Celibate married vocation

  • Thread starter Thread starter dan
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
D

dan

Guest
Two quick questions:
  1. Would it be licit for a Catholic couple to get married with no PLANS to have children (either due to age or health reasons), assuming that they don’t employ any artificial means of birth control?
  2. Also, I remember reading somewhere about saints in history who have been married couples who decided to begin to be and/or stay celibate in their marriage to devote themselves completely to God’s work. Does anyone know of any examples of this off hand?
Thanks and God Bless!
  • Dan
 
dan said:
I remember reading somewhere about saints in history who have been married couples who decided to begin to be and/or stay celibate in their marriage to devote themselves completely to God’s work. Does anyone know of any examples of this off hand?

Thanks and God Bless!
  • Dan
Click to expand...
St. Therese’s parents lived a celibate marriage for about a year, until their confessor advised them to assume a normal married life. They are not saints at this time, but have both been declared Venerable, and are on the road to sainthood…
 
No. You must be open to the gift of having children. Children are the natural expression of the fecundity of love within the sacrament of marriage.🙂
 
NMJenny said:
St. Therese’s parents lived a celibate marriage for about a year, until their confessor advised them to assume a normal married life. They are not saints at this time, but have both been declared Venerable, and are on the road to sainthood…
Click to expand...
Code: 
  Therese's parents could not have lived a celibate marriage. Sometimes celibacy is confused with chastity. The following description of celibacy suggests that celibacy is a more perfect observance of chastity. Either one is chaste or not, whether married or single. How is single chastity more perfect than married chastity?
  How many Catholic couples need a confessor to tell them to assume a normal married life? Which is more venerable, those who pursue a normal married life, or those who need to be told to pursue a normal married life?
From newadvent.com:
“Celibacy is the renunciation of marriage implicitly or explicitly made, for the more perfect observance of chastity, by all those who receive the Sacrament of Orders in any of the higher grades.”

Also from newadvent.com:
“Chastity is the virtue which excludes or moderates the indulgence of the sexual appetite. It is a form of the virtue of temperance, which controls according to right reason the desire for and use of those things which afford the greatest sensual pleasures. The sources of such delectation are food and drink, by means of which the life of the individual is conserved, and the union of the sexes, by means of which the permanence of the species is secured.”

Michael
 
domineutvideam said:
No. You must be open to the gift of having children. Children are the natural expression of the fecundity of love within the sacrament of marriage.🙂
Click to expand...
You must be open to the gift of having children, that is not the same as saying you have to plan on having children. If two people in their 70s decide to get married, the inability of the woman to become pregnant is not considered an impediment to the marriage and I would be very surprised if the Church was expecting them to plan on children :).

The issue gets thornier not when one party is infertile (for whatever reason) but when it is considered too dangerous for the woman to carry the pregnancy. If a doctor has advised a woman that she should not get pregnant, but she is still technically capable of pregnancy, then it is probably better for the woman to remain in a single state while she is still fertile.

The only real impediment to a marriage would be if one party was incapable of consumating the marriage.

There are cases where certain couples have decided to abstain from relations within marriage (the most famous examples being Mary and Joseph) but I don’t know the Church’s particular requirements for such a marriage.

–
Bill
 
I knew of a couple like that when I was growing up. It is possible and it is permissible, it is allowed but it is not the norm.

This was a very loving and stable couple, they received permission but only after 2 years of counseling and many meetings with their Bishop.

I would say for those who believe they are called, try it.
It is too personal for us (outsiders) to comment on.
You have as your example St. Joseph and Mary.
 
dan said:
Two quick questions:
  1. Would it be licit for a Catholic couple to get married with no PLANS to have children (either due to age or health reasons), assuming that they don’t employ any artificial means of birth control?
  2. Also, I remember reading somewhere about saints in history who have been married couples who decided to begin to be and/or stay celibate in their marriage to devote themselves completely to God’s work. Does anyone know of any examples of this off hand?
Thanks and God Bless!
  • Dan
Click to expand...
there are no saints who married and remained celibate, that is an oxymoron, as celibate means unmarried. There are saints who married and either after raising children, or from the beginning, like Our Lady and St. Joseph who remained continent, that is, did not engage in marital relations. That can be done only with mutual consent, and if it involves vows only under spiritual direction.

Can a Catholic couple marry with the the mental reservation on the part of either or both that they will deliberately avoid having children, with that rejection of God’s gifts the primary motive for their actions, even if it means refraining from marital relations? No that is rejecting one of the principle gifts of marriage and would render the union valid from its inception. Our lady and ST. Joseph conducted their married life under the direction of the Holy Spirit Himself and their voluntary chastity was in obedience and to serve a higher purpose.

the story related concerning the parents of Therese illustrates not an abnormal Christian marriage, but that this couple realized that as a married couple their vocation was to pursue holiness together, and further illustrates they placed themselves under regular spiritual directiorn from their confessors. Extreme vows, penances or devotions simply cannot be undertaken voluntarily without such direction.
 
dan said:
Also, I remember reading somewhere about saints in history who have been married couples who decided to begin to be and/or stay celibate in their marriage to devote themselves completely to God’s work. Does anyone know of any examples of this off hand?
Click to expand...
Bl. Bartolo Longo and Countess Mariana di Fusco had such a marriage, which is sometimes called a Josephite marriage.
 
