Childless married couples were recently condemned by the Bishop of Rochester. The Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali has labeled them "incomplete" and "self-indulgent." He says it's not simply an "optional extra." It's fundamental to marriage, evidently.
His rather idiotic views were made known in the Rochester Link, the newspaper of the Diocese of Rochester in Kent. His blithering also said that circumstances were irrelevant. If a couple doesn't have kids, they're "lacking."
"Marriage is not a matter of self-indulgence or even a prolongation of 'romantic' love," he said. "It is, rather, costly self-giving to one another and to any children which are born."
Nazir-Ali isn't the first person I've heard of who calls childless couples "selfish." My ex-mother-in-law did the same thing. Her daughter and I did not want children. It simply wasn't something important to us at the time, nor were we ever really in a financially stable enough situation to properly support a child. But we were being selfish, according to her mother. Of course, she showed her inherent hypocrisy soon enough. She wanted a grandchild, you see.
I can only assume that it never crossed her mind, or Nazir-Ali's, either, that some couples simply shouldn't have children. If the couple doesn't want kids, what kind of parents would they make? All one has to do is take a look around our society. There are some really bad parents out there. Many of them are bad parents because they never wanted their children in the first place, and therefore never took the parenting job seriously. The truly scary part is that some bad parents did want kids, but never took the time to become good parents.
I've mentioned elsewhere that I have a real problem with people such as this. I've semi-jokingly stated that parenting should be taken every bit as seriously, if not more so, than other things for which we must be trained. We have to pass a test before we can get a driver's license, after all. Parenting is much more serious than driving.
At any rate, I have no idea what the Bishop of Rochester's reasons are for saying such things. Could be that he's just an idiot. And there's evidence of this. Last month, he said that children could become gay if the government permitted the discussion of such lifestyles in schools.
Yeah. Lots of rational thought went into that one, I'm sure.
