Quote:
Originally Posted by JCB
The Churching of mothers was quite common in the Catholic Church during my younger days . It was a simple ceremony when the mother gave thanks for the birth of her child on her first visit to the church after the birth .
As far as I know the practice has died out . I can recall a priest in a local Catholic parish in the late 1950s refusing to allow the ceremony because of the superstition surrounding it .
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Yes that is what our vicar told me, but the common view, the one held by the people, was that it was to cleanse the woman of the stain of original sin........and as I said in a previous post women who had given birth and had not been 'churched' were not made welcome at social gatherings....and would be shunned by those who felt themselves to be devout Christians.