PrIce 5 Cent's The Queen's Work 3115 South Grand Boulevard St. Louis 18. Mo. Nihil obstat: Willi am M. Drumm Censor Libron,m I mprimat1tt' : + J oseph E. Ritter Archiepiscop'IIs Sancti L1Idovici S li. L ll dovici, die 2I Febr1la rii 1947 First printing, August 1947 I N A LETTER to Father Lord a mother of three small children gives an irrefutable answer to the birth-control hawkers : the happi- ness of a family-husband, wife, and children - whose keynote is wholehearted, unselfish cooperation with the Son of the H Iy Family. !\1\'¥ Fl:-JAN C IAL PROFIT made by th e Central Off·ice (If Ihe Sodality will be 1Ised for the adva·ncement of the Soda-lilY lliovement and the ca li se of Ca tholic Action . Copyright 194 7 THE QUEEN'S WORK, I Nc. A MOTHER LOOKS AT BIRTH CONTROL A Letter From a Mother to a Priest Margaret Theresa Boyan to Daniel A. Lord. S.J. The Priest Comments First H ERE is a letter that came during the course of one busy winter day. $ince I wrote the first of a small series of pamphlets on birth control, I,'ve had many a letter fired at me: " Why do you priests keep harping on the subject all the time? ... " "Anyhow what can an unmarried priest know about the problems of married peo· pIe? ... " "With so many important things to be discussed, must you waste your time and ours on this subject? .. " I answered the letters one and all: "Please-I do not mean to harp. But if we who love the human race and worry about the future of our country do not make at least as much effort t o prevent its destruction as do those who beg the young to practice race suicide, we should be fail- ing in our duty .... " "I think we know your problems, and we sympathize with them. The confessional and our close contacts with. life keep us in touch with .your difficulties. But a doctor does not need to have cancer to be able to cure it. Nor does a lawyer involved in an -3 - important law suit feel as capable of handling his own case as he does of han- dling the case of someone else in whom he is deeply interested .... " "Important? What could be more im- portant than the whole question of admit- ting human souls into the world or slam- ming the door of life in their faces? If this problem is not solved, there won't be many other problems to worry about. The possible extinction of the human race is a pretty vital question. Or don't you think so? •• oN Then came this letter. I read the first few paragraphs and felt that once more I was a target. I glanced at the end of the last page to find the writer's name. Frequently enough letters that disagree with what I have said are written by that mysterious character known as Anonymous. This letter bore a signa- ture. Mrs. Boyan was the lady's name, Margaret Theresa Boyan. And in a post- script: "My friends call me Peggy." I sighed. The first two names indicated that at least once on a ' time she had been a Catho- lic. The name Margaret may denote any religio!1; Margaret Theresa is-or was- certainly of the faith. The Boyan left me puzzled. It was an unusual name, 'very unusual. I personally had never , known anyone of that name. Was it a name that the lady had used to cover up her real identity? 4 - I returned to page one and read it again, bracing my soul for the rest of the attack. I read the letter to the end and then wrote to the lady, having assured myself that she was very much a reality, very much a .. .. But here is the letter. Let it speak for itself. The Lady Writes "Dear Father Lord: "I have just been paging through a few of your birth-control pamphlets. "As a result I cannot help writing you this letter. "I have been married three and a half years. Recently to our . home came our third child. Three children in three and a half years. Even you should be congratu- latory. "Now babies are an awful burden and a lot of work. What's more, they wreak havoc with your nervous system. They keep you in a state of perpetual weariness. You fall into bed, exhausted. Then just as you settle down and start to doze off in a first happy sleep - beautiful sleep, sleep too long delayed-one of them sets up a howl and a squawk. "You are up again. Sleep has .fled, and the children are very , much there. "Again bed, and.again up. Through the night it goes on. Apprehensively you waken to realize how terribly cold it is. So you slip out from under your warm covering to see whether they have thrown off their ~5- blankets. Usually they have, so you tuck them all in again. "By six o'clock, when you think you haven't a measure of strength or energy left, the alarm goes off. "You may be sure that your husband feels very lonesome and neglected if you don't get right up and fix his breakfast, pack his lunch, and provide him with lots of cheerful conversation before you finally kiss him out the door. "Then-back to