I’m an 18 year old female college student, and I have just gotten back in touch with Catholicism…She goes on to ask about why the Church teaches against artificial birth control, and as I say, Mary's answer is great. However, I think the other thing worth touching on is the impression people sometimes get that from a Catholic point of view you should either be in the religious life or else you should be married and having lots of kids.
…I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting back into my faith, but there is something that REALLY continues to rub me wrong. I’ve prayed and prayed about it, but I am not getting any answer. I’ve researched it, but just hear the same things over and over and it just doesn’t sit right with me, and that is the issue of contraception. I’ve read humanae vitae, I’ve researched “natural family planning”, and it all still leaves me completely unsatisfied still. I see where the Church is coming from on this issue, however, I feel that God has called me to do something else with my future besides staying at home with my “loving” husband and having a billion children…And then I went to the church and asked my female minister about it. The gist was this: If you have the financial capability, happiness, and wealth, your job is basically to be popping out children.
This just honestly does not sit right with me…Some women love being mothers, and being a mother is certainly an honorable duty, but I don’t think I’m cut out for it. I’m very ambitious and have goals of working for the Department of Defense, not sacrificing all my happiness because the Church says I should.
But the Church does not teach this. People may well be called to an active single life in the laity. The Church has absolutely no problem with this. If Mary's correspondent wants to pursue an ambitious career, in the Defense Department or elsewhere, without having to worry about getting home on time to spend a few hours with a spouse, that's absolutely fine!
Where the Church does become more countercultural is in saying that sex has an inextricable connection with procreation, and that the only proper place for sex is within marriage. Thus, marriage is a state that should be open to children. During the marriage ceremony, the couple is asked if they will be open to the blessing of children. This isn't just a matter of, "If you accidentally get pregnant, will you keep the baby," (though that's important.) Rather, if a couple seriously intends never to have children, the Church would see that as an obstacle to contracting a valid marriage. Marriage is for the purpose of starting a family. It's not just a romantic relationship, but a familial one. (This does not mean that there's something invalid about the marriage of a couple that is not physically able to have children. This may be a source of sadness to the couple, but it certainly doesn't mean their marriage is defective or invalid. The problem is if a couple actively does not want children in the first place.)
Now, of course, this is not a lot of comfort if what someone wants is to get married and have the love and companionship of a spouse, but not have to worry about the responsibility of having children, which given our culture's assumption that every healthy person must want to get married, and that sex has no natural relation to having children, is going to be a much more common desire than not getting married at all so you can focus totally on your career. (And given that the correspondent is very young, she may well chase her dreams for ten or fifteen years and then realize that she now feels very differently about having children. That's fine too.) Because within the conservative Catholic subculture there are a fair number of people who get married comparatively young and have a lot of kids (and so spend a lot of time defending that lifestyle), I think people can get the impression sometimes that that is the only "really Catholic" way to live. And it's not.
30 comments:
Great post!
The Church does not say you have to get married. This is because your potential mate may have been seduced into believing that a career in the Department of Defense is a good idea.
The Church is rather weak in this area, because it tends to focus on an amorphous 'vocation'. Marriage, pregnancy- all of this involves sacrifice. But, if you can turn some silly career into your 'vocation', you can get a decent paycheck and keep your figure. Now, is this 'vocation' actually more important than human life? Well, the DoD is engaged in the business of killing people, not life. So, we've got a lot of death she wants to participate in, plus the not-life of choosing not to have any children at all.
And if she does do this whole DoD career thing, chances are she'll be taking birth control anyway- she isn't looking into this stuff because she feels blessed with the ability to be celibate. She feel the untenable nature of her decisions and incorrectly decide it is the Church, not her ambition, that is in the wrong.
I've long thought that some professions such as doctor or lawyer would be very compatible with celibacy because the long hours are such a detriment to family life. Why is it that we often look at toll working takes on women but not on men? It takes just as much a toll when a man is working 80 hours a week and never has time to be with his family.
I think anyone who has as much ambition as this young woman seems to should really look at their goals to see how compatible they would be for marriage. If she doesn't think she'd have time for children, does she think she'd have time for a husband. The poor fellow might want to spend some time with her every now and then!
