The custom of women being 'churched' ?

Spirogyra

Hi my late mother said that she had to be 'churched' after I was born. That she wasn't allowed into the church until the priest had performed prayers, in her company, not sure where or when he'd do this. Does anyone know anything more about this custom and when did it end?.

Thanks

Sarah

tommy2bad

Churching was a practice in all catholic churches up untill about the 60's. It was a blessing for the woman and a thanksgiving for childbirth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churching_of_women
However some thing went amiss in the teaching because that's not how it was seen. It was populary seen as a clensing ritual to remove the 'sin' acoiated with giving birth. Rightly or wrongly this was the common understanding.
http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/churching-women-after-childbirth-dublin-tenement-1913-1061449-Aug2013/
The fact that it was only available to married women didn't help it's reputation either.

robp

It was officially called The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth.

Some may have seen it very negatively as an unnecessary purification but it was deeply valued by some new mothers. Some saw it as an intimate moment away from the community and their children for thanksgiving and spiritual reflection.

There is a podcast from RTE's the History show. https://player.fm/series/rt-the-history-show/churching-new-mothers

El_Duderino 09

robp wrote: »

It was officially called The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth.

Some may have seen it very negatively as an unnecessary purification but it was deeply valued by some new mothers. Some saw it as an intimate moment away from the community and their children for thanksgiving and spiritual reflection.

There is a podcast from RTE's the History show. https://player.fm/series/rt-the-history-show/churching-new-mothers

It may well have been about thanksgiving in theory but my grandmother's practical experience was being reminded that she is a dirty, dirty sinner and she did a shameful thing in order to conceive the child she gave birth to.

I always thought people looked fondly on those who had large families as they were 'doing their duty' well. However she said there was another side to it. She had 12 children not counting miscarriages and stillborn babies. This showed that they might have enjoyed sex throughout the 20 odd years she was having pregnancies. Having sex was shameful enough but the idea that they enjoyed sex was an added guilty shame which, she said, the priest was sure to remind her of each time she was churched.

They had to remain behind at the end of mass and approach the alter so everyone was on the way out talking amongst themselves and probably copped what was happening to the couple at the front.

When she found out she was pregnant the last time, she was so reluctant to go through with it that she tried a kind of home remedy abortion involving a hot bath and drinking gin. She said she couldn't face the shame of being churched again.

I'm sure it's a lovely, positive ceremony... in theory

Graces7

Not just RC as I remember this from my English Anglican childhood

tommy2bad

Graces7 wrote: »

Not just RC as I remember this from my English Anglican childhood

Yep and still practised by Orthodox churches.

robp

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

It may well have been about thanksgiving in theory but my grandmother's practical experience was being reminded that she is a dirty, dirty sinner and she did a shameful thing in order to conceive the child she gave birth to.

I always thought people looked fondly on those who had large families as they were 'doing their duty' well. However she said there was another side to it. She had 12 children not counting miscarriages and stillborn babies. This showed that they might have enjoyed sex throughout the 20 odd years she was having pregnancies. Having sex was shameful enough but the idea that they enjoyed sex was an added guilty shame which, she said, the priest was sure to remind her of each time she was churched.

They had to remain behind at the end of mass and approach the alter so everyone was on the way out talking amongst themselves and probably copped what was happening to the couple at the front.

When she found out she was pregnant the last time, she was so reluctant to go through with it that she tried a kind of home remedy abortion involving a hot bath and drinking gin. She said she couldn't face the shame of being churched again.

I'm sure it's a lovely, positive ceremony... in theory

I think there is reverse rose tinted glasses here. Sex in wedlock was not seen as dirty. There is no theological basis for that. If individuals like priests suggested that they were doing so on their own bat. I find it hard to believe that many priests lambasted women for enjoying sex in marriage. I find it hard to believe they would delve so far into what was seen as a private matter. People did not refer to sex in formal situations as much in the way they do today.

El_Duderino 09

robp wrote: »

I think there is reverse rose tinted glasses here. Sex in wedlock was not seen as dirty. There is no theological basis for that. If individuals like priests suggested that they were doing so on their own bat. I find it hard to believe that many priests lambasted women for enjoying sex in marriage. I find it hard to believe they would delve so far into what was seen as a private matter. People did not refer to sex in formal situations as much in the way they do today.

OK. I'm just sharing my grandmothers experience.

I don't know why you find it unlikely that they would delve into personal matters back then. Given the tradition of confessing your sins, ceremonies at birth, marriage and death, priests patrolling dances to ensure their moral standards were enforced, reading donation amounts out in mass. It seems the Catholics were/are quite at home in people's private matters.

Granny's account doesn't seem all that unlikely but I can't comment on how widespread that, unkind interpretation of the ceremony, was.

tommy2bad

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

OK. I'm just sharing my grandmothers experience.

I don't know why you find it unlikely that they would delve into personal matters back then. Given the tradition of confessing your sins, ceremonies at birth, marriage and death, priests patrolling dances to ensure their moral standards were enforced, reading donation amounts out in mass. It seems the Catholics were/are quite at home in people's private matters.

Granny's account doesn't seem all that unlikely but I can't comment on how widespread that, unkind interpretation of the ceremony, was.

It was pretty widespread though unremarked by people as anything other than the way things were. Few felt able to question it no matter how uncomfortable it made them feel. In private I think it was seen as archaic and anacrostic but as far as pointing this out to a priest? Don't rock the boat was the motto back then.

Peregrinus

My own mother, in the 1960s, declined to be churched after childbirth, as did most of her friends. This was an increasingly common stance at the time. There were a couple of mutters from the older (female) generation of her own family, but nothing serious, and no problem at all as far as priests, etc were concerned.

