Do Protestant churches handle dating and sex issues better than Catholic parishes?

[valient_Lucy]

JP2 actually writes quite profoundly about the vocation to the single life and celibacy in a number of the sermons (#73-86), and his message is far from “you’re better off dead”. In fact, JP2 teaches that a vocation to celibacy/continence is a sign for the sake of the Kingdom of God, and that it is superior to the vocation to marriage. He explains the teaching of St. Paul that the unmarried person is “anxious to please the Lord,” while the married person is concerned with practical matters and pleasing their spouse. Christ lived without sex; so did His Mother; so do priests (including JP2), religious, many saints…this makes unmarried people far from pathetic losers. I really can’t imagine how anyone could think that the Church values married couples and sex more than chaste and celibate single people or religious. That celibacy is a more elevated vocation than marriage has been clearly taught by the Church for all of its history.

Of course JP2 wrote profoundly about the vocation to celibacy/consecrated religous/single life. He was a celibate man himself. As I said above, the priests and religous are the ones who should be instructing teenagers and singles on how to live a chaste life.

As you may or may not know, I was ranting somewhat on another thread about how single women cannot help but hating her sexuality. Most of the married people who responded were kind, but completely baffled by my remarks, and their efforts to help were genuine, but not helpful. This past weekend, I went on a retreat, and the priest made a 2 minute comment to our retreat group that not only explained why I was feeling the way I was feeling, but explained to me how I should be living my life instead. As soon as I heard that remark, I thought, “I’d been getting help from the wrong people!” I also vowed that, if I marry and have children one day, I would make sure that my children learn about chastity and sexuality from good and holy priests and religous, not from myself or my future husband. We would be ill qualified for the job.

I’m not trying to come off snide here, but it just doesn’t seem to me that you’ve really been exposed to the TOB, which is a holistic explanation of Church teaching on human sexuality and how it shapes our lives and vocations. We need to be careful to remember, whether we are single or married, that all of the Church’s teachings about marriage, all of the beautiful mystery that marriage is, are intended to point us to the deeper Mystery that human marriage reflects: the spousal union of Christ with His Church. ALL of us are united as one Body, presented to Christ as His pure and holy Bride. Human marriage, even when “done well” only begins to point us to this great mystery–and the beauty of virginity for the sake of the Kingdom helps us to understand it even more.

I’ve bolded your last statement because this is exactly what I realized this past weekend. Just as virginity for the sake of the Kingdom helps us to understand the union of Christ and the Church more completely than marriage can, a consecrated preist and religous can help teenagers and singles of all ages develop a positive understanding of chastity and their sexuality far better than a married person.

I’m sure you’re not going to like what I’ve written. I’m sure most of the people who’ve posted on this thread won’t like what I’ve written. But, as I stated in an earlier post, this is a great advantage that Catholic parishes have that Protestant churches do not. A Protestant child has no hope of learning about chastity and sexuality from almost anyone else but a married person. It’s an incredible disadvantage.

 

[CountrySinger]

On the other hand, how would a celibate priest or nun really help a single person living in the world? It is two very different lives. It’s easy to not have sex when you are sheltered from the world. It one thing when you live in society, have a boyfriend, etc. It’s like taking gardening advice from someone who has never raised a garden. I don’t expect a celibate priest to know what it is like to be a single woman.

Priests and nuns are different from us. That’s what I found out when I was a postulant, and that was one reason I left. I didn’t fit in at all.

 

[valient_Lucy]

On the other side of the spectrum, there’s a huge push for hyper-intentional, kissed-dating-goodbye courtships, where a 45-year-old woman still has a solemn moral obligation to obtain permission from her father before going on a date (not an exaggeration; this idea is widespread among highly devout non-denominationals) and couples must never be alone together before marriage.

The conservative camp seems to be causing the most trouble in Protestant young adult/singles communities, because the massive risk of dating causes men to become paralyzed in a way that prevents them from initiating relationships. When relationships do fail, the breakup of the couple ends up tearing rifts in established communities, because the dating relationship was given far too much importance by the couple’s friends and acquaintanceship.

Yeah, I was exposed to this, albeit very mildly, as a teenager. Fortunately, my church never went gung ho in this direction, though I did use it as an excuse to not date someone. In retrospect, I can’t exactly say it was a mistake. My parents were about to divorce, and I’m not sure that that’s a great time to have a boyfriend. But on the whole, it was more of something I was aware of, then was actually taught.

I agree that the overemphasis on courtship can actually be quite damaging to both men and women.

