Miscarriage and the Catholic Church

Hello Friends,
I got a link from a newsletter to a page which hosts a blog by Fr. Frank Pavone and he so beautifully wrote about miscarriage and what it really means.  His words really resonated with me, especially the following excerpts:


"...here is one fundamental truth that needs to stay front and center: a miscarriage is the loss of a child who is just as real and has just as much value as any other child of any age. A woman who has a miscarriage is a parent who has lost a child, as is the father of the child as well.


In a society which continues to have a legal and cultural blind spot for the unborn, many suffer from the illusion that miscarriage doesn’t grieve a parent as much as the loss of, well, a “real child,” and that is precisely what hurts so much. We can never console someone in grief if we imply, even remotely, that the person they lost wasn’t real."


"...The naming of these children who have died is one significant way of acknowledging their reality. The counting of these children matters too, so that if a parent is asked how many children he/she has, the child who died before birth is counted as one of them."


" The life of that child matters, no matter how short it was. The death of that child matters, no matter how many may not cry. And the love I have for that child matters, even if nobody else knows."


You can read the entire entry here.  I had made a comment, but there is an "internal error" and I can't post my comment there, so here it is:
Thank you for your kind words and acknowledgement of our children.  It is rare that we are acknowledged as parents or receive expressions of sympathy or compassion.  We named our child and had a memorial service, but I wish that our parishes would mention and acknowledge us as parents - this past Mother's Day, our parish priest expressed well wishes to all mothers in church, those who were not able to join us and those who had passed on, yet he neglected to even acknowledge those mothers without living children.  Perhaps a special day sanctioned by the church to pray for all those children who were born in heaven would be nice.


I know that this is how I feel - that we are all parents and that our children count. I know that if we ever have another child, I will definitely correct folks when they assume that it's our first - it's not.  Also, with Father's Day coming, I found a really nice card for Freddie from our Angel- it start with something along the lines of "Dear Dad, although we're far apart and can't be together on this day, I want you to know that you are the best dad possible"...or something along that vein.


It's nice to see our children acknowledged, perhaps this is a move in the right direction!