1ke - The Impotent can't marry, a commntary

[tabsie3210]

I never got a chance to respond to everyone who responded to my first two posts about the impotent not being able to marry.

I especially wanted to thank 1ke for breaking down my questions and dealing with them individually. Big help, thank you.

I do not question the validity of 1ke’s statements, or any other arguments against the senarios I presented. I believe that you are correct and that the Church is legitimate in its decision to say, a person cannot marry if impotent.

I do feel that this is extremely unfair, given that God gave man and woman to each other and implanted love and desire into our hearts. I’m not blaming the Church, mind, I don’t think that God is being very fair here, to be honest with you. In the case of some people, who don’t want to marry, or who have a vocation to single life, that’s fine. If a person falls in love, though, and wants to be wed to another person, God shouldn’t give him that desire if he is impotent. That seems extremely unfair. That said, I’m sure I wasn’t there the day the oceans were filled up, either, and I certainly can’t count the stars in the sky, so what do I know? Job at least got to confront God; I haven’t even merited that.

I’m not happy with the legal limbo that the inability to marry might leave someone in. You can say what you want about presenting senarios being meaningless in light of the Law, fine, but human law isn’t necessarily Catholic law, and plenty of non-Catholics roll their eyes at us and go about their own business, just as in the case of abortion. We’re seen as behind the times, and people don’t mind trampling us if our morals seem outdated to them. Frankly, for no other reason than it ruffles my feathers for someone to think “old fashioned” is the same as “bad,” I’d support the Church’s teaching. Old fashioned doesn’t mean bad.

The Catholic Church should never change its stance because someone like me has a beef with it. I have my own struggles with some parts of the Law, fine. I know why, and I know why I worry about it. I also know that I’m not God and I don’t have to worry about it. I know ultimately everything will be fair, and that the reason I’m upset because something seems unfair now is simply a reflection of my inborn knowledge that God created a perfect universe and it has been tilted by sin. If God didn’t exist, and if the ultimate plan wasn’t to make everything fair in the end, then I’d never feel that something was unjustified. And that’s plenty to keep me steady in my course.

I would like to see more Catholic lawyers and legal experts out there working on hard cases to protect the rights of people who can’t marry and who wouldn’t be protected without benefit of marriage under normal circumstances. I haven’t been able to find any information pointing that way on Google or Yahoo! or any other search engines. If someone has links, please supply them. I’d appreciate it.

I don’t have to be happy with every little thing. The Apostles weren’t thrilled to be on a boat ride in the middle of wild weather. That doesn’t mean I’m going to jump ship.

That’s all I have to say about it and I consider the case closed, but I wanted to thank everyone and be sure they knew I was thanking them, especially 1ke, who did such a good job of answering my questions.

Greatly appreciate it, all of you.

 

[1ke]

What a thoughtful response, tabsie. Thank you for taking the time to do so.

 

[tabsie3210]

You deserved to have a thoughtful answer, because you went out of your way to give me correct information.

By the way, my initial indignation is pretty much over. God is greater than I am, thank heaven! I don’t trust myself to know everything that’s right. I may sometimes need to be shoved the right direction. God puts up with me because He’s got a sense of humor and He knows I’m not going to stay mad.

I’m much happier having gotten the issue off my chest.

 

[Matthias123]

A very orthodox priest once told me that your vocation will also be your cross. Perhaps there is some logic as to why God permitted this to happen.

God, being an infinitely good being, will never do anything that will be harmful to your soul. However I have come to know that God seems to use suffering to refine us. He will prepare the soil, and then plant the seed of your vocation. Once it is planted it will explode with growth.

Perhaps marriage is not the best way for you to get to heaven.

Have you ever thought about religious life?

 

[tabsie3210]

A very orthodox priest once told me that your vocation will also be your cross. Perhaps there is some logic as to why God permitted this to happen.

God, being an infinitely good being, will never do anything that will be harmful to your soul. However I have come to know that God seems to use suffering to refine us. He will prepare the soil, and then plant the seed of your vocation. Once it is planted it will explode with growth.

Perhaps marriage is not the best way for you to get to heaven.

Have you ever thought about religious life?

First off, some info, because I don’t know if my response will make the thread off-topic:

I’m a 31-year-old woman, and I don’t suffer from any kind of impotence (that I know of). I’m currently single, with no marital prospects.

I’m not sure if your response was a “rolled into one” response to both this thread and the one I posted in family life, “Childless at 31, a rant.” If so, then, yes, I’ve thought about it, though not because I feel any particular calling to it. I just don’t like the idea of being alone, and at the same time I’m feeling a little cooped up in the house with my family all the time. So, maybe that’s the rout to go. I’d really rather get married and have a family. I don’t have the temperment for a convent, I don’t think. I ask too many questions and get annoyed if I don’t like the answers. That can cause some strife among other women, and anyway, I enjoy the secular world too much. I’d hate to have to give up reading and writing fan fiction, and going to anime and Star Trek conventions.

I’m not too terribly thrilled with the idea of becoming a concecrated virgin, either, though if I haven’t married by 50 I probalby will be. I’d love to have a husband and children to raise, and a house of my own to care for. But eh.

The whole “the impotent can’t marry” bugged me a bit because for a while there I was courted by a guy who is severely deformed and in a wheelchair, and the question of what kind of marital life we might have never came up (I was too bogged down in a bad relationship that I should’ve jumped out), but at the same time, in retrospect, he was probably the nicest guy I ever met, and the idea that a nice person who would have a lot of qualities I admire and who liked me for myself, being unable to marry me, bothered me. Especially in light of the fact that I haven’t got any marital prospects right now. I’m not at the “I’ll take whatever I can get” stage, but I’m at the “I’m open to try anything to find a decent husband” stage, and if that meant settling down with a guy who is disabled, fine. But the impotence question bothered me all to piecies.

And then there were the senarios that popped into my head that I wrote on the other thread. The idea of being in legal limbo didn’t appeal to me. My parents know my wishes, but my father’s old, and when he goes then it’s my mother and my two half-sisters. Mom also knows my wishes and respects them, but if I have to settle, as I said, and Mom isn’t there to fight for me, I know my sisters. Both of them are pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia (“I’d never want to see someone I love suffering in a coma like that. He’d be better off dead and with Jesus in Heaven”), and unfortunately for them my parents re-wrote their wills so that I (the stay-at-home daughter) inherit everything except my father’s first wife’s ring (that goes to the oldest sister) and an equal value of money for the ring to the younger. So, if it were me in a coma, with no Mom and Dad there to yell them into submission, and I wasn’t legally married to the guy because of the impotence thing, then it would be pretty scary to think that my life is in the hands of two women who told Daddy they were better off on their own, without him, and that college wasn’t going to get them anywhere in life anyway.

Ahem.

Well… that’s not all of it but eh. I’m leaving it up to God, but I have no idea how to get out there and meet people anyway, so I suppose the point is moot.