 

[HouseArrest]

Even though I have not read them, I’m well aware that the Theology of the Body originated in the teachings of Venerable John Paul II. Thanks, for the link, I’ll read the originals. I actually don’t have a problem with the ideas of TOB, but I have a major problem with how, and specifically who is presenting it, as I’ll explain below.

Actually, Good News about Sex and Marriage is intended to be read by a wider audience than singles currently discerning or preparing for marriage. Only chapters five, six, and seven dealt specifically with marriage. There were also chapters on being single before marriage, on homosexuality, and on celibacy, and on the authority of the Church.

However, I think that some of the problems I discussed (the over-glorification of sex and marriage and the dismissal of the single life/priesthood/religous life seems to be common in the few other TOB discussions that I’ve been exposed to.

In the end, I think the problem with Christopher West’s teachings about chastity to single people stem from the fact that he is married himself. I don’t think that a married person has any buisness teaching a single person (even a single person who hopes to marry one day, as I do) how to live a chaste life. At best, it’s ineffective, at worst, it’s counter-productive. That’s why I stated in my previous post on this thread that the instruction of chastity to teenagers and young singles is best left to priests and religous. A married person cannot help single people, even teenagers, how to have a positive view of chastity and their sexuality, and how to live that in their lives, no matter how orthodox they are or how well grounded they are in the Faith. They can explain the teachings of the Church, but they cannot give advice, and they certainly cannot exemplify this teaching in their lives.

Married people have spent a lot of time being single… couldn’t they draw from that experience? And when they were going through it, they didn’t necessarily know they were going to end up married. I don’t know why that wouldn’t qualify them to teach chastity?

 

[valient_Lucy]

On the other hand, how would a celibate priest or nun really help a single person living in the world? It is two very different lives. It’s easy to not have sex when you are sheltered from the world. It one thing when you live in society, have a boyfriend, etc. It’s like taking gardening advice from someone who has never raised a garden. I don’t expect a celibate priest to know what it is like to be a single woman.

Priests and nuns are different from us. That’s what I found out when I was a postulant, and that was one reason I left. I didn’t fit in at all.

Parish priests aren’t cloistered. They may not have girlfriends, but they still live in society. And most of the nuns we meet aren’t likely to be cloistered.

I don’t mean to deny that parish priests and nuns are different from you and me. But even though you and I would both like to be married one day, we as singles have FAR more in common with priests and religous when it comes to chastity than we do with married couples.

In my own experience, married people have next to no understanding of what it’s like to be single in the modern world. I guess the sacrament of marriage has some sort of amnesiac affect on the recipients. Some of them aren’t even that sympathetic, and when I tried listen to what they said, my problems only got worse.

These thoughts aren’t really anything new. I’ve had these intuitions for over ten years, but I was never able to put them together until this week. I remember being a teenager, listening to a married youth pastor teaching us about chastity, and I thought “Something’s wrong with this picture.” I just didn’t know what it was until now.

If you’ve found married people to be sympathetic to your situation and their advice to be helpful, then more power to you. This simply hasn’t been my experience. I’d rather listen to a talk about chastity from someone who knows firsthand how difficult it really is.

I had one married person tell me he knew how difficult it was to be chaste, because he and his wife had to abstain from sex for four whole weeks! That’s no different than me going up to a person who is worried they might be parylized from the waist down and saying, “Cheer up. I had to be in a wheelchair for four weeks. I know how tough that is.”

Four weeks, with the assurance that once those four weeks were up, they could have sex again. How demanding. How difficult. How impressive! :bowdown2::coffeeread:

 

[CountrySinger]

Married people have spent a lot of time being single… couldn’t they draw from that experience? And when they were going through it, they didn’t necessarily know they were going to end up married. I don’t know why that wouldn’t qualify them to teach chastity?

Better qualified than a religious!

But it comes down that most sex advice for singles comes from the pages of Cosmo, Maxim, etc. Christopher West can go take a long walk off a short pier for his writings, and the Church ignores anyone who doesn’t have: a ring around their finger, a collar, or a habit.

“Don’t do it” doesn’t work for adults.

 

[CountrySinger]

Parish priests aren’t cloistered. They may not have girlfriends, but they still live in society. And most of the nuns we meet aren’t likely to be cloistered.

I don’t mean to deny that parish priests and nuns are different from you and me. But even though you and I would both like to be married one day, we as singles have FAR more in common with priests and religous when it comes to chastity than we do with married couples.

In my own experience, married people have next to no understanding of what it’s like to be single in the modern world. I guess the sacrament of marriage has some sort of amnesiac affect on the recipients. Some of them aren’t even that sympathetic, and when I tried listen to what they said, my problems only got worse.