August,
Why this particular person feels drawn to the Department of Defense, I have no idea -- could be good reasons, could be bad. Since I don't know, I didn't comment on it. The Church does state that military service (and a modern military requires both servicemen and civilian administrators) is necessary for the common good and something that can be a noble pursuit, though clearly the Church is cautious about when actually deploying military force is justified.
Similarly, I don't think it's helpful to say, "If someone chooses to remain single without taking religious vows, that person probably isn't going to remain celibate anyway," which seems to be where you're going with your last paragraph.
It may well be some individual person's intention to avoid the responsibilities of married life while seeking sexual gratification anyway, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible or illegitimate to abide by the Church's teaching on sexuality while also choosing to pursue a single life in order to focus on other responsibilities.
Kelly,
Agreed. Man or woman, someone who intends to focus so completely on professional life as to have very little time for personal responsibilities is probably someone who should think about remaining single.
Of course, a lot of people may not really have thought that one out clearly -- wanting to spend so much time on a professional pursuit as to make almost any spouse feel neglected, yet still wanting to have a spouse around during the time he or she actually is free.
And in our contraceptive society, there is always the temptation to assume that you can get sexual companionship through a marriage while not taking on the responsibilities of every having more family.
What strikes me about this young woman's question is her utter certainty, at 18, that she'll never even want to have children, and that she's not cut out to be a mother. No one can see all of life's curveballs at 18, and it's not as if she's making a decision -- "I want to be a nun", for example -- that contraindicates children, ever. The religious life, however, carries its own safeguards against children, to wit, celibacy, without having to take permanent measures against pregnancy.
Is is so inconceivable to her that one day she might meet a man she thinks will be an excellent father? Or that she might love someone so much that having a child with him would be an expression and continuation of their love instead of a drag on her career and ambition?
The two main vocations do indeed take the form of priesthood/religious life or marriage...tradition has rightly exalted these to the point that if one really wishes to remain single and "secular" he or she should do so within a "community" erected by the Church to nourish such a vocation, such as Opus Dei, etc.
Darwin, my last paragraph was pointing out that if she chooses an untenable lifestyle, with the supposed blessing of the Church (since most of us will sit around and pretend this is a calling), she is more likely to decide, once the pain of that lifestyle kicks in, that it is the Church and not the lifestyle that is in error.
This is in line with St. Paul's teaching, for, after waxing about how awesome celibacy was, said marry those crazy kids if they started showing signs of getting randy. (Yes I know he didn't use those particular words, but the sentiment is there- get them married so they won't burn.)
I don't think the God of the living is much amused. There are only so many years of fertility that a woman has, and it seems the secularists have won a great victory with this education/career nonsense encouraging an awful lot of women to waste that time in dubious endeavors.
This nonsense about a women's duty to maximize her years of fertility as if she were baby vending machine is exactly why many women my age have such a claustrophobic attitude towards the great goods marriage and family life.
Now may be as good a time as any to link to this handy flowchart.
1658 We must also remember the great number of single persons who, because of the particular circumstances in which they have to live - often not of their choosing - are especially close to Jesus' heart and therefore deserve the special affection and active solicitude of the Church, especially of pastors. Many remain without a human family often due to conditions of poverty. Some live their situation in the spirit of the Beatitudes, serving God and neighbor in exemplary fashion. The doors of homes, the "domestic churches," and of the great family which is the Church must be open to all of them. "No one is without a family in this world: the Church is a home and family for everyone, especially those who 'labor and are heavy laden.'"
Perhaps she feels her calling is to protect the country. That in itself is a form of motherhood, I would say.
"There are only so many years of fertility that a woman has, and it seems the secularists have won a great victory with this education/career nonsense encouraging an awful lot of women to waste that time in dubious endeavors."
I am sorry that the education of the women who bear and raise the next generation is considered little more than a "dubious venture" to some. Women can't be reduced to their reproductive potential, any more than they can dial up a proper mate in their chief reproductive years.
