line with the love we tried to live. But, being so alone in step, we tended to get the impression that it was the regiment that had the correct step.
Danielle came back assured. In view of the dangers menacing us, it was not compulsory for us to follow through with life. But we would do no evil in confronting them. It was good to know.
* * *
Our friend Van taught in a college in Virginia during the silly sixties. He took part in protest demonstrations in favour of racial equality, wrote in favour of sexual equality and was even the inventor of the word "sexist" that has become so popular since. As with most people from those days, he calmed down, content that the Black people could profit from their gains. He had also discovered that many "sexist" attitudes were common sense rather than macho exploitation. For instance, the lower pitch of male voices explained newscasters were once mainly men. As people get older, their ears harden and lose higher-pitch perception. The low-pitched voice of a man is therefore a better general means of communication than the higher-pitched voice of a woman.
A committed Christian, Van had finally discovered that Christ had not founded a Church that changes with the world but a Church that resists worldliness and changes the world. In short, if God had taken a particular human body to make the Universal Father known to all men, he had also chosen a particular person to be the universal railing for the children of God. This railing was the Pope. As Van wrote: "that very period that Protestants rightly point to as having the most corrupt of popes: the hardly-Spirit-filled popes of the Avignon ‘Captivity’ and the Great Schism as well as the not-noticeably-religious popes of the Renaissance who triggered the Protestant revolt. Lots of sin. No question about that — the sin — but the Protestant critics fail to notice the really significant fact: not one of those wicked popes altered doctrine. To this historically-minded sheep, that fact is quite the most remarkable proof that the Holy Spirit was on the job, guiding His Church away from error. […] That is the significant fact: not what the good popes did, but what the bad one didn't do."
Having come into the Roman Catholic Church, he carried with him a wound from older times. As a great lover of nature, of green spaces, of solitude, he disliked big cities and their growing population. So he kept fearing world overpopulation even while the disappearance of his own race through birth dearth was menacing his own world. We discussed over and over what for me was the "myth" of overpopulation and what, for him, was the scientific certainty of a disaster for mankind in the more or less near future. He was necessarily uneasy with the contradiction between the Church's pro-birth view of conjugal love and what he considered as the need for mankind to have few children.
In our friendly correspondence, I mentioned the uncertainty Danielle and I had concerning our future children. Should we forge ahead or not? By return post, Van answered with humour: "TEN, becoming eleven, leaves a number that had neither the potency of TEN nor that of TWELVE. That is a reason to add another number. A DOZEN makes even a more spectacular title than TEN. And why not for thirteen, making it a Baker's Dozen?"
It was a joke, but so totally counter to the usual drift of our correspondence that it warmed us all over.
* * *
Towards the end of World War II, the surviving German fighter pilots did not want to know the names of the new recruits in their squadron. Nobody likes to get attached to people who are about to die. It hurts a lot.
In the present war against human love, we had a similar experience. At the beginning of our married life, we were friends with young couples who, like us and at the same time as us, leapt gleefully into life. But then we saw them break away from the gift of life in order to dabble in anything else. At the same time, we witnessed their drifting away from each other. Their wounds became our own, by the magic of friendship. Then we heard of bitter remarks made by some against our perseverance in what appeared to us to be simply the fusion of love. These remarks were at the outer edge of our world and did not affect the peace and tranquillity of our micro-society. But they hurt and nobody likes to be hurt.
So we became suspicious of the bright-eyed youth of new couples who appeared to be enthusiastically leaping into love and life. Was their joy the image of a commitment to love or simply the expression of a passing passion to be replaced by other passions? Would they too be shot down in the Western sky?
Nancy had been an intimate friend during her years of pregnancy and we had dearly loved her and her growing family. Then she had a change of heart, deciding that enough was enough and gave a new direction to her life. Well, her life was her own. But common friends would occasionally report her bitter remarks against us. We built a wall against them and put them on the other side.
Then we heard that Nancy had cancer. Nobody could say what the outcome of the illness would be. Her husband was upset. Their friends prayed for her.
Danielle phoned her. Nancy was transformed. She was peaceful and confessed: "Danielle, I have often criticised you. But you were right. You can be sure that, from now on, whatever your decision will be, I will fully back you." Such a change of heart touched Danielle so deeply that she had to fight her tears back. Nancy's voice was beautiful and profound. Her heart was generous. In the face of death, she let life speak out. Could we, ourselves, hesitate to face death?
Surgery was a success. Nancy came back to health and family. But while death had been menacing, she had given Danielle God's judgement. At least, that is what it appeared to be.