These thoughts aren’t really anything new. I’ve had these intuitions for over ten years, but I was never able to put them together until this week. I remember being a teenager, listening to a married youth pastor teaching us about chastity, and I thought “Something’s wrong with this picture.” I just didn’t know what it was until now.

If you’ve found married people to be sympathetic to your situation and their advice to be helpful, then more power to you. This simply hasn’t been my experience. I’d rather listen to a talk about chastity from someone who knows firsthand how difficult it really is.

I had one married person tell me he knew how difficult it was to be chaste, because he and his wife had to abstain from sex for four whole weeks! That’s no different than me going up to a person who is worried they might be parylized from the waist down and saying, “Cheer up. I had to be in a wheelchair for four weeks. I know how tough that is.”

Four weeks, with the assurance that once those four weeks were up, they could have sex again. How demanding. How difficult. How impressive! :bowdown2::coffeeread:

Most of the priests I’ve met are pretty clueless about sexual things. In confession, they are like “well don’t think about it”. Well, if I could do that, then it wouldn’t be a problem right? I would rather take advice from someone I want to be like, you know? I don’t want to be a nun. :shudder: I was so stupid back then when I wanted to be one. Celibacy is a bad word in my book.

 

[valient_Lucy]

Married people have spent a lot of time being single… couldn’t they draw from that experience? And when they were going through it, they didn’t necessarily know they were going to end up married. I don’t know why that wouldn’t qualify them to teach chastity?

No. It doesn’t qualify them to teach chastity. They are simply incapable of drawing on their experiences and presenting them in a realistic, sympathetic, fashion. I’ve never met one who was able to do this. When they use themselves as examples, they present pipe dreams and make promises they simply cannot guarantee. When they use themselves as examples, they are promising that all singles will meet an amazing spouse, and they will never regret waiting until marriage to have sex. They can’t promise either of those things. Some lonely singles will never meet any spouse at all, let alone an amazing one, and some virgins will regret staying virgins until marriage. (My mom does, albeit for a really stupid reason.)

Even more damaging, by emphasizing waiting on some sort of future happiness, they are encouraging singles to live in the future, and not in the present moment.

 

[SnakeMauler]

Why would anyone want to have premarital sex? Chances are you’ll end up in a relationship where you’re like “We’re going to get married someday, so might as well start now.” and then boom they break up and the become addicted to pornography and masturbation and get married like 6 times.

However, since my growing interest in the Catholic faith, I’ve received loads of talks about theology of the body and whatnot. Part of the reason is, as a youth, you have to look for the information by participating in youth ministry or reading yourself. No Catholic should expect to sit in their rooms and have someone walk in and teach them about “dating and sex issues.”

-Snakemauler

 

[Sierrah]

This was posted in The Hook Up Culture thread, and people couldn’t respond without derailing the thread. So I’m starting a new thread.

It isn’t so much lack of materials but lack of support. I know of two Catholic singles groups that failed because the church made it difficult for them to exist (no support at all, wouldn’t even let the groups advertise in the church bullitens). Then there’s also the lack of programs out there to educate singles about anything other then a vacation to the priesthood. No wonder the church is loosing members right and left. I’m in a Christian singles group and the Protestants have lots of support and programs for their singles.

 

[CountrySinger]

Why would anyone want to have premarital sex?

-Snakemauler

Because it feels amazing! It is the closest thing to Heaven we have on Earth.

Well, you did ask. Lol.

 

[valient_Lucy]

Most of the priests I’ve met are pretty clueless about sexual things. In confession, they are like “well don’t think about it”. Well, if I could do that, then it wouldn’t be a problem right? I would rather take advice from someone I want to be like, you know? I don’t want to be a nun. :shudder: I was so stupid back then when I wanted to be one. Celibacy is a bad word in my book.

If taking advice from married people helps you, that’s cool. I tried it my whole life, and I just wanted to roll around in broken glass.

Since rolling around in broken glass is socially unacceptible, I’ve decided to try a new strategy.

If I get married, I’ll go to married people for advice. Until then, I have no use for them. They’ve just done me more harm than good.

 

[valient_Lucy]

No. It doesn’t qualify them to teach chastity. They are simply incapable of drawing on their experiences and presenting them in a realistic, sympathetic, fashion. I’ve never met one who was able to do this. When they use themselves as examples, they present pipe dreams and make promises they simply cannot guarantee. When they use themselves as examples, they are promising that all singles will meet an amazing spouse, and they will never regret waiting until marriage to have sex. They can’t promise either of those things. Some lonely singles will never meet any spouse at all, let alone an amazing one, and some virgins will regret staying virgins until marriage. (My mom does, albeit for a really stupid reason.)