bed? Ah, no! "The children are awake and clamoring to be taken up. In fact your day has now begun in earnest. "I haven't time to initiate you into the minute-by"minute happenings of the day. But let me assure you that one day in a family of three children under three-the oldest exactly two and a half-is something to tax the strongest nerves. "At least three times every day I reach a point when I am sure I am losing my mind and my patience. "It's tough. It's hard. And I love it. "If I have a single bit of advice to offer married couples, it is this: Have children. Have all the children God sends you. Don't ever practice life prevention. Don't ever!" "That's my stand based, not on any theo- ry, father, but on happy experience. "For aU the fact that they are a burden, they are a sweet burden. They are at once a trial and a consolation. They are one worry after another, and one joy crowding "'- 6 - on the joy just ahead. My home is blessed over and over again because three little saints have come to live in it. I feel my house is rich with God's grace. "Almost everybody seems to pity me (or condemn me) for having had three babies in three years. Yet I know no married pair who are happier than we, and I per- sonally would not change places with any other woman in the world. "What I really wish is that I had the time and the chance to tell the world at large all the reasons why life prevention should not be practiced and to go on to all the reasons why children are good for people. The fact that life prevention is a sin against God and the human race makes it bad. But I don't talk of that when I talk with couples who have no religion, no inter- est in God or the supernatural. "I tell them what I have seen again and again around me-that they should not practice life pr"evention because it is a vice that will destroy their love for each other; because it will cause them unrest, dissatis- faction, and will lead to unfaithfulness. It will break up their marriage. And it does, father. I could almost say that in the couples I have known it happens every time. "People insult me when they suggest that my children have been accidents. (How I detest such talk!) 'Y ou wanted them? They are not just accidents? Why in the world do you have them?' It's a common line of questioning. - 7- "My answer is very simple: I say, ISo that we can bring them up to know God and love Him and serve Him in this world and so that we will all be happy togetHer in heaven.' "But I go on. 'Besides I know they have a right to exist. If Bill and I hadn't felt this way, we wouldn't have ) 'I)arried. If we simply wanted to live together, it wOllldn't have been necessary to go through th~ mar- riage ceremony'." The Priest Com'ments I interrupt this letter to note the shrewd connection 'that the young mother traces between the practice of birth control and the promiscuity of modern life, where "liv- ing together" comes to be less and less a vice in modern life and , literature. The Lady eontinues Her Letter "There are some however who can't be stopped. They say, 'Well you're one of these good Catholics. That's your religion, and you have to stick with it .' They sound as, if they meant, ' .. . and you are stuck with it.' "I answer that simply enough : 'Even if I were not a Catholic, I'd have children. No marriage is complete without them. A home kept deliberately without children, a home from which little ones are barred- what right has that to be called a home? "'Besides my children give me and my husband mental and spiritual development. Children make a couple grow up.' -8- "To me it's as plain a s day. When men and women deliberately keep children out of their lives, it is a sign that they are emotionally immature. They are afraid to face life's responsibilities. They want to play like children and to dodge trouble and difficulties like children. They want to go on being sweethearts and refuse the full development that comes when the sweet- hearts progress into the high vocation of parenthood. They choose t o stay immature when they determine that they will dodge being mothers or fathers. Whatever peaks in life they may seem to attain, I main- tain that the couple that deliberately plans against children or stingily limits the num- ber to a scant one or two lack adult stature. "Some women resort to charm schools and cram into their brains "the textbooks on psychology in order to develop poise and cultivate self-assurance. Mothers get those traits along with their children. Poise and self-assurance are necessary for moth- ers; hence those traits come naturally to mothers. Mothers who have to make both major and minor decisions day in and day out acquire a deep and instinctive sense of values. (Believe me, these are not merely materialistic values.) And as they