The Cross of Infertility: Between Catholic Suffering and the Conciliar Silence on the Reign of Christ the King
EWTN News reports that during National Infertility Awareness Week (April 19–25, 2026), author Leigh Fitzpatrick Snead shared her personal experience of infertility and encouraged Catholic couples to seek support, understand Church teaching against IVF, and consider adoption. The article presents infertility as a “private cross,” emphasizes the prohibition of in vitro fertilization, and suggests resources such as Springs in the Desert and NaProTechnology. While the article correctly rejects IVF, it operates within a framework that reduces the Church’s mission to psychological comfort and naturalistic solutions, omitting any reference to the supernatural order, the necessity of sanctifying grace, the reality of original sin, or the public duty of nations to submit to Christ the King. This silence reveals the modernist impoverishment of post-conciliar pastoral care, which offers sympathy but not salvation, and substitutes human effort for divine mercy.







