No doubt, had your grandmother died giving birth to the twins, the odious priest would have offered a pater noster for the repose of her soul, and suffered not a moment of doubt, much less shame. Churches are far more human, and truer to the Gospel, when they have no power.

Thank you for sharing the story, Dot. I am glad that you had such a stubborn, loving woman in your life.

Can be described as two major points.

First, that there is no way that a man who is not allowed to marry, prohibited from having sex, and will never know what it is like to be in a loving, caring relationship either with a spouse or with children, should not be allowed to give advice or direction regarding marriage, parenting, sex, or healthcare. This is just another example of what is wrong in this country - a group of old mostly white men are being allowed to decide health care issues for the entire population. They are being allowed to dictate to women about what and how they decide to care for their bodies. And they are being allowed to decide for every child in the country what gender they are supposed to be.

Second, this illustrates very well the difference between organized religion, or church, and actual religion, or belief. Nearly every organized religion in existence was created by men, and they are still controlled by men. One of the major purposes behind nearly every religion is to create a second class of people - namely women, and they are all designed to control women and keep them in their place; that place is basically subservient to men.

As has already been mentioned, that priest nearly killed your grandmother and her children - and if he had, he would have not felt the least bit of guilt over his actions.

What a powerful and worrying story. Thank you Dot, for sharing this. It must have been hard to tell the story, as I find it emotional, so you must do so a thousandfold.
Your Gran obviously was a huge inspiration to you, and, I am sure, helped make you the wonderfully loving person you are today . I am sure she would be proud of her granddaughter.
Lucy xx

That priest was definitely on a power trip. My wife was raised Catholic. I married into a Catholic family in a Catholic ceremony. So I'm aware of the struggles that go on. Being a bit of a nerd and a biblical scholar I went head to head with a number of her family members as to what it took to get into heaven. I had a good rapport with the priest that married us. This even though I refused to sign the agreement that said I would have my children raised solely in the Catholic Church. We came to an understanding and modified the agreement to delete the word "solely".

What the priest told your grandmother wasn't even sound Catholic doctrine. Before our wedding my wife went to confession and confessed to premarital sex. She did her penance and all was good. After we had the two children we wanted I had a vasectomy. Then after hearing horror stories about vasectomies that didn't work, my wife decided to have a tubal ligation. Mind you when this was done she wasn't attending church, but some years later, she went back to church and confessed to that and again the priest gave her penance and all was good.

I know for as long as I can remember that abstinence in the form of the rhythm system has been an approved method of birth control in the Catholic Church. My in-laws must have done something because my wife only has one sibling and they were stanch Catholics.

On a lighter note:

A preacher, a priest and rabbit went into a bar. The rabbit looked at theother two and said, "I think I'm a typo."