* * *
Our Bishop was soon to die from an unexpected heart attack. — He had worked to revive his flock's faith in the Church of Jesus Christ. He had forced his diocese to go through the conversion of the heart before leaving for God's purity. The pastoral bureaucracies of Quebec and Canada had taken occasion of a momentary exception clause in the law of the Church to bring the children to their first communion before their first confession and had not restored things when the exception clause had been lifted. Once he got to understand this, Bishop Charles-Henri Lévesque remedied things and brought his people back in line with the logic of the loving heart. It took some time and doing, but the children were finally invited to live and grow correctly again.
The last Christmas before his untimely death, he sent us a moving testimony: "May the Lord shower with blessings this family whose courageous faith is a firm attachment to the Child who comes to save us. The parents and the children give witness through their lives to the Mystery of the Manger, to it's truth, to the salvation that is given to us in these days. You edify us and be sure that your example is a true deed of evangelisation in our midst."
Many in our midst said he was too Roman (too Papist).
* * *
Some Witnesses of Jehovah knocked at our door.
"Madam," they told Danielle, "what would you say if we told you that Christ is about to come back on earth to put things in order?"
"I could adapt to that," she answered. "The main problem is to live in the present disorder of the world."
"But," they insisted, "what would you say if you heard that the end of the world is near?"
"I would say that this is very good news," she said delighted. "I've always thought that one of the worst sufferings in our world is having to die one at the time and to go through the grief of death. It would be so wonderful if we could all leave at the same time."
They exited perplexed.
* * *
Amongst the conflicting elements of our situation was a physical matter of importance. How resistent was Danielle's uterus? We feared it had weakened. It may be too weak to carry a new child during nine months. Mireille's birth by caesarean section has revealed a perfectly healthy uterus on which the surgeon hadn't even been able to find the scar of the previous caesarean. Had we known that before-hand, wouldn't we have gone for a natural birth? And the door to the future, that others would now have us shut, would still be wide open. As before. What if we tried going back to natural birth this time? Danielle's uterus had of course been cut a second time. Maybe that cut had left its mark as the first time around was supposed to have done. But how could we know before the fact? The unknown brought anxiety. In the case of Mireille, it would have been wiser to foolishly leap into the unknown while we had foolishly followed a wisdom of prudence and scalpel. What was wisdom and what was folly this time around?
Edouard and Marie-France were a young married couple who met bad luck. They needed a caesarean for the birth of their first child. As they wanted to live a life of mutual generosity, this saddened them. The medical profession told them what it was telling everybody: caesareans should be few in numbers. But Edouard and Marie-France did not want to be amongst those who falsified their relationship with a contracepted intimacy. Consequently, they feared they would soon be limited to their moments of infertility.
Then they heard that, in Quebec City, there was a team of doctors that accepted the risk of natural birth after a caesarean. Threatened by the gates of life that would shut after having barely opened, they chose the risky path that could keep them open.
Couldn't we do the same thing? The temptation was strong.
"I'll talk to our surgeon," Danielle decided. "I want to get his professional opinion. He's the one who has seen my uterus. He's the one who was surprised to find it in a better shape than he expected. He might have an opinion concerning the possibility of my giving birth naturally."
She asked him candidly.
A week later, he gave us the result of his cogitation. He had consulted his colleagues, researched the subject and thought a lot: "Why," he concluded, "do you want to give birth in a dangerous way rather than in a perfectly safe way? I have done over two thousand caesareans and I have never lost a mother."
Danielle could hardly believe her ears. Could it be that all she had to do was change the question to make a risk into a security? No children could bypass the risk. But now a caesarean became the secure way of life… comparatively to natural birth. But this was more than just a comparison. The professional experience of this man had met no failure. Where was the spectre of death so often brandished before us? We suspected that the sophisticated contemporary medical profession had an inferiority complex in this matter. It could do far better than it dared conceive. Might not our suspicion be founded after all?
One thing was sure. We wouldn't let the chance pass. So we voluptuously called forth the next child… who didn't answer the call straight away.
* * *
To be frank, we hadn't correctly understood our doctors' fears and our sureness wasn't properly founded. They had never really feared for the moment of birth. At that moment, they had things in hand. What they feared was that if the mother and child did not make it to that moment, then the uterus would rupture away from the hospital. The blood vessels affected by such an eventuality would inflict a grievous haemorrhage to the mother and the drop in blood pressure could even produce instantaneous death. That was the risk they feared. However, even if Danielle made it fine to the delivery room, they didn't want to face the same risk factor at that moment.
In fact, our surgeon had only been asked about the latter risk lifted by the caesarean section. He hadn't discarded the more serious risk of the last months of pregnancy.