I've said this before, and I'll continue saying it until my voice gives out: One does not choose marriage in a void; one can only discern marriage in the light of another person, real and present, whom one wants to marry. All this talk of how women ought to get married young posits a world in which women browse through the orchard of love and pluck likely men off trees. Real relationships don't work that way. Until a woman meets the right man, what is she to do? Having a career sounds like a pretty positive option.
Someone recently took a survey of a homeschooling group I'm in, to see what the various mothers did before leaving jobs to raise and teach their children. One woman had a Ph.D in music and had been the principle french horn player in an orchestra. One wrote grant proposals. Several had been nurses. One woman had been an editor at a publishing house. I myself, who married and bore children in my early twenties, was a theatrical stage manager and production assistant. Were all of these "dubious ventures"? I think not.
Also missing is that the idea a woman is not simply biding time till she gets around to the real business of her life--raising children. Children are a gift from God, but though they are an important part of a woman's life, they are not it's end or the measure of it's value (although it might not feel that way when you hold your first-born). Women (and when married, a couple) will negotiate in different ways how they to balance competing and worthwhile pursuits, how to structure family life, etc.
Lots of great points already made, but I would like to throw out a reminder that there is another type of vocation open to women who wish to live and work in the world but who are called to a non-married state: consecrated virginity.
I am skeptical that "ordinary" non-consecrated single life constitutes a vocation, because of the nuptial meaning and potential of the body. I think we are all called to a vowed state -- but that some of us encounter obstacles that prevent us from entering it in our lifetimes.
Lots of interest here. I think it bears reminding that the primary vocation of Christian life is the vocation we get from Baptism; the vocation of marriage simply specifies this in a particular way. And it is perhaps worth noting that St. Gemma Galgani was neither married (she turned down two marriage proposals) nor a member of a religious order (she was turned down by the Passionists for reasons of ill health -- she had tuberculosis); she's the one who comes to mind off the top of the head, but I'm sure there are others.
Like bearing, though, I'm inclined to be skeptical of the idea of a specific vocation for non-consecrated single life; it's a pet peeve of mine, actually, when people talk about it. Everyone having special vocations seems silly to me: I do just fine with my completely generic baptismal vocation, and one can live a good life like that until something more specific comes along, if it does.
August,
Others have given some very good answers, but I always did like weighing in myself on things.
Darwin, my last paragraph was pointing out that if she chooses an untenable lifestyle, with the supposed blessing of the Church (since most of us will sit around and pretend this is a calling), she is more likely to decide, once the pain of that lifestyle kicks in, that it is the Church and not the lifestyle that is in error.
It seems to me like addressing this concern by saying something that the Church does not actually teaching (that women should not worry about education or careers because their only purpose is to get married young and have lots of babies -- unless they become nuns) would not help either. It may be that if some individual person is faced with the choice between a desired lifestyle and following the Church's moral teaching on sexuality and marriage, that person will pick the lifestyle. But the best we can do in that situation is present clearly what the Church's teaching actually is. If there's something worse than having the Church rejected because of what it teaches, surely its getting someone to reject the Church by misrepresenting to them what the Church teaches in hopes that the misrepresentation somehow has better built in guardrails than the real teaching.
I don't think the God of the living is much amused. There are only so many years of fertility that a woman has, and it seems the secularists have won a great victory with this education/career nonsense encouraging an awful lot of women to waste that time in dubious endeavors.
As MrsDarwin said, I think it's a mistake right off the bat to assume that everyone has a choice when to get married -- it's highly dependent on whether you meet anyone you want to marry.
But even beyond that, I don't think there is some ideal marriage age in the mind of God, and that anyone who delays past that point is somehow deviating from his plan. "Get married young and have lots of babies" is not a moral norm.
A baby-vending machine would not be a good evolutionary strategy. We've all been taught pretty much the same feminist nonsense, and when this conversation comes up, the feminist concept of self, which was drilled into us as 'education', kicks in. It makes evolutionary, biological, and if we are going to assume God does not do extremely silly things, spiritual sense that having children when you are at the most biologically optimal point. (That we do not have perfect control over when we get married is too obvious. It isn't even a point. You can still try. You can build a culture where women can learn & have children, too. Some are doing it even now.)
