Anyone NOT want to get married? Why?

[Norseman82]

Are most people called to marriage? Yeah, sure. But the people who have discerned that, for the time being, or even indefinitely, they should not be married…why would you even want to consider someone who had reasons that prevented them from being available for marriage?

Why would the church choose to canonize someone who never married and was not a priest or nun? There are many examples. Would you say that those people were wrong to take themselves “off the market”?

When it comes down to it, it’s none of anyone’s business when someone chooses to make him or herself unavailable to someone else. Just because someone cannot find a spouse doesn’t mean people should make themselves available to him or her. If you want to talk about the problems of people leaving the church or not being properly catechized, I’m with you there. But to say that other women who do not feel they should be married should make themselves “available” to people who are having trouble finding spouses?

If there are legitimate reasons preventing one from marrying, I already covered that when I spoke of “impediments”. However, if these reasons are “fixable”, are they doing anything to fix them? For example, if one is unemployed and cannot support a wife/family, is he trying to seek employment or getting training? Or if one has social skills that are lacking, what are they doing to remedy that? Or are they using “well, my vocation is to the single life” as an excuse for laziness to fix their problems?

 

[Norseman82]

If someone feels called to marriage, God will provide a spouse for them in due time.

I have been hearing that “a spouse will be provided in due time” line for years and years. In my experience, it’s just a line that people use to “blow off” that pesky single person and to tell them “go away, I don’t want to hear about your problems”.

If the spouse doesn’t appear, maybe that person did not have a vocation to marriage. Or, maybe the would-be spouse has some personal work to do…how do we know all these people searching for spouses are going about it the right way? What are their social skills like? Why should single people get the blame for all these unmarried Catholics?

Or maybe they do have the call (meaning they are absent the call to celibate vocations and have discerned so) but they are being lied to about this so-called “single vocation”.

If they have personal work to do, are they doing it, or using “single vocation” as an excuse for laziness? What is their progress?

Additionally, once in confession when I mentioned my frustration over not being able to find a wife and establish a family, the priest asked me, “Are you making yourself available?” If people don’t make themselves available (or work on it), God can’t work through them, since He does give us free will and many (if not most) of these problems are due to a misuse of free will. But then again, it is easier to invent a “single vocation” rather than confront these problems.

If there are that many Catholic people looking for spouses, it sounds to me like they’d get some benefit out of organizing a national convention and MARRYING EACH OTHER.

There is - it’s called the National Catholic Singles Conference. I did meet someone there a few years ago; unfortunately, without warning, she decided to go into a “formation/evangelization” program in a religious community and I haven’t heard from her since. One of her parting words were that was the risk of dating a religious girl, and that if I wanted to get married I probably should look for a “bad girl” (those were her exact words). That still sends chills down my spine, and is one of the reasons I mentioned about people having to look outside the Church (and risk their souls in the process).

 

[Ryan_Love]

After reading some of the replies, I came to one conclusion. If you want to get married keep looking and ask God for the right person. Me personally, I have to get my own act together before I can even consider it. Hopefully in three years my Life will be to the point where If i do decided to get married, I can be of use instead of being a burden. Marriage is a blessing if you find some one you truly love. Sometimes I forget that when I think of bad times,but I believe if you find a person that truly loves you and you love them in return, then marriage is most beneficial. God did make men to be married to a woman like one of the posters said. When I really think about it, it is because we have been conditioned by bad experience in life that makes us reject the idea of marriage. One must be happy being single before he can bring joy into a marriage. My first response, I sound so angry about it. I had to make a rebuttal to it. I am neutral on the issue of marriage. As soon as I become completely self reliant ,then I will consider it. till then, I will remain in the friend zone. hopefully it will happen sooner than 3years LOL.

 

[cecilia97]

I do not know about St. Catherine of Siena, nor does it concern me. Demographics may have been different back then. She may have been a rare exception. All I know is that today, in the rotten world that we live in, good Catholic spouses are harder to come by, and encouraging more people to take themselves off the market makes matters worse, not better.

And if you feel you may be called to religious life, I already covered that when I mentioned the exception for discerners.

