When some of my ethics clients describe their frustration in dealing with infertility, they often borrow a phrase from childhood: “I feel like I’m about to cry uncle.”
The right way to translate that admission? Counseling experience teaches me that these couples are at a moment of exhaustion, grief, and longing.
For those of you battling infertility for months or even years, I would suggest ‘crying uncle’ is not about giving up on your desire for a child. It’s about reaching a point where you sense the swirling emotional and spiritual weight of an empty womb is simply overwhelming. You might use a variety of explanations:
- Our bodies aren’t responding the way we would like.
- The rollercoaster of hope and disappointment is wearing us down.
- We just need a moment to breathe.
‘Crying uncle’ is not failure. It’s your human vulnerability spoken aloud.
At this point, because you treasure the Catholic Faith, an important question surfaces: How does the Church meet your ‘cry uncle’ moment?
In the first place, the Church speaks with clarity about the dignity of the child you hope to conceive and the moral boundaries around the reproductive technologies you might want to access. But, secondly, and most decisively, she also speaks with deep tenderness about your suffering.
The Church wants you to know she understands, among the many joys and sorrows that touch the life of your Christian family, few wounds cut as quietly or as deeply as the experience of infertility. Not being able to conceive a child, or to maintain a pregnancy, or to deliver a healthy baby cuts to the core of your being. More than anyone else on this planet, you grasp that you are “hard-wired to cooperate with God in the creation of new life.”1
The Church recognizes this suffering. She does not turn away from it, nor does she reduce it to a medical problem or a moral dilemma. Instead, she perceives it is an integral part of your human story, which the crucified Christ desires to make his own.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church2 speaks with clarity and tenderness about this reality. It recognizes the “suffering of spouses who cannot have children” and affirms that your longing is good and natural. It also reminds you that when legitimate medical efforts do not bring about conception, you’re invited to unite your sorrow with the Cross of Christ, trusting that God remains close to you in your grief. Your marriage, the Catechism teaches, does not lose its fruitfulness in the face of infertility. The metric for fruitfulness is not only biology but the love you share and the generosity you embody.
This same pastoral heart is echoed in Donum Vitae3 that begins, not with prohibitions, but with compassion. It acknowledges the legitimacy of your “desire for a child” and the deep suffering you bear because you can’t have children or sustain a pregnancy. The moral guidance of Donum Vitae is never a rejection of your longing for a baby, but a defense of your dignity and the dignity of the child. It reminds you that every child is a gift, never a product, and the marital act is the privileged place where the gift of life is meant to be received.
Dignitas personae4 deepens this reflection, calling infertility a “painful trial,” all the while urging pastors and communities to accompany you with “understanding and patient support.” The Instruction affirms the goodness of seeking medical help, provided that such help assists—rather than replaces—the marital act.5 More, the document calls you to look for an integral approach to care, one that respects your whole person and honors the sacredness and full truth of your marital bond.
In Amoris Laetitia6, Pope Francis speaks with particular tenderness. He acknowledges that infertility is “a source of real suffering” and urges the Church to show “delicate and pastoral closeness.” He reminds you, throughout your struggle to conceive or to maintain a pregnancy, that your infertility does not exclude you as a couple from the fruitfulness of love. With spiritual insight, Pope Francis insists that your efforts to bring your love to perfection in giving life cannot be reduced to biology. Your marriage could radiate a “fruitfulness of charity,” expressed through “adoption, foster care, spiritual parenthood,” and by your beautiful expression of openness to life.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops echoes this pastoral vision in its Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services7. The bishops affirm the legitimacy of treating infertility while, at the same time, calling for compassionate pastoral care for couples like you who are navigating these challenges for months, even years. It requires those delivering Catholic healthcare to support you in morally sound avenues of treatment and accompany you with respect, charity, and hope.