Some years ago, on the twentieth of April, 1951, to be exact, Simonne, a mother in a nearby town "faced death at the birth of Marguerite-Andrée. It was the first time she gave birth outside her home. Leaving her home, she felt she would never see her children again. It was during the night. She was suffering from haemorrhage. She did not wake them so not to perturb them. The doctors at the small hospital of St-Jean-Port-Joli did one of their first caesarean sections using local anaesthesia. The mother could see her baby but the child's cries reassured her. Ten days later, mother and daughter left the hospital. The mother came home only on the ninth of June, after a stay of convalescence at her parents' home in Montmagny. Her pastor then warned her: ‘It's now enough. You have eleven children!’ But it was clear for Simonne that ‘if she had other children, it was because they must come’. So she confidently carried Daniel. Then there would be Yves and Bruno. And she gave birth at the hospital."
Many years later, there was Danielle, with eleven children, who had been told that eleven it was enough. Would we have the same strength to give ourselves spontaneously to our next child? What would we have decided if we had not misunderstood our surgeon? Of course, the chances favoured our child. Crucial testimonials instigated us to put our complete trust in our common Father. In misreading our surgeon's answer, we saw the green light all the while he was still keeping the red light on. This illusion put an end to our indecision.
A matter of chance, for some. Stupidity, according to brainier ones. This misinterpretation might finally have been a kind gesture from God while he was trying to help our faith grow towards the size of a mustard seed, as that of Simonne.
* * *
"And when they warned him not to speak any more to any one in the name of Jesus, Peter answered them, ‘Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.’" (Acts 4:19-20)
Danielle, Michel, Johanne and Claude, and some 300,000 other people were at John Paul II's first Mass on Quebec soil. Christine, the other children and I remained at La Pocati re watching the Mass live on television. Peter's successor was enthusiastically received everywhere he went. He had judged correctly: The Pope "believes he has met a people thirsting for truth."
"John Paul II has wanted to bring this light to the people, but he worries that the faithful do not always find people ready to help them understand."
"The Holy Father now wishes that the Bishops continue to assemble people, that the priests live their priesthood more intensely, that the nuns and friars inform and that the media analyse the messages." — These words were told to a La Presse reporter by Mgr Emry Kabonga, assistant personal secretary to the Pope. Noted the reporter: "The Pope's personal secretaries never give interviews."
John Paul II had brought grace and truth. But Christ's grace and truth never grow without its "martyrs", that is, its witnesses who write about God's love for us with their blood and flesh. The Palm Sunday's enthusiasm must now be followed by Passion, Death and Resurrection.
The opposition between the teaching of Christ (taught by John Paul II) about sex and the way Catholic couples lived was evident.
Weren't a vast majority of Quebeckers disobedient on this matter? This was understandable considering that the vast majority of priests, bishops and theologians in Quebec had never delivered this teaching in the last twenty years, nor had they tried to explain its theological and human foundation. In general, Catholics, even those who went to church, couldn't be expected to be "more Catholic than the pastor". This silence, this reluctance, and sometimes hostility of the clergy was also understandable since they were recruited in a society whose values ran counter to those of Christ in the matter.
This opposition between the Church and society is not strange. It has always been the case and is founded upon the nature of the Church herself. Paradoxically, the teaching of the Church would crumble if her members were thoroughly faithful. The central act of the Church, which is the Mass, begins with the priest's invitation to recognise before God that we are sinners. And the faithful admit their infidelity.
Christ came for the sick and not for those who are well. The Catholic Church does not consider itself as a sect for the chosen. She is the refuge for sinners. She is a hospital of the heart and the mind where even her doctors are among the first to recognise that they suffer from the illness of mankind, but where each one tries to heal everyone. The practice of counting Catholics afflicted by pride and selfishness of some kind is a loss of time. Not all die, but all are sick.
Therefore, attention must be given to the Church's spiritual diagnostics and to her ceaseless efforts to care for and to heal all people afflicted by the various ills of the heart.
In this context, the media and social perception concurred with the Church's own teaching when it showed us that John Paul II was an original chap. According to Scripture and Tradition, he is the one amongst Christ's witnesses that has received the charisma, the grace, the attribute necessary to be the doctrinal caretaker of us all, half-wits needing care. The greater the number of half-wits trying to break out of life into oblivion doesn't disprove his use. On the contrary.
Well the caretaker had come to visit us and to encourage us to say "yes to life".
* * *
Ever since we had made our decision, even though an occasional fret disturbed us, our conjugal union filled us with joy. "I feel like a young spouse all over again," Danielle told me. "We can give life!"