My definition of self includes my body. I am not my soul, or my mind, or my body, but all of these; whole, integral. I can use biological realities to maximize my health and my growth; they certainly do not reduce me to mere machinery.
So, understand, you are not defending women against me, rather you are defending a very sick society against us. I am not arguing against the Church, or pushing this or that norm, but saying our society has really skewed values resulting in having children being rated as less valuable than making a career out of doing powerpoint (another of the DoD's sins).
Mrs Darwin,
Not completely disagreeing with your point about deciding to marry, only to observe that it's very culture-specific. Many of my friends' parents, and a surprising number of my college friends, who came from Asian countries did indeed take the view that there is a correct point in life to get married, and you then do so, normally with the assistance of parents, friends or other personal contacts, or professional matchmakers. In discussing this with a Chinese-born friend, we both noted that there wasn't an observable difference in marital happiness in these semi-'arranged' marriages; but she strongly felt that was just a matter of how skilled your matchmakers were.
August, Clare and the Darwins.
How interesting this conversation is. There is a biological truth that a woman's fertility begins to decline around 26 years of age. Speaking as someone who waited to have children, August has a serious point. But then, it is all a matter of degree. This 18 year-old woman is very young. The statistics on women who never want to bear children are scant. Most eventually change their minds. I actually do think that many women cast off worthy suitors in their twenties as they look for Mr. perfect. I know a crew of such women in their late thirties right now. The fun is over, and they are desperate. It is tragic.
Yet, marrying very young and bearing children before one has had any experience in the work world can be deadly, as very few educated women can withstand the feelings of "being left behind" and the inevitable resentment that creeps in from time to time. This is further exacerbated in an environment where one's peers are doing exactly the opposite. Most women are social beings who love to chat and bond with other females in their same life stage. Absent such peers, a young mother can feel very isolated, to the detriment of her marriage and family.
But...I know many couples that have made their families work while both spouses are employed to some degree. Sure, a high-power law firm is not the place for such a mother if her husband is equally employed, but many men can and do stay home, at least part-time, these days. As far as I know, the Catholic Church is open to the idea that men might be the primary caregivers.
Yet, I am in the camp that barrier contraceptives within a marriage are not sinful. As I see it, they are no different from using NFP to "Limit" rather than "space" your children, which is licit under Catholic doctrine. It is just that you cannot "limit" them to "none."
It is also prudent for women to have some work experience before marriage and family, as some marriages do fail, and to be left with nothing on your resume is a precarious situation to say the least.
August: There is a huge difference between acknowledging and respecting biological realities and reducing the human person to biological realities. And you are doing the latter.
I have no idea what you mean by the feminist concept of self. Nor do I have any idea why this is about value of babies versus powerpoints. This is about women and men rationally and prayerfully choosing which goods to pursue, when, and how, without self-appointed arbitrers of the divine and darwinian order shaming them for a failure to fit into their boxes.
I agree that the visceral repulsion of young woman to children and family life is deeply tragic and wrongheaded. Understand though, that rhetoric suggesting that their only valid choices lie within a narrow reproductive framework drives them away much better than any feminist tactic.
I am sooooooo glad that Dalrock has obliterated Darwin Catholic's faulty logic, and sinister desire to swindle innocent men.
Sorry, toots, but you have been Dalrocked. I know you are cowering in fear from the prospect of being faced with Dalrock's airtight logic.
Some women love being mothers, and being a mother is certainly an honorable duty, but I don’t think I’m cut out for it
Okay, fine. Don't have sex, and don't marry. This also means, no dating, no courtship, no romance, etc., since dating with no intention to marry, is fraud, both emotional and financial, against the men who date you.
I've long thought that some professions such as doctor or lawyer would be very compatible with celibacy ...Why is it that we often look at toll working takes on women but not on men?
Reality check: the only reason why men ever go into medicine, law, science, engineering, etc, is to earn enough money to attract and support a woman. Without the sexual reward, no man would ever work that hard.
Besides, the same woman who complains endlessly about his long hours, in most cases would never have married him if he had the lower income associated with a 40-hr/wk job. Plain fact, an otherwise-rejected man can increase his attractiveness to the opposite sex by working himself to the bone; a woman cannot. (Google "hypergamy" sometime).
