View-0.7; "The whole future of Christian civilisation depends on Catholic mothers."
This claim was made by Mrs. Bower speaking at Foyle's Art Gallery, on Friday, on the subject, " The Catholic in the World To-day." Mrs. Bower spoke as a wife and a mother of eight children.
In worldly terms, said Mrs. Bower the Catholic doctrine of marriage seemed hard. In youth one sees others having one or, at the most, two children. One is described as selfish or as a sort of oddity, a survival of the Ark. One is told that to have a family so large that it is difficult to give it the benefits of an expensive education is selfish. Or a family which cannot have the material comforts equal to the parents' own childhood is selfish.
Only a deep spiritual outlook could carry the young mother beyond this outlook to a realisation of what the Christian family means, said Mrs. Bower, With that realisation came the knowledge that a family was one's great heritage for God. The family was the only sound bridge for the future in a materialist world.
In fact, she found, a family of eight was easier to rear than a fam ily of three. The older children raised the younger. The child of thz large family demanded less attention than the spoiled child which. because it came from a small family, could always make demands on its parents. Again, it had been proved in the United States that it was the childless marriage which tended most frequently to the divorce court. Seventy per cent. of the divorces in the U.S.
came in childless marriages. Onechild marriages provided 8 per cent„ and as children increased divorce showed a proportionate drop.