do, they rise far above the characters of the deliber- ately childless women. "I have been watching carefully the de- velopment of mothers. It would be a mam-. moth task for me to set down the graces and talents that God bestows upon them to equip them for their state in life. Why -9-· should I try to list what great writers have put into great books? Anyhow the Pope brought that all out in his address to the women of Rome recently. "But let's talk about the men. "Children have a way of making men out of what often looks like men but what are deep down inside simply overgrown boys. I've noticed that most married men who are deliberately childless always seem adolescent and not quite what they might have been. They are always getting into childish scrapes and putting on adolescent displays of emotion. They lack something. "I don't say that children necessarily reform a bad character. H. 1. Phillips seems to think they can help do it though. In his column, 'The Sun Dial,' he said a lot the day he wrote: Little child?'en r'ound the house Make (L man out of a louse. ("Oh just to beat any possible rejoinder, that verse emphatically does not refer to my husband.) "But while we are on the pleasant sub- ject of husbands, let me give you a sample of what I mean-my own husband. He is not quite twenty-four. That means he is young. He looks young too, and he acts boyish. But he is much more prac- tical, sensible, and mature than plenty of men in their forties. He is most lovable and gentle. Yet no one coming to our home could doubt for a minute that he is the h{!~d Qf the house. -10- He wouldn't agree to that. And don't get me wrong about it. He always says, 'Christ is the head of this house,' and he means it. "But if Christ is the head, believe me, my husband is the acting chief. "I must say that I have not always seen that same adult attitude, that same accept- ance of responsibilities, that same maturity combined with youthfulness among many husbands. It is invariably found, I dis- cover, in the few other couples I know who are also rearing families and who have the fine Catholic ideals about marriage and children. "N one of our husbands have that strange softness and that almost effeminate affecta- tion that seem to become characteristic of life-prevention husbands. "What is most important however in all of this is something pretty lovely to a hus- band and wife: Living the way we do has brought us very close to God. Maybe that is why we are so happy. "Everything was so difficult at the start: The war, no money, sickness, 'troubles no end. He was in service and seldom home. We had to live the unnatural life of separa- tion and shifting about that came to so many couples during the war years. I have never been particularly strong or healthy, so pregnancy was never easy for me. Yet we tried to do our best, and we leaned entirely on God. For often enough - 11 - things seemed desperate, and we felt the impossibility of helping ourselves. He .was just one man, and the higher-ups issued their commands, and he ~beyed. Well God would help us, and to God we prayed. We went to God for every single thing we needed. Before each step, each decision we called on God. My husband was thousands of miles away, in tl1e Pacific; I was in a cOld-water tenement fiat-in the United States, in the east. But we were tied by our, rosary, out family rosary. Every night God was the one bond, we had in common. It has indeed been a niarriage in Christ ever since the ceremony and the nuptial Mass. Somehow God let us know what He meant whei-t His Son said, 'Seekye first the king- dom of God ... .' Oh if people would only dare to practice that. We tried all the way along. ' And God is good. When we started out, we had nothing. In time, little by little, we acquired things. By the time he came out of the service we had our furniture-chairs, bed, baby things. Today we live in this little four-room fiat- and it is completely furnished. We have a phone, a brand-new table-top gas range, an electric washing machine-latest model -a second-hand car that, unlike all other on apparent record, gives us no trouble at all. And we have our three children. I used to pray for a house-a house of our own. Not any .more. Now I know bet- - 12- ter than to ask a nything of God except the essentials of love and life. If God wants us to have a house, we'll get it in His good time. The women in the maternity ward where I spent a week not long ago complained of the cost of living. Many of them said that just as soon a s ' the baby got a little big- ger,' they'd go out to work again. I told them 1 didn't intend to. work. It was wrong for a mother to work. 'Don't do it,' · I ·told them. 