Why is Patrick an Only Child?

[geebengrrl.livejournal.com]

Pam and Geoff Marlow are remarkably fecund; but Helena and Anthony Merrick only have one child. Anthony Merrick seems to be a fairly strict Catholic, so why is it that Patrick is their only child?

I wonder whether Helena Merrick, being a rather pragmatic Catholic (see Patrick's remark about fish on fridays in Attic Term, for example), was secretly using some form of contraception. Or perhaps they were playing Vatican Roulette and were just lucky...

I guess from AF's point of view, Patrick needs to be an only to contrast with the Marlows; and maybe he also represents her: she was also an only child.

Comments

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Vatican Roulette wasn't allowed pre-Vatican II - I suspect either they were being very pragmatic indeed or they only managed the one.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Is this so? Because the FPA* were providing instruction on the safe period well before then, and I assume that this would have been of most interest to those who were not allowed to use more efficient methods (as well as no doubt a certain % who were just squicked out at 'putting things up inside themselves'). Only this morning dug out a 'safe period' calculator (1930s, German) to illustrate a talk I'm giving.

*Though I've no idea what the Catholic Marriage Advisory Centres of the same period were up to.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Definitely. Pre Vatican II there were women in working class parishes in Dublin who were accused of murder in the confessional because they hadn't had a child for two years - contraception of any kind was an absolute no-no. Actually, I was wrong - it's *after* Vatican II, to be precise - it's 1968 and Humane Vitae that allowed "natural contraception". The Lambeth Conference in 1930 changed things for Anglicans and most other Prods followed suit over time.

I know of one couple who had four kids between 1964 and 1969 (three of them unplanned) and then started using Vatican roulette. Only one mistake after that - in 1972.

Even now, I suspect that if the Catholic church were ever to go further on artificial contraception, it will only allow absolute barrier methods such as condoms and caps and not permit the pill or the coil.

The pill is permitted for medical reasons with the contraceptive effect at that point regarded as a side-effect, and that's the principle under which condoms are most likely to be permitted in the near future, since church law is unequal in these situations.*

*I can elaborate for *hours* on this and have some rather good sources on the theological side of things...

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

I shall soon, on my lj, tell the story of my mother's Uncle Jack, which is pertinent both to this and to the concept of marriage.