This post was entirely speculative without any kind of supporting documentation. I removed this post. Please do not post purported observations which you cannot prove one way or the other.
 
The two of you should find religious orders which are in line with the spirituality and apostolic works that interest you and join the order. Do not make a mockery of Matrimony by rejecting the gift of children.

Matthew
 
drafdog said:
The two of you should find religious orders which are in line with the spirituality and apostolic works that interest you and join the order. Do not make a mockery of Matrimony by rejecting the gift of children.

Matthew
Click to expand...
Two of whom? I read this question as being one of mere curiosity, not one that actually applied to the situation of the original poster.

Also, the OP never referred to rejecting the gift of children, rather not planning on children. As I pointed out before, the inability to have children is not in and of itself an impediment to marriage. If a couple enters the marriage knowing that their partner is unable to father/carry a child, it is not unreasonable for them not to plan on having children.

That being said, more than one figure in the past thought they were sterile only to be surprised by God’s grace :). Also of course children can enter a family through many means besides natural child birth. There are lots of children in this world that need love and often a shortage of adults willing to give it to them.

–
Bill
 
Not everyone who gets married plans or wants children for various reasons.
 
Another interesting article: jimmyakin.org/2005/07/marys_marriage.html

"Could a couple get married today, always abstain from the marrital act, and still have a valid marriage?

Yes. This is known in Church history. It is referred to as “Josephite marriage” after St. Joseph. With a billion Catholics in the world, there are likely a number of such couples out there right now."
 
Although this happened occasionally in the past, I suspect permission for such a “marriage” would not be given today. A commitment to celibacy is a commitment not simply to refraining from intercourse, but a commitment to celibate LOVE. Besides not being sexual this love is not exclusive but inclusive — and this certainly runs counter to the notion of married love.Also, as implied above, marriage is the sacramentalization of sexual love. (I do not mean here a love which immediately includes the act of having sex, but rather a loving and giving of selves to one another so completely that this giving is expressed most fully in and symbolized by the act of intercourse). All married love tends towards this union, or flows from it; even in old age, the love which obtains between two married persons speaks of union of both body and soul and remains sexual love. All married love is, in this sense, sexual love, and a VERY HIGH value indeed. Why would one want to commit to marriage and the reality of married or sexual love, and then make a commitment to repudiate it? Unless illness intervened, for instance, one would be repudiating the very witness and purpose of the marriage itself. To enter into marriage with this intention seems to me to be commiting fraud, at the very least.)Consecrated celibates embrace a form of love which is proleptic of that found in the Kingdom, and the witness value of such a love is high, of course. Evenso, while I may give my life for others, I never give my body TO another; to this extent celibate love is less complete than sexual love. But married people embrace sexual love, a love which celebrates the completion of manliness with womanliness (and vice versa), and which, exclusive as it is, leads the couple to God, creates new human beings, and opens up onto the world as a whole. Our world so trivializes sex that we need this witness to sexual love; we need married people who will allow the act of sex be and say all that it is really meant to be and say. In some ways, the need for this today is far greater than the need for consecrated celbate witness.Note that I have only mentioned children once and not as the central problem with a commitment to celibacy. The main problem with such a commitment in marriage is not simply that the persons involved are not open to having children (though that is also true). The real problem, again, is that this couple is not open to having married or sexual love be and say all it can and is MEANT by God to be and say. Having children are a piece of this, of course, but not the deepest issue.
 
SRLAUREL said:
Although this happened occasionally in the past, I suspect permission for such a “marriage” would not be given today. A commitment to celibacy is a commitment not simply to refraining from intercourse, but a commitment to celibate LOVE. Besides not being sexual this love is not exclusive but inclusive — and this certainly runs counter to the notion of married love.Also, as implied above, marriage is the sacramentalization of sexual love. (I do not mean here a love which immediately includes the act of having sex, but rather a loving and giving of selves to one another so completely that this giving is expressed most fully in and symbolized by the act of intercourse). All married love tends towards this union, or flows from it; even in old age, the love which obtains between two married persons speaks of union of both body and soul and remains sexual love. All married love is, in this sense, sexual love, and a VERY HIGH value indeed.
Click to expand...
Did Mary and Joseph have married love, or celibate love?

Michael
 
Mt_28_19_20 said:
Did Mary and Joseph have married love, or celibate love?

Michael
Click to expand...
Apparently, celibate love. Married love is sexual love, a love which leads to and flows from physical union. (Sexuality is a deep and pervasive reality so sexual intercourse and physical union symbolizes, that is, it really mediates, the union of the WHOLE persons.) As a celibate it is true that I am called to celibate love. I may give myself in many many ways to others, and may give my life for others, but so long as I am celibate I never unite with others in the way sexual intercourse symbolizes (makes real). Mary and Joseph doubtless loved one another deeply and created a Holy Family from and through that love, but they did NOT share nor model married love as we understand that term.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top