Tag: Marriage

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33,000 Years of Marriage In This Place – A Few Pointers From Catholics Married for Long Years

072613This past week six couples in my parish joined about 850 other couples in the Archdiocese of Washington at the Basilica here for the Jubilarian Mass. Couples celebrating 25, 40, 45, 50 and 60 or more years of marriage gather each year to receive gratitude and recognition from the diocese for their witness to the fact that love never fails. We may fail, but love is our constant call, and, if we will let love have its way amor omnia vincit (love conquers all).

In times like these the witness of many years of marriage is all the more necessary and all the more inspiring. My parents made it to 45 years before my mother died. And I know they were not all easy years. I have written on that here before. But as the years ticked by Charles and Nancy Pope, my parents were quite inseparable. When my mother did die, and she died suddenly and tragically, I knew my father wasn’t long for this world. We kids wondered how dad would manage without mom. Shortly after her death he wondered aloud how he could go on living when half of him was gone.

Saying those words witnessed to the miracle of holy matrimony where God takes two and makes them one. My father and mother did not get to that place quickly or easily (there we some stormy years in their forties). But they got there, by God’s grace, they got there.

My Aunt and Uncle just celebrated their 50th. Again, many years, lots of love but also their share of struggles and sorrows. Yes, God is faithful, and he will do what he says: “They are no longer two, they are one.” (Matt 19:6)

In the Basilica last Sunday some one did the math and found that there were 33,000 years of Holy Matrimony collectively among the Jubilarians in that place. Amor omnia vincit.

Many will point to the crisis of Holy Matrimony today. I would not be so foolish to deny it and have discussed it here. But to those who say it is not reasonable or possible to expect people to get married and stay that way today, My mom and dad, my aunt and uncle, 850 other couples in the Basilica and 33,000+ years of marriage all stand in witness to the fact that God can do this, and God STILL does this.

I am not a married man in the conventional sense, but I have had the privilege of talking with many married couples over the years, and I have asked of,  and been able to discern the ingredients of success in holy matrimony, and the priesthood, by extension. Here are few brief pointers that the successful have offered in one way or another over the years to me:

1. No Ideal Marriage – Many people want marriage to be ideal, if there is any ordeal they want to look for a new deal. And the problem is that they want marriage to be ideal. But there is not such thing. Every marriage is imperfect. It has blessings, but also burdens. Clinging to the “ideal Marriage” fantasy is a recipe for resentment and disappointment. Living in reality is essential. Many good marriages are far from ideal, but they are good. And the best should not be the enemy of the good.

2. Always remember, you are sinner, who married a sinner. God wants marriage, as a sacrament to be a means of salvation for both spouses. Hence, marriage somewhat presumes that work was necessary for both spouses upon the beginning of a marriage. Let God do his work, and that work is sometimes painful. Marriage is an important way that God teaches and virtues such as humility, forgiveness, patience, kindness, honesty, accountability, and so forth. Honestly, if we do not learn these virtues and receive them from God, we will likely go to hell. Marriage is one of the ways God works to save us. It is a call to holiness, and as a sacrament, it is a way to holiness.

3. Stay in your lane and work your own stuff first. Always begin by saying, “My marriage is not perfect because I am in it.

4. Some of God’s gifts come in strange packages. For those who are faithful, all things work together for good (cf Rom 8:28). Notice that, ALL things. Not just the good things, even the bad things. Spouses bring many blessings to one another in pleasant ways. But even the less pleasant and difficult things, for the reasons stated in # 2 above, redound to our good if we can learn to learn from adversity as well as pleasantries. A spouse, by God’s grace, is a means by which the other spouse grows in holiness.

5. What you feed grows – It is usually the case when couples date that they compliment each other and overlook negative things rather easily. But a few years into a marriage when the “I Do” has become “You’d Better”  the negative is focused on. Couples in crisis all too easily have great recall of all the foibles and sins of the other, what they have done and not done is easily recited. When I ask what is good about the other, suddenly the memory is less clear and the recitation less articulate. It is a simple truth that what you feed will grow, and what you starve will shrink and die. Couples who have made often talk of being blessed with a poor memory, and a forgetfulness of hurts, and of being grateful for the blessings that their spouse brings. They have learned to feed the positive and starve the negative.

6. Beware the noonday devil – It often happens that when one sets about a good thing like marriage, priesthood or the religious life, or other paths, that at the four or five year mark a certain lethargy sets in that combines boredom, perhaps some discouragement and a desire to get free for something new. This is the noonday devil, the five-year itch. Beware it, but even more, ignore it. Those who make it through this transition are all glad they did. I say “transition” because that is what it is. Life cannot simply be based on newness and thrills. Our commitments must ultimately have deeper roots to be stable and it is important to transition to the daily living of the tasks before us. One ultimately adjusts to slowing down to the pace of life and comes to appreciate what is familiar and stable. If one can make this transition in marriage a more stable and mature love replaces the more mercurial love of romance and courtship.

7. Marriage is hard because life is hard. It is so easy to think life would be better outside the marriage or in another marriage. No. Life is hard. It is hard being a priest, it is hard being single, it is hard being married. Life is hard. Life also has joys in all these states. One of the hard truths that sets us free if we accept it is simply that life is hard. There is not escaping this. There is no where to go where this will not be so. Running from marriage because it is hard is futile. If you try to run from this truth you will meet yourself coming back. There is no escaping this, we live in paradise lost. Life is hard. Running never works.

8. Your spouse’s strengths and struggles are very much related. If we are honest we will discover that what we most like about people is only separated by 3 degrees from what we dislike. For example, we may know someone who is a great organizer or manager. And we very much like and depend on the leadership they have. However, the same person can also be controlling or a bit anxious about things. Their strength and their struggle are very closely related. Perhaps too we know of person who is passionately committed and creative. But that same person also struggles with the passion of anger, or the moodiness of the creative. Someone many be very outgoing and friendly, but they also, thereby, struggle to be committed to core principles and may be a people-pleaser. Successful spouses learn to take the bad with the good, and to accept that what they most like and admire about their spouse, is also accompanied by a less desirable side to it. But at the end of the day they are able to link the two, accepting the tension with appreciation for what it points to.

9. Happiness is an inside job – Most successful spouses come to love and admire many things about their spouse, and their marriage brings with it many happy moments. But, at the end of the day, most individuals are about as happy as they set out to be. Too often we think that happiness comes from external factors. It is true that external factors can bring comfort. But happiness has its origin in our own own heart. There are many people who have very admirable external settings who are not happy. There are also people who have difficult external situations but are happy and content. In the end, happiness is a gift that comes from God which we must allow him to work in us, whatever our circumstances. It is wrong and idolatrous to make another human being, even your spouse, the source of your happiness. Not only is it wrong, it is unfair to your spouse. Only God can grant true and lasting happiness. And we must individually cooperate with that work of God. Our spouse can and should help in this regard, but they cannot be the ultimate source of our happiness. Ultimately we have a God-sized hole in our heart that only God can fill. No human being can take that place.

10. Faith is Fundamental – While it is true that irreligious couples do succeed in marriage, the best guarantee for a successful marriage is for each of the spouses to report to and be accountable and obedient to God. The remedies of the sacraments, God’s word, prayer, sacred teaching and walking in fellowship with other believers are essential helps that we are foolish to try and live without.

