Still good for 88 bucks a month.
The Canadian Catholic Register reports:
A Tuscany priest is offering a baby bonus of more than $2,000 to Italian Catholic families who have three or more children. But there are strings attached.
The gift to parishioners in Staggia, a village close to Siena, was announced online as an “extraordinary contribution” by Fr. Stefano Bimbi, the local Catholic priest.
The $2,210 (2,000 euros) will be handed over only when the children are baptized. Additionally, the offer applies strictly to Italian couples who were married in the church, are residents of the village and have three or more children.
Incentives to have more children are a good thing and this is a wonderful gift for young families open to life, but I must ask:
- How did we get to a point where we were forced to pay people to do the right thing and to accept the gift of children?
- Should we reward people simply for not sinning, for refusing to contracept or abort children?
- Isn’t money generally the same incentive people have for thwarting childbirth? Doesn’t that actually pay better?
- Is this about money or about honor, duty, love, and Heaven?
- Aren’t beasts the creatures who will do things for treats?
Nonetheless, Bimbi said the decision had the potential to help Catholic couples. “Our parish wants to give concrete help in this moment of crisis for families, that with courage accept the gift of a child!” he wrote in the announcement.
The language of reverse pastoral care permeates the Synod documents. The message of softness is immoral. Childbirth is a moment of crisis? Is caring for the family you created some kind of heroic courage or is it just decent? Must we be paid not to be negligent or criminal?
Get up in the pulpit Fr. Bimbi and lay them straight! Tell them there’s far more joy in raising a holy child with love than in being paid to sit there and shove food in their face like some government nanny. And if they can’t hear you because they’re not at Mass, why are you giving them 2,000 euro?
The parish coffers are not all “roses and flowers,” the priest said, so its economic affairs council had allocated an unspecified limited sum for the baby project. Bimbi was not immediately available when contacted by Religion News Service to discuss whether anyone had yet taken him up on the offer.
The financial incentive follows a similar initiative by the Italian government, which promised low-income families $88 (80 euros) a month for each child under 3 years old.
Talk about baby factories! If the Italian Gov’t could bump that up to about 1,000 euros there’s be some high living in those noisy houses. What say you, Pope Francis? It’s fine so long as there’s not too much soy in the formula and the diapers are sustainable?