Our decision surprised some people, amongst whom a friar who was a long-time friend of ours. In his Christmas letter, he wondered whether it was wise for us to go ahead with our plan. Hadn't Stéphanie's arrival signalled the fact that we should call it quits?
I answered: "Your interpretation of our God-given adventure with our eldest daughter and Stéphanie is quite original. I admit that I do no see how the necessity imposed upon us to plunge entirely into divine mercy should deter us from trusting the Lord in the case of the children that he invites to an eternal life through us. Indeed, if our choice had not been deep-rooted in a self-giving that, by God's grace, we try to fulfil, our daughter would have been on contraceptives a long time ago. She would not have become pregnant and she would have mindlessly warped the love seated in her. Or she would simply have had Stéphanie vacuumed out of her by a caring doctor. Then, if our option had not been conceived as the gift of life for each of our children, it is probable that our eldest daughter would have dragged her own daughter through the hell of the tug-a-war of opposing attachments between a motherly grand-mother and a liberated mom, instead of giving her a true home. Finally, if our daughter's accomplishment has a sense, shouldn't it be the sense of the peace that she has found and in which she expressed eagerness for Danielle to have another child?"
Another person we knew spoke "frankly": "If you couldn't accept Stéphanie, how do you think you are able to accept another baby?"
"What do you mean we couldn't accept Stéphanie?" said Danielle who was hurt. "Do you really think it was fun to carry the baby in my arms and then see her leave forever? We accepted Stéphanie so fully that we were able to give her what she needed most. We kept nothing of her for ourselves."
* * *
On June 14, a superficial but lasting frustration came to an end. I was finally awarded my Ph.D. in Philosophy. I had written my thesis with much fidelity to truth. I really tried to understand something concerning our being and the world we live in. When I explained part of it to a union man who had battled against revolutionaries, he thought my analysis of the ideology of Revolution fit exactly with what he had been up against. But that preoccupation for truth had nothing to do with the process that made a "doctor" out of me. So I pocketed the salary increase and slipped the diploma in a bottom drawer.
* * *
On Thursday, July 18, Danielle and I were wrapped in intimacy in a Quebec City motel. The day was lovely. The time was ripe. That Church's prayerbook, on that day, called to the Lord: "Lord, make fruitful this day's work." And in a moment of ecstasy, our child came into our lives. We were sure of it. And it was a fact.
A girl would be nice. Having arrived after three boys (François, Jean-Paul and Richard) Mireille felt deprived of something. She would stand up in front of the toilet and lift her dress. We showed her how her mother, Christine, Johanne and the twins all sat down on the toilet and were happy to do so. To no avail. She did not want to degrade herself by sitting down on her potty. Her immediate brothers stood and she would not allow for discrimination. So it might be good if she wasn't shut in by another boy.
Also, another girl would give us the pleasure of having an equal number of six boys and six girls. Otherwise it would be seven to five. Of course, Thomas Aquinas, known for many brilliant observations had also suggested that it was better to have more boys than girls. He wrote: "parents are more attached to boys rather than girls because [amongst other reasons] what is more perfect is more desirable, and the masculine is to the feminine as the perfect to the imperfect." But, in our opinion, this was not one of his brilliant observations.
In the meantime, we thought about names. I jokingly suggested Fred-Eric so he would have to tell everybody to his last day: "No. It takes a hyphen in between Fred and Eric." Our older children, said they preferred Alfred E. Neuman. Alfred was Fred and E would stand for Eric. But they added Neuman so he could play the board game MAD with them. The goal of the game is to lose all one's money. And on one of the squares, the player wins a fortune (and loses the game) if his name is Alfred E. Neuman…
Speaking more seriously, we finally opted for Suzanne or Lucie for a girl and Eric or Louis for a boy.
It was André. Born on April 3.
The caesarean section was a breeze. But the surgeon wasn't too pleased. The scar from the previous caesarean was there and the uterus was thinner. Some of the baby's hair even stuck out of the pouch as had happened at the last caesareans for the woman with seven caesareans he had told us about. The surgeon had received explicit orders from Danielle not to tie her fallopian tubes. He proved trustworthy and let us decide our own future.
André was a strange fellow. He was always full of smiles. He was a smiling baby that would make any other mother jealous. He smiled as no other child of ours had. And God knows was had already had smiling children. We concluded: "Maybe God has a special smile for the dozen. For sure, the God-given smile is not a reprobation."
We knew that André would learn how to cry later on. But, as our thirteen-year-old son Claude had recently figured out, moments of peace and joy are made to store energy for later battles in life. So we took in André's smiles as joys of the present, energy for the future and hope for eternity.