11. Headship Matters – There is an old saying, Marriage makes two people one. The trouble comes in determining which one. – One of the biggest problems today in marriage is power struggle. In our modern age we have rejected the biblical teaching of headship in marriage. God establishes a husband in authority in the home. Every organism and organization requires headship. A creature with two heads is a freak. A creature with no head is dead. Having rejected the necessity of headship and the biblical teaching assigning that to the husband (eg Eph 5:19 ff) the result is power struggle between the spouses. Now a husband’s authority is not a worldly, autocratic authority but a Christian, servant based authority (Cf Mark 10:41-45).  It does not follow that the husband always “gets his way.” Rather, if he is smart, he listens carefully to his wife and her wisdom. Practically speaking women have great authority in the home and its daily running and a smart husband will not seek to micromanage and usurp his wife’s role and her practical authority there and with the children. But in the end, two have to become one. Oneness requires headship, common faith, shared fear of the Lord, and a heartfelt appreciation for the gifts of each.

12. Your Marriage belongs to God, not you. The Scripture says, “What God has joined together, let no one divide. (Matt 19:6) Therefore note that God worked this work, not you. Your marriage is His work, it belongs to him. Respect what God has done and reverence it as of him, and by him and belonging to him.

Here then are a few things I have learned in 25 years of marriage counseling and talking to married couples. It is things like these, and more that I am sure you will add in the combox that adds up to 33,000 years of marriage and counting.

Here is a video from last year’s celebration. The couple seen in the still shot of this video box are Morris and Mary Freeman from my parish, who, that year celebrated their 50th. Mary died of a rapid form of cancer just two months after this video was taken. May she rest in peace.

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Getting the Marriage Conversation Right.

One of the most common and quickest traps and which most of us fall in the marriage debate about recognizing same-sex couples is that we allow the conversation to center around the couple themselves, that is, to center on the adults. But intrinsically marriage as an institution is not fundamentally about adults, it is about children.

William May recently wrote a short book on this matter: Getting the Marriage Question Right: a guide for effective dialogue. I want to summarize one of the key points he makes.

Marriage unites a man and a woman with each other, and any children born from the union. Marriage takes its fundamental structure and moral imperatives based on what is just and right for children. Hence, marriage must be heterosexual, in order that children may be conceived and born. Marriage must also be a stable and lasting union between those parents because this is what is right and just for children, namely that they have a right to be raised, formed, and influenced by their father and a mother.

But the problem with most understandings of marriage today is that they are adult-centric. That is to say, they focus only on the rights and happiness of the adults involved. Most people have little concept of marriage today as anything other than two adults being happy for as long as they please. And if they do have any children it isn’t because that is what marriage is about, it’s only because that makes the adults happy. Or so the thinking goes. And thus, because adults have a right to be happy, they have a right to get married, and if they are unhappy, they have a right to divorce. Basically, the modern concept of marriage is that it’s all about the adults.

Now, to be clear, this “all about the adults” mentality has been a problem in the heterosexual community long before the homosexual community stepped forward to demand recognition of their unions, as a “marriage.” And that is why it is so hard for heterosexuals to answer the demands of the homosexual community, and why so many heterosexuals are themselves confused. After all, what, really, is one to say to the homosexual community if all that marriage is, is two adults being happy for as long as they please?

And that is why we have to get the marriage conversation right.

The central point must remain this, that marriage, its structure, and how we understand it, must be seen from the standpoint of was is fundamentally just and and right for children. Any divergence from this central insight, leads us down dead ends and endless arguments about the rights and feelings of adults, and their need for recognition.

Actions which served to deprive children of their right to live in a married, stable, two parent family, with their own father and mother, are acts of injustice. Fornication which places children in danger of being killed by abortion, or of being raised in single-parent settings is a potential act of injustice toward children, and actual injustice if they are conceived. Adultery which violates and endangers the sacred bond of marriage and weakens it, is also an injustice toward children as well as adults. Divorce which intentionally destroys the marriage bond, also deprives children of what they justly deserve, a father and a mother who have made commitments, stick to those commitments, and work out their differences.

Other philosophies and lifestyles which weaken the institution of marriage are also injustices toward children, philosophies such as cohabitation, no-fault divorce, and giving legal recognition to same-sex unions. These philosophies and practices, because they weaken the institution of marriage, or to lose its meaning, are harmful to children, and an injustice toward them.

Children are not served by being born into a society where marriage is anything adults say it should be. A fundamental and intrinsic meaning of marriage is the raising of children and what is best for them.

We must do everything in our culture to regain this starting point when we consider marriage. To fail to do this at any level remains an ongoing social injustice, as well as personal injustice to children.

How is it unjust, you may ask? Because not being raised in a traditional marriage dramatically increases a child’s likelihood of suffering many social ills.

The chief cause of poverty in this country, is the single motherhood, absent fatherhood.
71% of poor families are not married.
Children of single parent homes are 2 times more likely to be arrested for juvenile crime,
2 times more likely be treated for emotional and behavioral problems,
Twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school,
33% more likely to drop out of school,
3 times more likely to end up in jail by age 30.
50% more likely to live in poverty as adults,
And twice as likely to have a child outside of marriage themselves. [*]

The subject a child to these odds is a social injustice, whether intentionally as some proudly do by having children outside of marriage on purpose, or unintentionally through unchaste behavior committed in weakness.

Further it is clear that heterosexual complementarity is what nature provides and what we should justly provide our children for their psychological and sociological development. A father and mother have unique and essential things to supply to the rearing of their children that a single parent or same sex parents cannot give. To intentionally deprive children of this is unjust. To weaken traditional marriage by the “anything is marriage or family” mentality is also an injustice since it makes our future children more likely to be raised in irregular situation.

In the marriage conversation, stay on message! Do not be drawn into long discussions about the rights of adults, or long discussions about homosexual activity. When it comes to marriage, marriage is about children. It takes a structure and its obligations based on what is just and proper for children.

Staying focused on this aspect of marriage, which gives it its fundamental structure and purpose, is intrinsic meaning, also makes it plain that this understanding binds heterosexuals as well as homosexuals.

We all have a lot to answer for with the kind of terrible situations the majority of our children are being raised in today. And even if someone wants to argue that a certain situation isn’t so bad, it still remains an injustice to deprive a child of his or her right to live in a stable married family with father and mother. Anything short of this or anything which weakens the institution of marriage must be seen for the social and personal injustice that it is.

Get the marriage conversation right, stay focused on children, and what is just and right for them.

I remember being at a Yolanda Adams concert, and before she sang this song she warned the audience to shun illicit sexual union and to remember how it hurts children, along with many other bad things we adults do.

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A Post Mortem on the Maryland Same Sex”Marriage”Referendum

Among the unsurprising but very disappointing results from yesterday’s elections was the approval of Same Sex “Marriage” by Maryland residents 52 to 48%. Maryland is one of the most liberal states in the union, and it is been known for at least several weeks now, through polling, that the bill was likely to pass.

Here again it is a time for a kind of post mortem analysis of how the Church could have more effectively taught the faithful, and have opposed the referendum more successfully. A reader from yesterday’s blog reflecting on this very matter wrote the following:

I was very disappointed at the lame, almost non-existent reaction of the Catholic Church to the same-sex marriage vote in Maryland. Where were the commercials? Where were the road signs? Where were the interviews and lectures and public forums? Where were the homilies?