The Dalrock post is actually hilariously funny, although you should only read it if you're in the mood for the sort of accusatory drama queen nonsense that consists of blaming and scolding people not for their arguments but for their tone and what they don't actually say. So we get exaggerated descriptions of the course of events followed by a long discourse on assumptions that turn out to be "unspoken" and also completely unproven, ending ultimately in self-vindication. This is why it's difficult to take some of these people seriously; dealing with them is like dealing with people who suffer from HPD.
Anon,
It's comments like yours that make me value so much more the IQ and prose writing abilities of my usual readers and commenters. Thanks for dropping by.
van Rooinek,
Okay, fine. Don't have sex, and don't marry.
You may have noticed that's what I said as well. I'm not sure why you feel the need to repeat the sentiment.
Reality check: the only reason why men ever go into medicine, law, science, engineering, etc, is to earn enough money to attract and support a woman. Without the sexual reward, no man would ever work that hard.
I'm not sure why you imagine that you have absolute knowledge of the motivations of all men who have ever lived, but I think it's a pretty sure bet that you're wrong.
Sure, some men work hard in some field or other in order to make themselves more attractive to women. Others do so because they want the money themselves, or because they have something to prove in some other regard. And some actually like what they are doing. I'm sure there are also other motivations I'm not even thinking of.
And, of course, some women work very hard in such fields for the same reasons.
Dalrock Readers in General,
I've written an extensive response to Dalrock's post in which he linked to this one. You can read it here:
http://darwincatholic.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-marry-nice-girl.html
"This is why it's difficult to take some of these people seriously; dealing with them is like dealing with people who suffer from HPD."
This is even more delightfully apt when one reads a bit about Histrionic Personality Disorder.
Thank you for writing this post! I'm Mary who wrote the response to this young woman's question about birth control. There was a lot I wanted to say but I simply did not have the space. Thank you!
Two options for women in religious life are marriage with children or single celibate life. Why doesn't the 18 year old girl in the letter take the celibacy option? Because she wants to fornicate. That's the crux of the issue. That and she wants to denigrate the lifetsyle of stay-at home mothers. She's no Mother Theresa saint who worked for others. She only works for herself and worldly pleasures. Yikes.
Girls who think contraception is okay and that if they marry young they will feel "left behind" and that's "deadly." It's pretty clear such a perons cares mainly about what people think of her, not about her purpose in life.
Motherhood is the highest natural vocation. If Christian women are really Christian, they'll want to give their best years to a devout man who loves them, to serve their husband and God in the highest natural vocation, the vocation of mother. Not tooting a french horn or managing a theater company.
I think it's pretty clear the reason so-called trad women typically eschew early marriage is that they do not think devout men are good enough for them, and they don't think motherhood is the highest vocation, but rather, something that's nice that you do later in life after having "fun." Such people should not pretend to be Catholics.
"August: There is a huge difference between acknowledging and respecting biological realities and reducing the human person to biological realities. And you are doing the latter."
Let's look at this statement. It is specious. Even feminists admit men and women have different organs and chromosomes. Those are mere "biological realities" - and it would seem that man who believes women should esteem their role of wife and mother as their highest calling, and therefore, as a priority, is not the one reducing motherhood to "biological realities." Feminists reduce motherhood and sex to mere biological happenstance, and degrade men who seek chaste young brides who will not use contraception as "men equating women to cows" - I've heard such a statement from a Traditional Catholic woman. And it's straight-up feminism. Totally irreconcilable with Catholicism.
You are mixing up equal and opposite errors . Misguided feminists *ignore* biological realities, or treat them with disgust, but that is not the same as reducing the human person to them. Your conflation with the fact that there are years of optimal fertility with an imperative moral norm to procreate in those years is a much more accurate picture of reductionism.
Priesthood is the highest vocation for man, but we do not demand that every man seek it. Catholics have never been obligated to seek the best if they have decided to choose the good.
And the claim that women who chose to remain single are all frivoling away their lives or secretly fornicating is simply idiotic.
More and more this seems to be about fear of women rather than respect for motherhood.
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