CVs don't have to be Virgins?

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You put “fair” in quotes…why? I’m going to stop myself now before it gets ugly. Stop with the anti “PC” nonsense.
 
In quotes because I know this is a topic of debate (whether they should allow non virgins or not). As a woman and as a Catholic, I obviously support women who have been raped as well as women who have made mistakes in the past to be CVs if they want to. Imo it’s ridiculous to exclude them and still talk about the power of confession.
 
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nunsuch said:
Please read some serious work on rape and sexual assault. Anyone who defines rape as “destroying” a woman’s virginity, or who sees it as “sexual activity” doesn’t understand what rape is. I realize this is not a place for debate, but you are simply not right. There is a lot you can read about what rape is and is not. I hope you will do so.
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Way to misconstrue what I said. I’m not talking about rape. I’m just saying that virginity is basically a physical thing in women. I never said I considered raped women “not virgins”.

I guess there’s “spiritual virginity” and “actual virginity” though.
 
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Maximilian75 said:
It could effect their life as a Dominican.

Dioceses want to know if a young man is a virgin in the application for seminary…
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Yeah, but it’s not a bar to priesthood if he’s not. a large number of candidates for the priesthood now are not virgins.
It has little bearing on how you will do as a priest.
 
Cloisters said:
The article is talking about the Vatican muddying the waters in regards to the criteria for a consecrated virgin. The criteria has always required that the woman had never engaged in consensual sexual relations. This document says that a woman practicing “Second Virginity” would be accepted.
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It makes perfect sense. People who lived very sinful lives became great Saints. I think of St Paul and others.

If it’s good enough for a Saint, it’s good enough for a consecrated person. We also have consecrated widows.

The theology and meaning of consecrating I New elf to God, is not to be publically chaste since birth, it’s to give our entire being and lives to God
 
AdamP88 said:
Please read some serious work on rape and sexual assault. Anyone who defines rape as “destroying” a woman’s virginity, or who sees it as “sexual activity” doesn’t understand what rape is. I realize this is not a place for debate, but you are simply not right. There is a lot you can read about what rape is and is not. I hope you will do so.
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This. Personally I don´t understand this whole virginity as vocation thing, too. Not having previous marriages makes sense for me in some cases, but chastity and a pure state of mind is not always intact
a) when the person is “technically” a virgin, and
b) is something you can restore after a bad or sinful past.
To the angry “rape is not sex” crowd: ask a women who has been raped in her past if she felt this was just a physical crime or forced sex, with all physical components of sex - loss of virginity (the physical virginity, not the pure state of mind) included. Rape as a crime is -for the rapist - not about sex, but about power, but on the victim´s side, it´s about sex, too. It´s both and therefore that hurtful.
One problem I see with those physically defined vocations is that those aspects can get mixed in a bad way.
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nunsuch said:
That is not loss of virginity. Being a victim of a violent act has nothing to do with virginity! Assault is an act of violence, not a sexual act–and certainly not one with the complicity of the victim!
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It actually is a loss of virginity. I mean, it may not be consensual but it is a loss of virginity.

Unless we are going to redefine virginity as chastity.
 
If “virginity” is no longer about never having had sex, or never having had consensual sex, then these categories make no sense.

I cannot see any difference between a woman who sneaks around in private having consensual sex with a man, then confesses and is absolved, and a woman who openly has sex with a man outside marriage, then confesses and is absolved. For that matter, I would think a widow who had sex with a man within a valid marriage is on the same level as well. Yet this “virgin” business differentiales between all these cases. It makes no sense to me.
 
I agree that virginity is not only about having an intact hymen. Think about this two extreme cases; in the news there was a pornostar claiming to be virgin (she did all you can think of but preserved the hymen intact) or a woman that is widow after very long sacramental marriage lived faithfully and now is living chastely after the death of the husband. Which one would you consider ‘virgin’?
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
I cannot see any difference between a woman who sneaks around in private having consensual sex with a man, then confesses and is absolved, and a woman who openly has sex with a man outside marriage, then confesses and is absolved. For that matter, I would think a widow who had sex with a man within a valid marriage is on the same level as well. Yet this “virgin” business differentiales between all these cases. It makes no sense to me.
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Yeah. This is exactly why I think the whole virgin vocation thing is problematic.

A better term would be “consecrated chastity/celibacy”.

I mean a virgin could have had a porn addicition while a widow might have fully lived chastity and never fallen in this area.

It’s not going to affect my life or faith really. But I just don’t really get this as a vocation.
 
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I believe the concern here is the Catholic Church’s definition of virginity. Until now, people have different understanding of virginity. There are still moral issues about virginity and chastity that remains open for discussion.

As for me, I understand the term virginity as a state of being innocent or not corrupted either by a thought or an act. It is synonymous to purity which has the root word “pure” or not contaminated/polluted.

Confession couldn’t bring back the innocence but through God’s ocean of Mercy, a person is forgiven and invited to live a life of holiness. Just a thought.
 
Consecrated virgins existed before religious sisters and nuns so this isn’t a new thing.

Virginity has often been something that gave a woman value. Rape, even though the woman is innocent, brought down her “value.” These concepts are literally man-made. Now imagine a woman being a virgin, not for man, but for God. When women are basically property and her virginity before marriage what gives her value, virginity for God, or even for herself, is outrageous. Even now people are balking at the idea.Years ago, I found myself sharing my interest in being a CV with a male friend (my friend’s husband) and he reacted with dismay that I would “waste” myself like that, even though it was my desire. If a some man can’t take a woman’s virginity what good is it, right?

There are some deeply ingrained twisted ideas about women’s sexuality, virginity, and purity that continue to exist in 2018. There are people who consider themselves pro-life in the case of rape because they see anything involving sex as an intimate act and they don’t want to look at the victim’s swelling belly because that’s her “shame,” they think/feel that they are privy to an intimate act. Just because Catholics don’t favor honor killings doesn’t mean we have gotten rid of a rather primitive, patriarchal, and possessive notion of women’s virginity.

Off topic, but relevant: I’ve said it before but I think chastity educators have failed if people dating and desiring marriage think virginity is owed to them or is better than chastity.
 
The Congregation hasn’t explained themselves on this. Paragraph 88 of the new CV document has the problematic language.

The CVs I know insist on actual perpetual chastity and virginity – as in not having even engaged in foreplay.
 
But it would also be wrong to equate, or put into the same category, women who “have made mistakes” with those who have been victims of rape or assault.
 
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