While I’m not sure that all these reflections are fair, it does remain true that the work we did in opposing the bill was unevenly experienced and, given that we lost quite soundly, our work could well have been more effective.

Perhaps a brief review of what we did do is in order.

Beginning, almost four years ago, when gay “marriage” was being forced on the residents of the District of Columbia by a mere City Council vote, the Church joined with many other Christian denominations in seeking at that time to have the matter brought to a vote for the citizens of the District of Columbia. This attempt was denied by the DC Board of Elections who claimed that “human rights” could not be a matter for referendum.

In the midst of that battle we began a campaign to teach on marriage entitled Marriage Matters. The goal here was, through sermons, published materials, and Internet sites, that we could lead to the people of God to back to a better understanding of the roots of traditional marriage in Natural Law, as well as Scripture and Church teaching. In the context of this wider teaching, we also sought to demonstrate why Gay “marriage” was not an acceptable understanding of marriage that Americans ought to adopt.

More recently, these materials were re-presented in a more focused way to the citizens of Maryland. Pastors were instructed to read several letters from the Archbishop, were asked to preach one Sunday on the topic of Marriage and why Catholics should vote against the recognition of Same-sex “Marriage.” We were also to provide written materials and other references to parishioners. This was to have been done on one of the Sundays back in September.

It is unclear to me whether the reader who commented on the blog yesterday attends a parish where, for some reason, this was not done. But the fact is, it was something that was expected of every pastor by the Archdiocese. Although I, have a parish in the District, not Maryland, since many of my parishioners live and vote in Maryland, I took part in this campaign. I read the letters, preached the sermon and presented written material to the congregation.

There was also an advertising campaign, in which the Archdiocese joined with others to purchase radio spots, and some TV spots as well. Initial funding for this advertising was good, but there was donor fatigue which set in when it became increasingly clear that the polls showed that gay “marriage” was likely to pass in Maryland. I received an urgent call from the Archdiocese three weeks before the election seeking to help identify donors who might make last-minute donations. I am also aware that some of the bishops personally sought donors as well. So, there were strong efforts made to raise the money and increase the advertising, but the money was generally not forthcoming in large enough numbers to afford major P.R. and advertising especially into October as the polls indicated we were unlikely to prevail.

Could we have done more? Certainly. Without simply excusing our less than adequate efforts, I would like to make a few observations however, about some things which make our efforts difficult.

In the first place, the Archdiocese of Washington is not a professional or full-time PR firm. Nor do we have endless monies to hire such firms. It is clear that, as we move forward, more monies, and fundraising are going to have to be done. We just have to get better at doing what is frankly, costly, complex, and requires great sophistication.

Secondly, there is also the problem of there being numerous fronts in which the Church must currently fight. There is Gay “marriage,” but there is also the HHS mandate, abortion and other life issues. Every year, the Archdiocese spends an enormous amount of money on the pro-life march. The Verizon Center is rented at great expense, as are other sites. There is also extensive time and money spent by the staff of the Archdiocese to coordinate with police and get marching permits etc. All the sophistication, fundraising, and coordination has taken decades to emerge. As we go forward other topics will require similar sorts of attention.

This brings a third point which is the pace of change. Many of the cultural issues have come upon us quite rapidly. Gay “marriage” has emerged as a credible threat, really only in the last five or six years. The HHS mandate, and the question of religious liberty, emerged only last year, though we have been fighting legal battles for many years over the attempts to exclude religious voices in the public square.

Fourthly we struggled to maintain a coalition with other denominations when it came to the gay marriage bill. While we are deeply appreciative of and respectful of the hard work done by many of the Protestant denominations, there remain some differences between us in the way in which we articulate and understand the problem of homosexual activity. The Catholic approach is to make careful distinctions between orientation and behavior. Many Protestant denominations do not speak with these distinctions, and sometimes consider the orientation itself to be sinful, not just the behavior. These differences have made it somewhat difficult, and or awkward for us at times to speak with a common voice and to stand together easily. The Catholic position on homosexual activity, and so-called homosexual “marriage” is clear but our pastoral practice is to maintain important distinctions, as a matter of pastoral practice and out reach to those who struggle with a homosexual orientation. All of this makes building coalitions, while not impossible, more delicate and difficult.

Fifth – teaching on this matter at the homily moment, as pastors were instructed to do can be effective, but also depends upon the capacity of preachers whose skills are often very uneven. It is a sad truth, that over the last decades, most Catholic priest instinctively avoid speaking about controversial issues, and as a body, have a poor skill set in addressing matters of controversy forthrightly and with charity. This is beginning to change with younger clergy, but the fact remains that when too much depends on the individual priest, the overall effect is very uneven.

Six – Another problem in using the homily moment, is a matter of time. Most Catholics have an expectation that the homily should be 7 to 12 minutes, no more. Setting forth the Catholic teaching on marriage, and why we oppose so-called gay “marriage” does not easily fit into such a brief format.

Of course then, if it is not the Homily moment, when can such information be given the people of God? Would they attend special seminars, would they come to a parish meeting? Not likely in large numbers.

Surely then we should use the Internet, and we have. But it remains a fact that most religious people, especially Catholics, do not get most of their religious information from the Internet. There are also email outreaches, flyers, bulletin inserts, etc., but frankly, most people no longer read much.

Yard signs etc. could have been more ubiquitous, as could have bus ads etc.

In the end however the greatest challenge, it would seem, is simply to get our own house in order.

Most Priests are well aware that increasing numbers of Catholics, especially younger ones, have no idea why we oppose so call gay marriage. Further, marriage has been in such disrepair in the Church for over fifty years now that almost no one even knows what marriages is at all. Contraception, has shredded the meaning of sex and marriage and severed their intrinsic relationship to bearing children. Divorce has also shredded the meaning of marriage. Pornography has destroyed innocence and, after over fifty years of heterosexual misbehavior, most people think of marriage as little less than two adults being happy with or without kids, whatever they choose, for only as long as they please.

Yes, we have sown in the wind and we are reaping the whirlwind. If most people merely think of marriage as two adults being happy for as long as they please, of course it is difficult for them to understand why to Gay people can’t get married. If marriage is not intrinsically about children in its fundamental meaning, why should it either be stable or heterosexual, necessarily?

Increasing numbers of Catholics, especially younger ones just don’t get it. Marriage of course is fundamentally about children, and takes it structure as heterosexual and stable because they are Integral to the meaning of marriage.

That is why marriages should be stable, lasting unions, and why divorce is wrong and why a child should have a father and a mother, because this is what is best for children. This is why contraception is wrong, why marriage must be heterosexual. But a lot of this doesn’t make sense to modern people who reject many if not all of these premises.

We have a lot of work to do to restore a biblical understanding of marriage.

Yes, even more than publicity issues, here is where the Church needs to do some very deep soul-searching. Too many of us clergy have said little over fifty years of heterosexual miss behavior, and deep misunderstanding about marriage has gone largely unaddressed.

When no-fault divorce railroaded through this country in 1969, it is hard to note that the Church said much of anything We were inwardly focused at the time, turning around altars, tuning up guitars, debating liturgy and authority etc. Yes, for over 40 years we have been inwardly focused and we lost the culture.