Recent USCCB pastoral materials8 speak even more directly to your lived experience as couples. Describing infertility as a cross that the Church helps you carry, these guidelines emphasize that your parish and diocesan community should surround you with love, not pressure or judgment. They encourage parishes to offer support groups, spiritual accompaniment, and practical guidance, confirming you in the realization you do not walk this path alone.
As you can see, across Vatican and USCCB teaching, a consistent theology of infertility emerges. It speaks to your experience of the loss of a hoped-for child and family. It calls you to unite your loss with Christ crucified and so participate in the redemptive meaning of Christian suffering. The Church reaches out to you and every couple who carries this hidden sorrow. She offers not judgment but companionship; not simplistic answers but the promise of God’s nearness; not a narrowing of hope but its expansion.
Never forget: because your marriage remains fruitful even without biological children, your marriage is a living sign of God’s love. Your generosity, your perseverance, and your faithfulness are already bearing fruit in ways the world—and maybe you—cannot always see. Your cross of infertility is never carried alone; Christ bears it with you, and the Church desires to walk beside you with tenderness and hope.
Lastly, when your human exhaustion—your ‘cry uncle’ moment—meets moral truth, the Church counsels:
- You are not required to exhaust every possible medical option.
- You are not morally obligated to pursue treatments that are burdensome or invasive.
- You are allowed to rest.
- You are allowed to grieve.
- You are allowed to discern a different path—adoption, foster care, spiritual parenthood or a season of healing.
In other words, the Church’s teaching does not demand endless striving. It invites faithful discernment grounded in peace.
At an even deeper level, what the Church is proposing to you is a Christian meaning of surrender. The surrender of Jesus on the Cross. Rather than defeat, this Christic surrender is trust in the Father’s loving plan. What I’m trying to say is that for couples like you, ‘crying uncle’ and surrendering to God’s plan for your marriage is a moment of grace. A moment to hand your burden back to God. A moment to rediscover that the fruitfulness of your marriage transcends biology. A moment to remember your dignity as a couple does not depend on your ability to conceive.
In a society where productivity and results seem to define a person’s worth, being unable to conceive children can feel like a catastrophic failure. But the Church rejects that stance. From her perspective, the deep wound of infertility not only has meaning and dignity but also constitutes a path to redemption that the world cannot offer.
My prayer for you: May the Lord who knows every longing of your heart bless you with His peace, strengthen you in His love, and guide you in your continued open-hearted search for Him.
Endnotes:
1 Jean Dimech-Juchniewicz, Facing Infertility: A Catholic Approach, [Boston: Pauline Books, 2012], p. 16.
2 1997, #2374-79
3 1987, Part II.B.8
4 2008, Introduction and Part II
5 All the protocols of the infertility approach of NaProTechnology and its FertilityCare system unambiguously assist the marital act. All queries as to whether the Saint Paul VI Institute can help you can be directed to me by email: ethics@popepaulvi.com.
6 2016, #1178-81
7 2025, Seventh Edition.
8 E.g., “Parish Leader Kit: IVF & Other Assisted Reproductive Technologies,” [2025]; https://www.usccb.org/resources/25-IVF-parish-kit-FINAL-022025.pdf.
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Thank you for this letter – so beautifully stated! Couples struggling with infertility are in great need of sensitive pastoral care that doesn’t focus solely on “solutions.” Even when couples are actively trying to conceive and are utilizing licit forms of treatment, they need to be not only accompanied but affirmed that their marriage is good and that fruitfulness is not soley defined or limited by their ability to conceive and bear children, nor is their holiness measured by family size. Infertility is an urgent pastoral issue, especially with so many Artificial Reproductive Technologies that do not respect the dignity of the spouses, or the child, being made available. We need to normalize talking about infertility, and recognize the fruitfulness of every marriage and the beautiful and necessary witness they give to the Church and the world! One place to find accompaninent and support is Springs in the Desert, http://www.springsinthedesert.org
I cannot know the pain of infertile couples that want to conceive, but I do know the blessing of being adopted by loving parents that wanted me. Fewer abortions and more adoptions, please.
