Palai: A diocese in Kerala has come up with a welfare scheme to help families with five or more children.
The initiative of Palai diocese’s Family Apostolate seeks to offer a monthly financial assistance of 1,500 rupees to couples who are married after the year 2000 and have five or more children.
Women deliver their fourth children onward are entitled for free delivery care at a hospital run by the Church. Children born as the fourth or subsequently in a family will get scholarships to study in Church-managed engineering college.
The scheme, announced as part of the year of the family celebrations by the Syro Malabar Church, is now going viral in the social media and has evoked mixed reactions from the public.
Confirming its authenticity, Father Joseph Kuttiankal, director of the Family Apostolate, said the scheme was planned as an assistance to the large families, especially in the post Covid-19 scenario.
“This is being planned as a minimal assistance to the families who might be finding it hard to make both their ends meet. The actual number of families who are eligible for the benefits under the scheme is yet to be ascertained,” he added.
Asked why they have set 2000 as the year for a lower ceiling, Father Kuttiankal said such young families would be the most vulnerable as they mostly had only one earning member in the family. “The elder children of couples who started a family before that year must have completed their education and begun contributing to their respective families,’’ he explained.
Meanwhile, the diocese’s move has evoked some sharp reactions from the public as some terming it as a deliberate attempt to raise the community’s strength. The Church authorities, however, have sought to dismiss those allegations and held that they did not want to respond to such irresponsible remarks.
An earlier attempt by the Kerala government to bring out the Kerala Women’s Code Bill 2011, which sought to penalize families violating the two-child norm, had created a furor in the state with various religious organizations including the Catholic Church raising a protest.
Later in 2019, a pastoral letter issued by the Changanacherry Archdiocese suggested that the share of the Christian population in Kerala has dwindled over the years, creating an ‘alarming situation’ for the community in the state.
“During the formation of Kerala, Christians were the second-largest community in the state. But now, the community is only 18.38 percent of the state’s total population. In recent years, the birth rate in the Christian community has decreased to 14 percent,” read the letter, issued by Archbishop Joseph Perumthottam of Changanacherry.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/catholic-church-announces-welfare-scheme-for-families-having-five-or-more-children/article35536552.ece
The challenges of everyday living are far too many that it is unlikely that anyone would take on this offer.
Best solution is to allow young priests to get married and sire as many as they can for there is the Sabha to meet living expenses of priests.
Certain Catholic Ideology is taken as outmoded by some. When we look at things as strict secularists, our aim is a good quality of mundane life and it must be achieved within the secular laws and not giving more value to religious ideology. We cannot fight against it as all have freedom of thought and interpretation.
We may have to abandon the faith that the Scriptures are god inspired, if we want a full change in our attitude. However some who learn both sides feel that a middle way can be chalked out and live a life pleasing the secular laws and religious laws, even if some sacrifice has to be practiced or a cross is to be borne.
“. I have produced a man with the the help of the Lord” we read in the Scripture. But this is against the secular view “ A couple can produce or at the most through artificial methods and no other power is wanted”. Each individual has his/ her own way of thinking. No praising or no condemning
These guys can shake hands with Yogi in U.P. Both pursuing demographic goals with shortsightedness. To be condemned outright.
The hidden agenda is that there are no fresh recruits to man their plethora of institutions.