More than yard signs, or PR in this latest go-round, we have some serious repenting to do. We have not done in maintain the family or preserving marriage in the Church. We have been sleepy and distracted. It will be a long hard journey back to sanity in our culture, and to a good degree we must accept our responsibility for the mess we’re in.

This has happened on our watch.

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Trouble in Paradise – As Heard in a Carly Simon Song

One extreme tends to bring on the other.

Idyllic – I did not live through the 1950s (born 1961), but it would seem that many of the TV shows presented a kind of idyllic picture of marriage and family life. To be sure there were shows like “The Honeymooners” that showed another side. But shows like “Father Knows Best,” “Ozzie and Harriet,” and “Leave it to Beaver” showed the American Family on its best behavior.

Cynic – Some who lived in that time, like my parents (now deceased) said the shows were very popular, but also bred a kind of cynicism, because unrealistic expectations often cause resentments when they are not met. “Why is my family not like that?….”Why are there all these nuts falling out of my family tree?…..Why can’t my Father be like Ward Cleaver?” And lets not forget the lovely June, doing her housework in high heels, a lovely modest dress and pearls gracing her snowy neck.

I don’t know somehow I think I did get a little of that idealism growing up in the 1960s. We lived in a decent neighborhood in a house not unlike the Cleavers. Mom did often wear a dress and Dad came home round 5pm. I had a flat top crew cut and rode my bike with friends.

But them came the War and dad was off to Vietnam. He came back, a year later and the war had changed him somehow. The military moved us away from Chicago, and things went south by my estimation. By 1969 the cultural revolution and the nihilism of Haight Ashbury was reaching the suburbs, no-fault divorce was sweeping the land and shredding families, and the sexual revolution was devastating innocence.

By High School in the mid 70s the revolution was in high gear and the idealism of the 1950s was replaced by an increasing  cynicism of and toward traditional values, including marriage and family, a cynicism that has reached a kind of peak today when more women 25-40 are unmarried than married, and more then 40% of children are raised in single parent families.

There were many songs that singled the shift in the 1970s toward cynicism. One of them was a rather melodic, even gentle song by Carly Simon called “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard it Should Be.” I don’t suppose I ever paid much attention to the lyrics back in the 1970s (few of us really did). But frankly the words are a bitter dismissal of marriage, dripping with disenchantment and resentment. They speak of darkened homes, distant and out of touch parents, and married friends living phony lives that hid desperation and a loss of self-identity.

Consider the words:

My father sits at night with no lights on
His cigarette glows in the dark.
The living room is still;
I walk by, no remark.
I tiptoe past the master bedroom where
My mother reads her magazines.
I hear her call sweet dreams,
But I forgot how to dream.

But you say it’s time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me –
Well, that’s the way I’ve always heard it should be:
You want to marry me, we’ll marry.

My friends from college they’re all married now;
They have their houses and their lawns.
They have their silent noons,
Tearful nights, angry dawns.
Their children hate them for the things they’re not;
They hate themselves for what they are-
And yet they drink, they laugh,
Close the wound, hide the scar.

But you say it’s time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me –
Well, that’s the way I’ve always heard it should be:
You want to marry me, we’ll marry.

You say we can keep our love alive
Babe – all I know is what I see –
The couples cling and claw
And drown in love’s debris.
You say we’ll soar like two birds through the clouds,
But soon you’ll cage me on your shelf –
I’ll never learn to be just me first
By myself.

Well O.K., it’s time we moved in together
And raised a family of our own, you and me –
Well, that’s the way I’ve always heard it should be,
You want to marry me, we’ll marry,
We’ll marry.

Hmm…. Welcome to the modern world. If perhaps the 1950s presented an extremely idealistic picture (at least it called us to come up higher), the reaction of the 1970s and later was the other extreme, an extreme that confirms the worst and says that everything is just phony. It neither inspires nor dreams, it just depresses and calls forth cynicism.

And yet, how many have one extreme or the other about marriage today. Either people have highly idealistic (and unrealistic) notions of what marriage can and should be. Or they are utterly cynical about it.

The idealists often struggle to find the “right” (ideal) person of their dreams. And even if they do, in wanting their marriage to be ideal, when there is any ordeal, they quickly want a new deal. Illusion gives way to disillusionment.

As for the cynics, they just dismiss marriage and live in serial polygamy.

But what if marriage was just like the rest of life…a mixed bag? What if it had some good things about it and some challenges too? What if imperfect marriages and families could still be good families and that imperfection was an acceptable outcome? What if, instead of having the perfect family I was willing to have the family I actually have, realizing that good and bad are often mixed together, and that all are sinners in need of mercy? What if I could accept that my family is imperfect first of all because I am in it? What if, instead of waiting for the perfect or the better I worked with what was reasonably good and tried to make it better?

Well you get the point. I’m not crazy about reality but it’s still the only place you can get a decent meal. And there’s just something about reality that’s a good starting point when it comes to living life. Idealism may have its place, but be careful, for too often it ushers in resentment and cynicism when its promises are not fulfilled.

I’m not sure its fair to say that 1950s TV was completely unrealistic, (I did experience some of what it portrayed), but there were aspects that were perhaps too idealized. The reaction it set in is still visible on the hideous, crass, boorish, broken-down “family” sitcoms of today, that hold up only garbage and dysfunction and tell us that the family in nothing but laughably stupid. It’s Carly Simon’s song on steroids.

Pray for families, pray for marriage. Work also at and for both.

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Marriage Mania: Average Couple spends more than $26,000 on Weddings

Back in the 1980s when I was ordained, there was a priest in the area who was famous (infamous) for the fact that he requested couples who were going to spend more than $5,000 on a wedding (more in those days than now) to pay a tithe, (one tenth) of what they spent on the wedding, to the poor. While he could not require this of couples, he made of it more than a casual suggestion, reminding them that, as they spent thousands on flowers that wilt and dresses worn only once, there were some in this world who had little to wear or eat. The priest has long since passed away now, but was famous for saying very little at diocesan meetings, except, “Gentlemen, what about the poor?”

The memory of this priest crossed my mind as a Facebook Friend passed on tho me an article entitled: Average Couple spends 26K on Wedding. The article goes on to describe the devastating debt that many families incur, (especially when paired with college debt, etc.),  on account of the increasingly unreasonable expectations regarding weddings.

In indicating that $26,000 is the average, that means that half spend more, some a lot more. I actually have couples who are shacking up, (err… “cohabiting”) tell me that they can’t “afford” to get married. Some are surprised when I tell them they don’t have to spend a dime to get married in the Church. They can come to the Chapel with two witnesses and I’ll even buy them lunch. The usual push-back I get is that my suggestion offends against dreams (usually of the woman who wants a picture perfect “Church Wedding”). “So, for the sake of a party you will go offending God?” I ask. “Why not prepare for marriage now, get married in the Chapel, and have a 10th Anniversary bash?” suggest I. “We’ll get back to you on that Father.” Do I need to tell you my phone is not exactly ringing off the hook?

Disclaimer – As regards the cost of weddings, I realize that families do feel certain obligations to others. Further, there are some families that are prominent in the community, and either sense, or do in fact have, wider obligations. I do not, in this article mean to, or wish to, opine on particular weddings and I presume good faith on decisions that families make. However, at the cultural level we have questions to ask ourselves, in terms of the financial and personal costs we place on families. I have little doubt that weddings have always been relatively expensive, but 26K (average) is off the hook, and all of us do well to walk this whole thing back a bit, and ponder what fuels this. There are valid costs, but what part does vanity and dreaminess play on the part of the couple? And what part do unrealistic expectations and commercial hype play from the wider community side?