Even more damaging, by emphasizing waiting on some sort of future happiness, they are encouraging singles to live in the future, and not in the present moment.

BTW, I forgot to mention the jealousy factor. A married person talking about being chaste as a single is like a person with 10 kids giving a speech about infertility to a room filled with infertile women. The audience can’t focus on the message, because their thoughts are clouded by the fact that the person before them has everything they’ve ever wanted, and can’t possibly relate to them.

Now, on the other hand, for most single adults, there’s no temptation whatsoever to envy the priest or nun. The singles realize that in many ways, the priest or nun has it worse than they do in the realm of chastity, because the priest or nun has given up the hope of marriage.

 

[CountrySinger]

BTW, I forgot to mention the jealousy factor. A married person talking about being chaste as a single is like a person with 10 kids giving a speech about infertility to a room filled with infertile women. The audience can’t focus on the message, because their thoughts are clouded by the fact that the person before them has everything they’ve ever wanted, and can’t possibly relate to them.

Now, on the other hand, for most single adults, there’s no temptation whatsoever to envy the priest or nun. The singles realize that in many ways, the priest or nun has it worse than they do in the realm of chastity, because the priest or nun has given up the hope of marriage.

Except that I want to slap the nun/priest silly and say “DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE GIVEN UP?!” No wonder I don’t trust them, lol.

 

[valient_Lucy]

Except that I want to slap the nun/priest silly and say “DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE GIVEN UP?!” No wonder I don’t trust them, lol.

Lol. True. Still, it seems better than listening to married people throw hissy fits because they have to go four weeks without sex.

 

[CountrySinger]

Lol. True. Still, it seems better than listening to married people throw hissy fits because they have to go four weeks without sex.

Sex is hard to give up once you’ve had it. It’s like eating really good food, then someone taking it away. It’s easy to say no to something when you don’t know about it.

 

[djeter]

Perhaps apropos of nothing: I always enjoyed the short story by Raymond Carver he gave the title What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Esquire magazine put it on a 75 must read books for men (and it would follow, women). This is a reading summary (not the story itself, but it might encourage you to find it)

The emotional landscape of “What We Talk About” involves recording the state of mind of the two couples in the story as they move through a mid-afternoon and early evening talking about all kinds of love — spiritual, carnal, platonic, possessive, brutal, obsessive, unrequited, and even parental, searching for what “real” love is.

The transience of contemporary relationships creates a need for the characters – and by extension for us as readers – to redefine what love is and what it means to love someone. The entire story revolves around a central passage, delivered as a monologue by Mel, that connects love with time as has occurred in contemporary culture.

Though the myth of “eternal love” persists, the reality of contemporary transitory relationships has shaken its foundations. I need to quote this central passage in its entirety because it capsulates the essence of Carver’s narrative. As Mel drinks more and more, the question implied by the story’s title becomes more and more urgent. Just what do we talk about when we talk about love between human beings today? Does the word mean what it has always meant, or is there something about late 20th century life that has radically altered its meaning?

I am limited by space here so full post you can read here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-love/

dj

 

[valient_Lucy]

However, since my growing interest in the Catholic faith, I’ve received loads of talks about theology of the body and whatnot. Part of the reason is, as a youth, you have to look for the information by participating in youth ministry or reading yourself. No Catholic should expect to sit in their rooms and have someone walk in and teach them about “dating and sex issues.”

-Snakemauler

What did you learn in youth ministry?

 

[valient_Lucy]

It isn’t so much lack of materials but lack of support. I know of two Catholic singles groups that failed because the church made it difficult for them to exist (no support at all, wouldn’t even let the groups advertise in the church bullitens). Then there’s also the lack of programs out there to educate singles about anything other then a vacation to the priesthood. No wonder the church is loosing members right and left. I’m in a Christian singles group and the Protestants have lots of support and programs for their singles.

I personally prefer Young Adult Ministries, or at least, ministries grouped by age, not by marital status. But yeah, those groups are notoriously undersupported by parishes and dioceses. I’m actually lucky to be a part of a great group.

 

[valient_Lucy]

If taking advice from married people helps you, that’s cool. I tried it my whole life, and I just wanted to roll around in broken glass.

Since rolling around in broken glass is socially unacceptible, I’ve decided to try a new strategy.

If I get married, I’ll go to married people for advice. Until then, I have no use for them. They’ve just done me more harm than good.

I apologize for the section in bold. That was uncharitable. As I posted on my other thread, I know the married people who tried to help, and who wrote the books I read, meant well. They wanted to help. But they were like the Apostles. They fished the whole night, and they caught nothing.