But when I hear women saying that marriage would interfere with their sports leagues, well, there is something seriously disordered there.

(continued).

St. Catherine was single, a third-order Dominican, was instrumental in bringing the popes back to Rome after the diaspora in France, and is a Doctor of the Church.

It does not matter what demographics were like back then. Either the Church wants all people to discern vocation to marriage or religious/clerical life, or not. Surely the theology on this has not changed in the last 2000 years. So, if people should not remain single, why did the Church canonize St. Catherine and name her a Doctor of the Faith?

 

[cecilia97]

There is - it’s called the National Catholic Singles Conference. I did meet someone there a few years ago; unfortunately, without warning, she decided to go into a “formation/evangelization” program in a religious community and I haven’t heard from her since. One of her parting words were that was the risk of dating a religious girl, and that if I wanted to get married I probably should look for a “bad girl” (those were her exact words). That still sends chills down my spine, and is one of the reasons I mentioned about people having to look outside the Church (and risk their souls in the process).

That, while very sad, certainly can’t be blamed on the single Catholics who don’t attend the conference. When people blame others for their problems, they give up the power to make positive changes…it’s all in the hands of the scapegoat for them.

 

[Katie966]

If there are legitimate reasons preventing one from marrying, I already covered that when I spoke of “impediments”. However, if these reasons are “fixable”, are they doing anything to fix them? For example, if one is unemployed and cannot support a wife/family, is he trying to seek employment or getting training? Or if one has social skills that are lacking, what are they doing to remedy that? Or are they using “well, my vocation is to the single life” as an excuse for laziness to fix their problems?

I guess what I am not understanding here is the attitude that other people are put here as part of a “pool” for you to choose from. Someone else has to choose you too, and if any one person is not in a place in her life where she wants to be married, then what difference does it make?

I get your frustration at the lack of good Catholics around. I understand. But rather than blaming that on people who have no immediate interest in marriage (especially if they have determined they are not called to marriage as a vocation), why not blame it on the million other reasons for the lack of faithful young adult Catholics?

And, would you really want all these “lazy” single people to be added to your pool anyway? Don’t you want to marry someone who actually wants to be married?

 

[joanofarc2008]

I don’t know. I think before I even consider this question I need to see if I am free to do so. But yet I seem to get this question a lot now that I am divorced. Heck, I just put in the tribunal paperwork a month ago - the divorce took almost eight.

Then I think dating will be part of a discernment to marriage.

Do I want the nice marriage with a white picket fence and kids - yes - but am I sure that this is possible after everything that I have been through. No. This is why healing time and counseling is important. It is one of the practical reasons why we should not date until we are free to do so.

@Norseman- try meeting some women that are third/lay/secular order - you know they won’t be going off to a nunnery on you.

 

[TiggerS]

I think at the heart of things is the motivation for remaining single. Those who experience the single celibate state as their call and vocation from God do dedicate their lives in some way to The Gospel - i.e. remain single for the sake of The Kingdom as a call and vocation. And only, most wisely indeed, would ever be undertaken after seeking spiritual direction and also on an ongoing basis.
To choose to remain single for some purely human and negative reason is not a call and vocation to the single celibate state which is entrirley positive in motivation and best and wisely affirmed by spiritual direction.

If reasons for remaining in the single celibate state are negative reasons not orientated towards The Gospel, then one has issues one needs to work through in the task of discerning one’s actual call and vocation from God. There is the transitional single celibate state where for whatever reason, one’s call and vocation from God is not yet clear including if one feels called to marriage and no suitable partner is on the scene.

A good spiritual director is pure gold and a treasure no matter one’s state in life, vocation, problem etc. etc.

Via Consecrata
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccscrlife/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_25031996_vita-consecrata_en.html
Together let us thank God for the Religious Orders and Institutes devoted to contemplation or the works of the apostolate, for Societies of Apostolic Life, for Secular Institutes and for other groups of consecrated persons,** as well as for all those individuals who, in their inmost hearts, dedicate themselves to God by a special consecration.**The Synod was a tangible sign of the universal extension of the consecrated life, present in the local Churches throughout the world.

TS