Permit me to give some excerpts from the article with my own commentary in red. The full article is written by Cathy Grossman of USA Today and is HERE

Call it Wedding Bill Blues. Even with a slight drop in “I Do” spending during recent tough economic years, many couples are beguiled beyond their budgets…..The average couple has a $26,989 wedding, according to Brides magazine. Even though that’s down from a peak of $28,082 in pre-recession 2008… remember this average number means that half of coupes spend more, some a lot more.

Couples are victimized by their own fantasies, cajoled by media visions of celebrity nuptials, and pressured by friends, family, even strangers posting idyllic photos on [wedding sites]…..Resisting is hard, say brides, citing wedding planners who overwhelm them with choices for décor and doo-dads that seem irresistible. Couples can also be lured off their financial feet by bank commercials that encourage borrowing for wedding costs. So the blame is collective, we ought not simply blame dreamy brides, or proud grooms, its all of us.

“It’s emotional. Practicality goes out the window,” says David Jones, president of the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies. Jones [though savvy about the problem of debt] sees many ways debt entraps people. As a grandfather, Jones…found himself a shocked participant in runaway wedding spending for his granddaughter’s wedding…— a $6,000 gown, when $3,000 was planned..

Gosh, I just can’t imagine spending 6K for a dress worn only once.

I remember that my mother, to save money, went in on a dress that three of her friends shared (see photo above). Of course in those days women married rather predictably right out of college and such “team arrangements” were easier to make.

Today, does a dress have to be purchased? Can it not be rented? I DO know of some brides who find very lovely “used” gowns for a very reasonable price.

We also discussed last month, that, for those who purchase a dress, there is a very lovely custom of making baptismal gowns from it, or other holy garments.

At any rate, I’m sorry, 6K for a dress worn only once is crazy. Why not just say no to that sort of stuff? I know, I Know, I’m “a man” and wouldn’t understand.

While Jones and his wife contributed cash, their son, father of the bride, “had to work overtime for months after the March wedding to pay off the credit card bills,” Jones says…..Most people don’t have an emergency account or savings. The typical family has $50,000 for retirement.They don’t have six to nine months of savings set aside and even if they did, it wouldn’t be $26,000. Even if young couples are increasingly sharing the costs, they’re facing student loans and credit card debt even before the first wedding invitation flies out.

The crushing debt that couples carry into marriage, and then the debt they add buying homes much bigger than most of then need, is a huge factor in marital stress and divorce. I have had to counsel many a couple to reset their expectations of the “American Dream” and live much more simply.

My parents lived in an apartment for a good number of years before being able to afford a house. Too many couples forget that there is more to home expenses than a mortgage payment. There is insurance, repairs, taxes, utilities, etc.

So honestly, couples need to think carefully before spending a lot on a wedding. Most of them already bring debt into the marriage…and debt has a way of piling up so that it becomes crushing.

Careful! Debt is real. Too many think of debt is theoretical terms. But it’s pretty awful and real when cut-off notices come for utilities, and the “repo man” is ringing on the bell, and the credit card company is inquiring when the next payment will come.

Crystals everywhere. Flowers everywhere. Lots of drapery and fancy lighting, ice sculptures and all that jazz,”….The couple thought they would spend “about $30,000, but suddenly… looked up, and we had 200 people coming, and the costs were heading for $10,000 to $15,000 over budget…..We cut the up-lighting. We cut the draping. We cut the special wooden dance floor, and no one missed it.”

Hello….There are a lot of other things that won’t be missed too. In then, can we agree, it is the people, and togetherness that makes a wedding reception, not the “stuff.”

The article then details a number of cost savings to consider and couples getting married may find this part of the article helpful. The article then concludes:

Weddings bells sound like a cash register —Ka-ching! The average 2012 wedding (not including a honeymoon) will cost $26,989, up from $26,501 in 2011. A May 2012 survey of 1,272 Brides magazine and website readers found:

•91% of couples set a budget, but 32% overall, and 40% of those who plan a destination wedding, cross that line.

•72% of couples used savings to pay for their weddings. I presume they deplete it almost entirely? Not a good plan when starting a family.

•30% use credit cards, and most expect to pay off credit cards within six months of their wedding. Think again

•54% of couples said paying for a wedding would not hamper their plans for “buying a house or a car, starting a family, etc.” Think again

•62% of couples say they’re contributing or paying entirely for the reception costs, including 36% of couples who expect to pick up the entire tab themselves. Notice, that’s a big change from 25 years ago when the family of the bride footed most or all the bill. I wonder if parents still paid most of the bill if things would be this off the hook?

•Couples are almost as likely to have a sit-down plated meal at their reception (42%) as a buffet style meal (41%).

Perhaps we can end were we started. I wonder if a cash tithe were going to the poor, if couples and families might not also think a little more soberly. Maybe the older priest I remember had a spiritual insight. When everything isn’t about me, and when I think of others first, perhaps the Lord grants us a greater degree of sobriety.

It isn’t just about weddings, its about a lot of purchases. What if I were going to buy a camera, the latest SLR, and what if it costs $1100 dollars. When It’s just about me, its too easy to say, “Sure! Charge it!” But what if I am also going to have to write a check to overseas relief, of $110? Now I might think twice, or I might not buy the deluxe, or maybe I will buy it, but at least its not just about me.

Maybe, when we render our debt to the poor, first, our own debts are less. Something to think about in the extravaganza and boondoggle known as “the wedding.”

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The President, Gay unions, and the problem of selective Christianity

The President’s disclosure that he now accepts so-called “Gay marriage” has received a good bit of political analysis. I am no political prognosticator and this is not a political blog. But when the President invokes Christ and the “golden rule,” to justify his decision, now I think we have something to discuss on a blog like this.

We have discussed at great length the problem with homosexual “marriage” before HERE,  HERE HERE, and HERE) there is no reason restate it all again. Just click through to read those sorts of articles. Further I make reference in this post to Scripture’s consistent teaching forbidding Homosexual acts. I do not set forth all the Scriptures here but you can read what I have set forth more fully here: Biblical Teaching on Homosexual Activity

In this post however lets consider the problematic appeal of the President to Jesus to affirm Gay “marriage.” Specifically Mr Obama said to ABC News:

…In the end the values that I care most deeply about and she [Michele] cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me….[1]

It is a common problem today that people often present simplistic portraits of Jesus Christ to support a variety of agendas. And the portraits of Jesus are not only simplistic, they are incomplete (usually intentionally so), and fail to accept that Jesus cannot be reduced to a simple sentence or two.

I would argue this is what the President is doing here. As if to say, “Jesus, was basically a nice and affirming person, who spoke of Love,  and so beautifully and taught us to do unto to others as we would have them do to us. “Surely,” the thinking goes, “this Jesus would affirm and rejoice over two Gay people getting “married.”” It is as if this were all Jesus was or said, “Love…Do unto others”. Never mind that he had some pretty high standards when it came to sexuality (Matt 5:27-30; Matt 15:19; Mk 10:11; Rev 22:15; Rev 21:8) Never mind that he told his apostles he had other things to teach them and would send his Holy Spirit, and never mind that His Holy Spirit inspired the Epistles writers like Paul to speak clearly in the ancient Biblical tradition about the sinfulness of homosexual activity, fornication, and adultery [2]  “Never mind all that,” says the modern world, and our President, “I chose the Jesus who said only, ‘God is love, and be kind to one another.'”