Theologically, the ritual was a thanksgiving for safe childbirth. Socially, it does seem to have served as a focus for or reinforcement/affirmation of regressive and puritan attitudes to women's sexuality, which is why women started to reject the practice, and why the upset caused by that rejection was not from the church, but from family, etc.

tommy2bad

Peregrinus has it right, it started to change around the mid to late 60's, I am unaware of anyone who went through this since the late 70's.
My mother was churched as were all her sisters so their is a generation gap. I'm far older than I thought I was.

robp

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

OK. I'm just sharing my grandmothers experience.

I don't know why you find it unlikely that they would delve into personal matters back then. Given the tradition of confessing your sins, ceremonies at birth, marriage and death, priests patrolling dances to ensure their moral standards were enforced, reading donation amounts out in mass. It seems the Catholics were/are quite at home in people's private matters.

Granny's account doesn't seem all that unlikely but I can't comment on how widespread that, unkind interpretation of the ceremony, was.

Very often, our perspective of the period passes through the filter of judgement that can sometimes distort. I have frequently seen examples of this in the area of religion in the 1950s. The more detail I learn the more I realise the actors of the past are more human than one would guess from popular imagination.

In time gone by I suspect the conversational topic of enjoying sex would simply not come up regularly. I don't think the fact that priests were part of marriage, birth and death ceremonies really makes it any more likely that it would come up. What you describe was found in all Christian denominations.

To be pedantic about it, the act of blessing of the mother was not abolished. Actually it was compressed into baptism. And it seems to have found a happier home in that ceremony.

braddun

Churching’ refers to a blessing that mothers were given following recovery from childbirth. After remaining at home for 4-6 weeks after giving birth, the woman would go to church where she would thank God for the safe delivery of her child and receive a blessing from the priest. Only married women were eligible for the blessing. They were to be appropriately dressed, and would carry a lighted candle. The priest would then mark the woman with the sign of the cross in holy water.

Churching is thought to derive from a Jewish purification rite, where the sin of childbirth was washed away. In the New Testament, Mary went to the temple to be purified following the birth of Jesus, a festival that is celebrated as Candlemas on February 2. Many people considered that childbirth made a woman unholy or unclean because it resulted from sexual activity; sexual abstinence and virginity being equated to holiness. People considered the purification rite, or rite of churching to be very important as it allowed the ‘unclean’ woman to re-enter the church in a ‘state of grace’.

As a result, superstitions associated with churching also arose. There was a superstition that it was bad luck for a woman who had not been churched to enter into any house other than her own; some say this was because she would be more susceptible to the fairies. In Ireland this bad luck could be avoided by pulling a piece of thatch or slate from a roof and wearing it on top of a new hat.

According to a Church of Ireland source from Sligo in 1829 ‘it is considered most dangerous and unlucky [among Roman Catholics] to touch meat that has been dressed by a mother who is not yet churched, or to be in the same house with her.’ The same source suggested that priest would expect to receive half a crown from the woman for the churching, an amount that for some might have been hard to afford; it also suggests that in some cases the baptism of a child was contingent on the mother having been churched. The article does contain some religious bias but other sources confirm that a payment was to be made to the priest for churching.
The rite of churching was not just restricted to Roman Catholics, being practiced by members of the Church of Ireland also. It was also common practice in England and other parts of Europe. In Ireland, Catholic women had to be churched up until Vatican II in 1962;

Armistice

This is an absurd, and non Christian practice. I don't recall Reading the part of the gospels where Jesus said mothers were unclean and babies had sinned just by being born. In fact I think he hung out with all sorts, from apostles to tax collectors and prostitutes which shows he was a pretty accepting guy/god.

J C

tommy2bad wrote: »

Peregrinus has it right, it started to change around the mid to late 60's, I am unaware of anyone who went through this since the late 70's.
My mother was churched as were all her sisters so their is a generation gap. I'm far older than I thought I was.

The reason it declined is also linked to the fact that the baptism of Roman Catholic children moved from the day of birth, as it was up to the sixties ... to weeks/months after the birth, now.

Mothers couldn't attend the baptism of their children up to the sixties ... and the blessing given to both fathers and mothers nowadays at Roman Catholic baptism, could only be given to mothers in a separate ceremony, as part of the 'churching' ritual up to the sixties.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

As an aside, there was the same practice in the Church of England and Church of Ireland. It was by no means a Roman Catholic exclusive.

gabsdot40

My mother was churched after I was born in 1970, Belfast.

J C

gabsdot40 wrote: »

My mother was churched after I was born in 1970, Belfast.

... and every Roman Catholic mother and father who attends the baptism of their children are 'churched' or blessed during the ceremony today.
Plus ca change !!!:)

uck51js9zml2yt

J C wrote: »

... and every Roman Catholic mother and father who attends the baptism of their children are 'churched' or blessed during the ceremony today.
Plus ca change !!!:)

You do realise you ressurected a 3 year old thread:)

Ash.J.Williams

robp wrote: »

I think there is reverse rose tinted glasses here. Sex in wedlock was not seen as dirty. There is no theological basis for that. If individuals like priests suggested that they were doing so on their own bat. I find it hard to believe that many priests lambasted women for enjoying sex in marriage. I find it hard to believe they would delve so far into what was seen as a private matter. People did not refer to sex in formal situations as much in the way they do today.

Sex outside of procreation was definitely frowned upon

J C

Tyson Alive Sax wrote: »

You do realise you ressurected a 3 year old thread:)

... and ??

beefburrito

J C wrote: »

... and ??

Resurrection on the third year....

J C

beefburrito wrote: »

Resurrection on the third year....

... it would be much more impressive, if it was the third day !!!:)
... anyway, it is quite ironic that most of the 'churched' RC fathers and mothers rarely visit a church nowadays ...
... after they are 'churched' at the baptism of their children !!!