Prescinding from all spiritual considerations and looking at things through purely human eyes, vows of this sort must appear prejudicial to the propagation of the species.  In fact, they go against the law of nature which says:  increase and multiply, so we are told.

If that law is natural as well as positive, it is certain that it applies to man collectively, and not individually.  It is manifested only in the instinct that makes this duty a pleasure.  Where the inclination is lacking, the obligation is not obvious.  That which is repugnant is not natural, in any true sense of the word; whether this repugnance be of the intellectual or spiritual order, it matters not, for our nature is spiritual as truly as it is animal.  The law of nature forces no man into a state that is not in harmony with his sympathies and affections.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that to a certain extent the race suffers numerically from an institution that fosters abstention from marriage.  To what extent, is an entirely different question.  Not all laymen marry.  It is safe to say that the vast majority of religious men, vow or no vow, would never wed; so that the vow is not really to blame for their state, and the consequences thereof.  As for women, statistics show it to be impossible for all to marry since their number exceeds that of men.

Now, marriage with the fair sex, is very often a matter of competition.  Talent, beauty, character, disposition and accomplishments play a very active role in the acquisition of a husband.  Considering that the chances of those who seek refuge under the veil are not of the poorest, since they are the fairest and best endowed of our daughters, it would seem to follow that their act is a charity extended to their less fortunate sisters who are thereby aided to success, instead of being doomed to failure by the insufficiency of their own qualifications.

Be this as it may, what we most strenuously object to, is that vows be held responsible for the sins of others.  In some countries and sections of countries, the population is almost stationary in marked contrast to that of others.  Looking for the cause for this unnatural phenomenon, there are who see it in the spread of monasticism, with its vow of chastity.  They fail to remark that not numerous, but large families are the best sign of vigor in a nation.  Impurity, not chastity, is the enemy of the race.  Instead of warring against those whose lives are pure, why not destroy that monster that is gnawing at the very vitals of the race, sapping its strength at the very font of life, that modern Moloch, to whom fashionable society offers sacrifice more abominable than the hecatombs of Carthage.  This iniquity, rampant wherever the sense of God is absent, and none other, is the cause which some people do not see because they have good reasons for not wanting to see.  It is very convenient to have someone handy to accuse of one’s own faults.  It is too bad that the now almost extinct race of Puritans did not have a few monks around to blame for the phenomenon of their failure to keep abreast of the race.