And this is the textbook definition of heresy, to pick or choose. The English word derives from the Greek word hairesis, meaning to chose.

The essence of orthodoxy is in the balance [3, 4] and maintaining the tensions inherent in Jesus and the Christian message.  The essence of heresy is to pick and choose. And, as author Ross Douthat has ably demonstrated in his book Bad Religion – How we became a nation of heretics, there is a lot of heresy being peddled today. Heresy picks one, or perhaps several teachings, and emphasizes them in exclusion to other teachings which balance and complete them. And to be fair, as Douthat points out, heresy is not just a problem on the left side of the political or theological aisle. The right does it as well (e.g. prosperity gospel, easy justification for war etc).

The modern tendency on the left, from which the President speaks has been to reduce Jesus to a rather harmless hippie who went about talking about love and inclusion and healed people. Gone from this harmless and politically correct  Jesus are volumes of verses that help complete the picture: a Messiah who claimed authority in our lives, who spoke quite clearly of sin, yes even sexual sin, and who warned repeatedly of the coming judgment, and the reality not only heaven, but of hell.

But Jesus is not either of these descriptions alone, he is both. Orthodoxy is in the balance, not choosing one or the other or tipping in one direction.

In a masterful description, Ross Douthot shows the paradoxes and the necessary balances about Jesus and the faith with which true orthodoxy must wrestle and hold in tension:

Christianity is a paradoxical religion because the Jew of Nazareth is a paradoxical character. No figure in history or fiction contains as many multitudes as the New Testament’s Jesus. He’s a celibate ascetic who enjoys dining with publicans and changing water into wine at weddings. He’s an apocalyptic prophet one moment, a wise ethicist the next. He’s a fierce critic of Jewish religious law who insists that he’s actually fulfilling rather than subverting it. He preaches a reversal of every social hierarchy while deliberately avoiding explicitly political claims. He promises to set parents against children and then disallows divorce; he consorts with prostitutes while denouncing even lustful thoughts. He makes wild claims about his own relationship to God, and perhaps his own divinity, without displaying any of the usual signs of megalomania or madness. He can be egalitarian and hierarchical, gentle and impatient, extraordinarily charitable and extraordinarily judgmental. He sets impossible standards and then forgives the worst of sinners. He blesses the peacemakers and then promises that he’s brought not peace but the sword. He’s superhuman one moment; the next he’s weeping. And of course the accounts of his resurrection only heighten these paradoxes, by introducing a post-crucifixion Jesus who is somehow neither a resuscitated body nor a flitting ghost but something even stranger still—a being at once fleshly and supernatural, recognizable and transfigured, bearing the wounds of the crucifixion even as he passes easily through walls. (Kindle Edition Loc. 3005-16)

Douthat goes on to conclude:

The boast of Christian orthodoxy, as codified by the councils of the early Church and expounded in the Creeds, has always been its fidelity to the whole of Jesus…..[Where heresy says which one] Both, says orthodoxy….The goal of the great heresies, on the other hand, has often been to extract from the tensions of the gospel narratives a more consistent, streamlined, and noncontradictory Jesus. (Ibid).

Indeed a remarkable passage, even if I might quibble with a few words (e.g. the standards of Jesus moral vision are not “impossible” with grace). I would highly recommend the book and will be commenting on it some more in days ahead.

Disclaimer! – In saying the President is exemplifying heresy (i.e. pick and chose Christianity), I am alleging material heresy,  but I am not call him a heretic. It is not my role or in my competency to to declare someone a formal heretic.

But the President is clearly proclaiming a very partial and thus reconstructed Christ. The real Christ is, as Douthat ably notes, far more complicated and far less vague than the President would have us think. And there is far more to his teaching than the “Golden Rule.”

Another form of heresy common today is to pick and chose Scripture. The usual approach, especially in terms of homosexuality and sexual matters in general, is to reduce the entire New Testament to the verbal utterances of Jesus alone, a kind of “red letter” reductionism. This of course, denies the inspiration of the entire New Testament and, in effect, says that Acts, all the Epistles, and Revelation are not the Word of God, are not inspired, and may safely be ignored.

But this is heresy since we cannot pick and choose the books of the Bible, we cannot tear out pages, or cross out lines. Orthodoxy is to accept the whole of the Sacred Text, and to consider its claims with reference to the whole of Scripture and in keeping with its trajectory. For a Catholic, of course this is done in union with the Magisterium and Sacred Tradition.

Many supporters of homosexual behavior adopt this heresy by saying, “Jesus never said a word about or against Homosexuality.” True, but he also never said a word about a lot of things: drinking to excess, beating one’s wife, he never forbade ethnic humor, or said people should wear clothes, He never declared how big and how much money should be spent on the military etc, whether Government should provide welfare etc. Since Jesus did not say out of his own mouth we cannot beat our wives then it must be okay to beat them? Of course not. An argument from silence is very poor and unhelpful.

Further it is heresy to say divine revelation closed with the ascension of Jesus. Rather it continues unto the death of the last apostle. The Epistles are every bit the Word of the Lord, and authored by the Same Holy Spirit as are the Gospels. We cannot pick and choose what we like.

To be clear, the reading of Scripture is not a purely mechanistic endeavor. For example, merely pulling proof texts out of thin air, and out of context is wrong, for that too is often heresy – picking one thing, forgetting the rest.

Rather, Scripture is to be read in a way which respects the overall trajectory of the Scriptures as God leads his people through stages to Christ. Therefore certain things are operative early in Scripture (e.g. certain feasts, dietary laws and punitive measures) that later fall away or are fulfilled. Thus Passover is fulfilled and subsumed into the Eucharist, Jesus cancels dietary laws by declaring all foods clean, the application of stoning and other severe punishments are curtailed etc. But all these organic developments take place in Scripture itself, and can be observed there.

However, there ARE teachings (notably the Divine Moral Law) that remain unchanged and are continuously articulated at every stage of Biblical revelation. They do not undergo change or fall away.

Regarding sexuality, at no stage in the Old Testament all the way through to the end of the New Testament, is fornication or adultery affirmed. The same is true for homosexual acts. At no stage, anywhere in Sacred Scripture are homosexual acts or fornication, or adultery ever affirmed, nor are these acts described as anything but sinful (e.g. Leviticus 18: 22; Lev 20:13; Gen 19; 1 Corinthians 6-9; 1 Tim 1:8-11; Rom 1:19ff, inter al).

Thus orthodoxy, which holds to the whole and does not pick and choose Scripture, must in every way accept and announce that these are sinful acts, sinful enough to exclude one from the Kingdom if they are not repented of (e.g. 1 Cor 6:9).

Simply ushering in a “Jesus is love” argument cannot override texts like these. For the same Scripture which says, God is love, also contains these teachings forbidding extra-marital sex and a host of other moral teachings. The Biblical record sees no essential conflict in saying both “God is love” and “Fornication, Adultery, and Homosexual acts are sinfully wrong.” Thus neither should we have a problem. Orthodoxy says “both.”  Heresy says, “there is tension here and I am going to resolve it by picking the concept I like and excluding the other.”

