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Question

Dear Father Angelo,
I have been wondering a lot lately: if all children are  gifts from God, is it that He  encourages the fact that some children are illicitly conceived?

For example:  children  are born also to unmarried couples who are cohabitating, or even to couples who are both divorced.
I’m wondering if also in those cases we can talk about a gift from God? Does the Lord somehow sustain  those illicit unions?
Ultimately, it is God who places a soul into those little bodies! And why is it that there are christian couples who pray to become parents, and do not receive the gift of a child?
Shall we then not consider children a gift? This has been racking my brain lately. Can you explain it to me?
Thank-you.
God bless you always.

Priest’s answer

Dear friend,
1. Unfortunately, we  very often make God do all kinds of wrong things.
If someone decides to commit adultery and God does not immediately strike him/her with a lightning bolt, can we say that God cooperates in the adultery because He continues to keep him/her alive?
Obviously not.
The same is true if someone decides to steal, kill, or engage in intimate sexual behavior that is outside  God’s plan.

2. Although we commonly use the same kind of language you used, “God places a soul into those little bodies”, in reality there is not an instant in time when there is just a body into which a soul is subsequently infused.
The soul is infused at the same instant of conception.
The law of nature  somehow demands God  to create a soul.
There can be no living body, not even for an instant, without a soul making it alive.

3. God gave us freedom, and is always respectful of our freedom; He actually upholds it even when we decide to act against His will.
If God permits all this, it is certainly to serve a greater good.
Presently it is not clear to us what is the greater good that God is preparing.
Nonetheless, on the other side  we too will sing for eternity along with all the saints in paradise: “Your judgements are true and just” (Rev 16,7).

4. A child is always a gift from God, because it is God alone who gives him existence, and keeps him alive , moment after moment.
As Saint Thomas reminds us, parents are the cause of their children’s becoming, but God alone is the cause of their existence.

5. What you say in the end is true: there are many couples who wish to receive this gift from God, and do not get it.
Should we think that God does not want to give them this gift?
Obviously not. We should rather infer the presence of some kind of physiological impediment to fertility in the couple, or perhaps in just one of them.

6. Why then does God not perform a miracle?
Sure, He could do it.  Maybe in some cases He does.
But ordinarily He does not. Why?
Maybe it’s because God wishes for these people to exercise some other kind of parenthood: an adoptive parenthood, or a spiritual one.
Maybe God wants to spare these people some unbearable crosses.  We don’t know.
Here too, we shall understand everything in paradise, and we shall sing what even now we are called to sing: “Yes, Lord God almighty, your judgments are true and just.” (Rev. 16,7)

I wish you all the best, I bless you and remember you in my prayer.
Father Angelo