'Children need their mothers at home much more than they need .any money that the mothers could possibly bring in.' " 'Don't be ridiculous;' they. retorted. It's impossible to .get along on one pay check these days.' "'I know that,' I replied. 'So let your husband earn both salaries.' "It was st range to hear them protest . Their husbands couldn't-or wouldn't. Or (what seemed often to be the case) they, the women, didn't want them to. Yet my husband thinks nothing of doing manual work on weekdays and then lining up all the work he can get for week ends and nights-in hi s chosen profession, music. "During his time in the service he worked and studied and' prayed for advancement. When other war br ides were working in defense plants and sending money to their husbands, I was keeping house on an income derived from the government allotment and his voluntary a llotment, Other men gam- bled, drank, and dissipated their :(l1oney and wrote home to their wives for more. My - 13- husband lived on five dollars a month and spent his free time studying to advance in rating in order to support his ever growing family . "So you see, although we were separated, he always supported me. He knew I de- pended entirely on him for living, and he never failed me or the children. It was a great incentive to him to know that no matter where on the earth he traveled he carried in his pocket a key that opened a door to his horne-and there hi s family were waiting and ready for him. "When it was all over and he made the long trek back from Japan, not for him the di sappointment and unhappiness so mallY men found . There was a place, poor but pretty and complete, and hi s babies in their cribs, all full of love for him. "After he came home, he worked fir st one job and then another, trying to find the way of life that would make us happiest. Now he has settled on a plan. I thrill when I think of it, remembering Joseph and the Boy Jesus. He has become an apprentice carpenter; in addition to his musical pro- fession he will have a trade. "I'm glad he . has the double resource for life. If he doesn't feel he is doing well enough at one, he can always turn to the other. I've noticed that the musicians who practice life prevention are not nearly so industrious and not one half so concerned about their homes. "Well in spite of what everyone seems to call these crackpot times, we get along, and - 14 - we hope to get along. For we have our prayer, 'God's will be done.' It has become our only petition. Then 'Thank you, God' is the echo that goes with it. And that comes often. We work hard and do our best. And we rely entirely on God. He pro- vides most abundantly. We never have a lot of money. But we always have whatever we need-and some left over to give to others. " 'God's will be done' is sometimes less a prayer than a song of joy that sings in our hearts. How I wish I could see other married couples live by that simple plan! How rich we are to have God for our Father! How happy we are to be His children and to bring His children into the world! How wonderful to let Him do with us and for us as He pleases! "If people only realized that to do God's will brings real and lasting happiness, they'd know so much less sorrow and so much more joy. "If they would only enter wholeheartedly with Him into this work of creation, they would taste the sweetness of sacrifice. "Of course bringing up a family is a backbreaking and often heartbreaking job. But what better work could married people do? To what better use could they put their lives? How could they more effectively exhaust their energies? "As for myself, aside from the fact that I want all my children to be saints in heaven, I secretly dream other things. Per- haps there will be religious vocations. Per~ - 15- haps there will be good, holy marriages. Maybe some of them will be ditchdiggers. Maybe some of them will be mere ditch- diggers and nothing more. "But whatever they become, I secretly hope and pray that this world will be a better place because my children are in it. "Sincerely, "Margaret Theresa Boyan; "P . . S.: My friends call me Peggy." The Priest Comments It was a bleak winter day no longer. The sun had came out and seemed to fill h the room. I wrote to hel: at once. Might I use the letter? Might I publish it for others to read? Her reply was a genuine surprise. What had she written that was worth publica- tion? But if I wanted to use it, of course I could. So here it is. Maybe this Peggy will be a smiling, gay, and challenging mother holding up her shining ideals to other thousands-to their joy in time, their glory in eternity, and un- fading gratitude from the Blessed Trinity and the Mother of us all. .... 38 -16- 757618-001 757618-002 757618-003 757618-004 757618-005 757618-006 757618-007 757618-008 757618-009 757618-010 757618-011 757618-012 757618-013 757618-014 757618-015 757618-016