The orthodox approach accepts the tension and sees a Christ who loves sinners (us) and holds them close, but who also summons us to repentance and a life that is increasingly free from sin and conformed to the truth by his grace .

I don’t know how the President will fare politically, but he has flunked theology and is, if you ask me (and even if you don’t) refashioned Jesus for his own purpose.

As for comments, I would rather not debate the whole Gay Marriage issue and/or the sinfulness of homosexuality. We’ve done that here before and the Church teaching is clear and is not going to change. I am most interested in comments that zero in on the problem of heresy – pick and choose Christianity and how it relates not only to this issue but others as well. But you decide.

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Cohabitation’s Dirty Little Secret

Back the 1970s there was a lot of talk that living together before marriage was a “wise” thing to do. After all, said its proponents, “You need to try a shoe on before buying it” and “You take a car for a test ride before negotiating the deal.” Never mind that human beings are a little more dignified and complicated than shoes or cars, and that we don’t “buy” one another. Never mind all that, according to the proponent of this theory, we were supposed to bow our heads to the obvious wisdom of “shacking up.”

Further, this little bit of post sexual revolution “wisdom” was obviously something that previous generations had never considered (since they were all sexually repressed after all), neither had they tried it and found it wanting and thus rightly discarded it. No, no this was a brand new insight  of a brave new world, and who could really argue that cohabitation was both sensible and “wise?” Or so they said.

But the dirty little secret about cohabitation (aka “shacking up) is that it doesn’t work like its proponents claim. Cohabitors have higher divorces rates when they do later marry. They are less prepared for marriage, not more prepared.

In a recent article in the New York Times (of all places),  Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia shares some statistics and insights as to why cohabitation does not work. As usual why I share articles, the excerpts from the original article are in bold black italic print. My remarks are in red plain text. Pardon the somewhat cynical, ironic and playful tone of my remarks. But sometimes when you can’t cry, you laugh or play the fool.

Cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500 percent in the past half century. In 1960, about 450,000 unmarried couples lived together. Now the number is more than 7.5 million. The majority of young adults in their 20s will live with a romantic partner at least once, and more than half of all marriages will be preceded by cohabitation. This shift has been attributed to the sexual revolution and the availability of birth control, and in our current economy, sharing the bills makes cohabiting appealing. But when you talk to people in their 20s, you also hear about something else: cohabitation as prophylaxis. (Prophylaxis is a fancy clinical term for “preventative,” as in “preventative of divorce.” And this is the dirty little lie about cohabitation, it doesn’t prevent it). I would also add to the list of causes: a general decline in religious observance, the decline moral standards, decline of the family, and the decline of maturity and ability to make commitments. While some will prefer to call my additions judgmental, it is hard to argue that widespread promiscuity and the unwillingness to make and keep commitments, having babies outside of marriage or aborting them, are signs of a healthy culture. No there is something basically wrong with us.

In a nationwide survey conducted in 2001 by the National Marriage Project, then at Rutgers and now at the University of Virginia, nearly half of 20-somethings agreed with the statement, “You would only marry someone if he or she agreed to live together with you first, so that you could find out whether you really get along.” About two-thirds said they believed that moving in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce. Deep down I think all these young people know better and that pre-maritial sex is wrong and stupid. But there is so much stinking thinking today that it is possible to play games with yourself and rationalize. Pair this with the silence of many pulpits on such matters. I wonder how many Catholic teens and young adults have ever been explicitly taught by their parents, pastors and/or catechists that living together outside of marriage is a sin or that, as the Scriptures clearly attest, “fornicators will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.” I strive to make this clear to the young people in my parish from 7th grade up. One of the tools I use is this list of scripture quotes I put together as I reason with them from Scripture: BIBLICAL TEXTS ON FORNICATION OTHER SEXUAL MATTERS

But that belief is contradicted by experience. Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples who do not. These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect. Oops where did these inconvenient facts come from? Imagine that, something modern being wrong?! Well, let’s at least appear smart by giving it a smart-sounding name like “Cohabitation effect.”

Researchers originally attributed the cohabitation effect to selection, or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and thus more open to divorce….Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself. You don’t mean to tell me!

[Regarding cohabitation] most couples say it “just happened.” “We were sleeping over at each other’s places all the time,”…“We liked to be together, so it was cheaper and more convenient. It was a quick decision but if it didn’t work out there was a quick exit.” [This is] what researchers call “sliding, not deciding.” Moving from dating to sleeping over to sleeping over a lot to cohabitation can be a gradual slope, one not marked by rings or ceremonies or sometimes even a conversation. Couples bypass talking about why they want to live together and what it will mean….. Actually, the concept of drifting is a very important insight. Most people do not up-and-leave the Lord or the Church in a huff. Most do not simply wake up one day and dive into serious sin. Rather, more subtly, and thus more dangerously, they just drift away from God and into sin. The book of Hebrews warns: We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away (Heb 2:1). The drifter goes quietly, often imperceptibly off course, and often comes to his senses way down the road when the journey back is tough. And thus many young people simply drift from the Church and from moral virtue. Thank God for those campus and parish programs that DO reach at least some of them, to keep the drifting to a minimum. Thank God too for parents who take the spiritual life of their teens and twenty-somes seriously, and help to keep them on course. Because, drifting these days, leads way down stream and eventually over the falls.

One thing men and women do agree on, however, is that their standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse. Imagine that, thinking less of a shack-up honey than a spouse. How can these young people be so judgmental? And how dare they think higher of marriage than any other form of relationship people wish to dream up. Hmm…but they DO think this way. I wonder why? Could it be that deep down inside, in the conscience, under all the justifications, rationalizations and stinking thinking, they know better?

Sliding into cohabitation wouldn’t be a problem if sliding out were as easy. [Actually it would still a problem, a problem known theologically as sin, and sociologically known as stabbing the traditional family in the heart, making life very difficult for the children born into all the chaos or threatening those children by abortion] But it isn’t. Too often, young adults enter into what they imagine will be low-cost, low-risk living situations only to find themselves unable to get out months, even years, later. It’s like signing up for a credit card with 0 percent interest. At the end of 12 months when the interest goes up to 23 percent you feel stuck because your balance is too high to pay off. In fact, cohabitation can be exactly like that. In behavioral economics, it’s called consumer lock-in.

Lock-in is the decreased likelihood to search for, or change to, another option once an investment in something has been made….Cohabitation is loaded with setup and switching costs. Back to the buying a selling paradigms again. But the point makes sense.

…[They] have furniture…dogs and all the same friends. It just [makes] it really difficult to break up.

I’ve had [many] clients who also wish they hadn’t sunk years of their 20s into relationships that would have lasted only months had they not been living together.

Founding relationships on convenience or ambiguity can interfere with the process of claiming the people we love. A life built on top of “maybe you’ll do” simply may not feel as dedicated as a life built on top of the “we do” of commitment or marriage. Wow, you don’t mean to tell me after all these years that our ancestors might have actually been on to something do you? I mean I thought they were just sexually repressed and juvenile, and that we were liberated and come of age. You don’t mean to tell me that maybe previous generations developed the system of dating and marriage to help us guard our hearts or something, or to help us be more happy? Well since that is not possible, we’re going to have to get the sociologists to study a lot harder to figure out some better explanation!