Absolutely. We have a lovely 2nd cousin discovered through a commercial DNA testing company. We had no idea her father ever had a child until she came up as a close relative on my daughter’s DNA results. God bless her parents who chose life & adoption back then. And her loving adoptive parents who raised her.
Thank you Sister Renee for your insights into this issue. Hopefully, this issue is discussed to couples in there marriage counseling, and that couples today need to realized that we are in a age to manifest Christian marriage with a new understanding. We forget that God is in control, and is the gift giver, and as Steveb said: if the couple wants a family adaption is one way.
I recall reading about this issue about a year ago. I was blessed with 8 children, however as they get older, many complications develop, even sending them to school is not easy and complicated. The public school system does not teach the Catholic faith, does not even teach much about morality, so parents need to struggle with the thought of homeschooling, or they pray that their children will be protected when they send them out to the wolves.
What I am trying to say is that as a parent I suffer and grieve with the eight children that I have and I don’t know what I did wrong, there’s been a lot of issues with them, but I go to daily mass and I offer it up and I confess my sins.
Since Sacramental Catholic marriage which requires the procreation and education and children which is the definition, that same church must provide the schools for these children.. the church is not doing that and homeschooling is not an option we tried that in my family it’s very difficult and you need to have money. Finally we live in different age, and we need to acknowledge how we’re living now compared to living years ago. They were big Catholic families who had a lot of children a lot of those children did not always marry they were the aunts and uncles to assist in the overall family well-being, and even though they were aunts and uncles they felt like the children were there own children.. This is what we need more than ever community and family the Jewish faith and the Amish Faith does not sit around all day long writing articles for magazines crying about their infertility problems, they have huge families that need to be helped and establish them to grow, this is what we need to do not to worry about more counseling and infertility clinics and what’s approved and not approved, I hope what I’m saying is registering and that I’m not being offensive, and I’m saying it in love and charity. However it gets frustrating when we do hear a lot of crying and weeping that’s not in our control, God controls this so if we’re talking about Catholics and marriage and faith then it’s God’s control if we don’t want God in the picture, science has developed a lot of techniques to do what’s necessary so pick and choose. God Bless
“What I am trying to say is that as a parent I suffer and grieve with the eight children that I have…”
“…and family the Jewish faith and the Amish Faith does not sit around all day long writing articles for magazines crying about their infertility problems,”
I cannot let this one go without addressing it. ADJ’s post is the most insensitive, obtuse, rangy and ignorant comment that I have even encountered on CWR. Far from being compassionate (which I sincerely believe she was attempting to be) her whining about her 8 children is a slap in the face to infertile couples who are trying to cope with their infertility. And if that is not enough, she decries those who would attempt to help infertile couples by writing an article addressing their situation. AJD is the last person who should be addressing the issue of infertility. Oh, and adoption is not always an option if the couple has reached a certain age. Good grief. Unbelievable.
This article offers a careful and compassionate articulation of the Church’s response to couples living with infertility. Sister Renée Mirkes succeeds in presenting Catholic moral teaching not as a set of abstract prohibitions, but as a framework shaped by a deep awareness of human suffering and the dignity of marriage. The article consistently resists reducing infertility to either a purely medical problem or a moral impasse, instead situating it within the broader Christian understanding of suffering, vocation, and hope. Particularly effective is the integration of magisterial sources, including the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Donum Vitae, Dignitas personae, and Amoris Laetitia. These texts demonstrate a continuity of concern for couples whose longing for children remains unfulfilled. The emphasis on moral discernment rather than obligation is especially noteworthy. Readers are reminded that they are not required to pursue every possible medical intervention, and that rest, grief, and reevaluation are legitimate responses within the life of faith. The article also offers a needed corrective to contemporary assumptions about fruitfulness. By affirming that marriage retains its full dignity apart from biological generation, it underscores the Church’s broader vision of love as generous, enduring, and open to multiple forms of life-giving expression.