I am not for or against living together, (but you ought to be based on what you’ve just said) but I am for young adults knowing that, far from safeguarding against divorce and unhappiness, moving in with someone can increase your chances of making a mistake — or of spending too much time on a mistake.  – Yes, facts are stubborn things…

Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of “The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter — and How to Make the Most of Them Now.” These remarks are excerpts of her longer article which is here: The Downside of Cohabiting

On a more serious note from me, the problem of Marriage and family in our culture is an ominous one. Frankly, it doesn’t take a degree in sociology or anthropology to understand that kind of crisis in the family we are currently experiencing is a civilization killer. The numbers regarding marriage are very alarming:

The number of marriages celebrated in the Church has fallen from 415,487 in 1972 to 168,400 in 2010 — a decrease of nearly 60 percent — while the U.S. Catholic population has increased by almost 17 million. To put this another way, this is a shift from 8.6 marriages per 1,000 U.S. Catholics in 1972 to 2.6 marriages per 1,000 Catholics in 2010…

[In this Catholics reflect the general social trend]. In 2010, 53 percent of Catholics surveyed in the General Social Survey (GSS) indicated that they were currently married. By comparison, 51 percent of non-Catholics surveyed were married. [But this an astonishing drop from 1972 when 79% of Catholics were married. Among younger adults 18-40 the number is even more shocking: Only 38% are married!]

Some of [the low numbers]  can be explained by Catholics waiting longer to marry, but the shift here has been slight. In 1972, the average age at first marriage reported in the GSS for Catholics ages 18 to 40 was 20.9. In 2006 (the last time this question was asked), it was 23.9.

Thus, the decline in Church marriages is more about not marrying at all than marrying older. [Our Sunday Visitor 6/26/2011]

The sexual and social revolution thrown by our culture is having its effect. We have sown in the wind and are reaping the whirlwind. And what seems most remarkable, even with all the data coming in, we have no will or ability as a culture to reform ourselves on any wide scale. As St. Paul put it so well well: Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and their senseless minds were darkened (Romans 1:21-22)

Thank God for the faithful remnant. It is hard to know where our culture will go, but as for the Church, though reduced in numbers, she will remain, by God’s promise and will we shall endure, even this.

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What’s a Woman to Do in a Culture Gone Mad? Perhaps "Good Girls DC" has an Idea

We have discussed at length on this blog the sad state of our culture, particularly when it comes to questions of dating, sexuality, faith and marriage.

For example, huge numbers of Americans, are postponing marriage, or never marrying at all. A recent article in Our Sunday Visitor presents stunning statistics about marriage:

The number of marriages celebrated in the Church has fallen from 415,487 in 1972 to 168,400 in 2010 — a decrease of nearly 60 percent — while the U.S. Catholic population has increased by almost 17 million. To put this another way, this is a shift from 8.6 marriages per 1,000 U.S. Catholics in 1972 to 2.6 marriages per 1,000 Catholics in 2010…

[In this Catholics reflect the general social trend]. In 2010, 53 percent of Catholics surveyed in the General Social Survey (GSS) indicated that they were currently married. By comparison, 51 percent of non-Catholics surveyed were married. [But this an astonishing drop from 1972 when 79% of Catholics were married. Among younger adults 18-40 the number is even more shocking: Only 38% are married]!

Some of [the low numbers]  can be explained by Catholics waiting longer to marry, but the shift here has been slight. In 1972, the average age at first marriage reported in the GSS for Catholics ages 18 to 40 was 20.9. In 2006 (the last time this question was asked), it was 23.9.

Thus, the decline in Church marriages is more about not marrying at all than marrying older. [Our Sunday Visitor 6/26/2011]

Of course, despite this, most younger adults are quite sexually active. And the lack of marriage, and promiscuous sexual activity is a very poisonous environment for you people. There is no need to here recite all the terrible statistics of STDs, abortion, teenage pregnancy, single motherhood (absent fatherhood), cohabitation, poverty, broken hearts, broken homes, and children raised in less than ideal situations, with often terrible conflicts they have to grow up in.

And in these promiscuous conditions, and conditions of low marriage rates, women suffer a lot more than men, since (fair or not) the consequences of the sexual revolution have fallen much harder on them. Too often men “play the field” with few social consequences, while women end up used and abused, often pregnant and with little support. Many end up unmarried with children to raise or, tragically, haunted by the aftermath of abortions.

One may ask, “In this poisonous climate, what is a woman to do?” It is easy to say that women, who usually set the limits and boundaries in a relationship, should just be chaste. But the expectations on women to be unchaste are very strong. Further women are not a monolith and there are many different points of view among them as to questions of sexuality, family, priorities, careers, faith, and any number of other issues. Women who do seek to remain chaste and also to live an active Catholic life face many challenges in doing so.

So again the question, in a culture gone mad and dysfunctional, “What is a woman to do?”

One answer is given by a new group here in Washington DC called “Good Girls DC.” These women, most of them college graduates, most of them single, but some married, have gathered to support and encourage one another in living their Catholic faith in a world often poisonous to it. At their website, goodgirlsdc.com their vision is stated as follows:

We are a network of trendy young adult Catholic women who welcome all woman of faith. We seek to renew society through living out our dignity as daughters of God. We aim to create a place where like minded women can find fellowship, friends, and networking opportunities while encouraging each other to live up to their God-given potential.

The group sponsors luncheons, rosary and holy hours, book clubs, and other social functions in which women gather to give each other support in living their Catholic faith and to not give way to the often poisonous social culture of today. They also sponsor co-ed events that encourage Catholics and others of like mind to meet. Their website and Facebook page feature encouraging articles, of many topics focused on faith, uplifting stories, significant events, and helpful links. In the video box below is a Radio interview with Jessica Lanza, the founder of Good Girls DC that supplies a lot more information.

In effect, what are these women doing? They are, by God’s grace, forming a faithful remnant and seeking to become a leaven in society; or, if you will, a spark that will ignite a refining fire. This is, most often, how God reforms his Church and the world. It usually begins with small groups of the faithful, the spark God ignites. And fanned by the Spirit of God’s love, the spark becomes a fire, a refining fire that begins a purifying process in the Church and the world.

Something tells me that Good Girls DC is a spark of God and He wants to fan it into flame. Why not become part of it? While the group is for women only, Men to ought to form similar groups. (Here in DC I am aware of the St. Lawrence Society, a men’s group with a similar purpose). And men ought to support groups like Good Girls DC and encourage women to join. There is a hope that other chapters will begin soon in other cites.

We all need to be strong in a culture gone mad. To use a gloss on a scriptural text we might say Woe to the solitary woman! For if she should fall, she has no one to lift her up. (cf Ecclesiastes 4:10). The same scripture also says, Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. (Ecc 4:12).  Here are strong women, unwilling to compromise with the madness of modern times. Here are women who are standing together and insisting on what is right. Here are women who seek others of like mind. Here are women who seek their vocation, whether to marriage or religious life and want to seek it untainted by the often bitter waters of modern culture.

To remain chaste, faithful and focused, we need as Catholics to support and encourage one another. Thank God for Good Girls DC.

What is a woman to do? Find other women and stand together, grow in numbers and through this spark, let God send a purifying fire upon the Church and the whole earth.

Photo above: A recent gathering of some members of Good Girls DC.

Here’s an interview with founder Jessica Lanza on the Sonrise Morning Show: