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Vico
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1ke
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No that isn’t what I’m saying.
The age by the church is a prudential judgment in canon law.
I got married at 28 and some people seemed to think I was too young.
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tuffsmurf
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I got married at 22 and some people seem to think that is too young as well, but that mindset is just ridiculous according to me.
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TK421
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"Lea101:
It’s not necessarily about who is more or less mature because biologically we have the same rate of development today as we did a couple hundred years ago, it’s just that the demands of society were radically different in the past as they are now. and people adapt to their environment.
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Theban
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Yes, I think it’s very off-putting how many people here seem to defend pedophilia on the basis that “different times had different standards”.
I was going to write something longer to argue against this, but this whole thread is quite nauseating so I think I’ll just wrap up.
Yes, it is true that the vast, vast majority of marriages weren’t between children, and it is true that most children that did marry didn’t marry adults, but other children. It might even be true that most adults who married children were doing so for legitimate reasons and weren’t pedophiles. That doesn’t change the fact that the way canon law was formulated for a long time allowed abuses against children to occur without strictly violating canon law.
I think we are well within our rights to criticize the Church for this. We’re not in a cult, we don’t have to defend everything the Church does or has done throughout history.
Sure, morally speaking there might theoretically be a twelve year old who is both mentally and physically mature enough to marry. Age isn’t magic, and we all know people develop at different speeds. That doesn’t mean the Church acted prudently by allowing marriage from 12 and up as a general rule.
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tuffsmurf
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I too find this moral relativism to be disturbing. If we can’t condemn child marriages in the past, then how can we condemn modern child marriages? Or female genital mutilation?
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TK421
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Female genital mutilation has always been wrong.
Using prudence, we can also make a sound argument for why a young marriage with an old person is wrong. We could also use this argument in the past, it’s just that it’s not something we can say in a blanket fashion (that it is an intrinsic evil) because chronological age and biological age varies greatly and societal expectations can vary greatly. There is a difference between something that is evil and something that is intrinsically evil.
Abortion is always evil because there are no circumstances where it would be a moral act.
Two women or two men having sexual relations is always evil because there are no circumstances where it would be a moral act.
Age and social expectations vary greatly from time period to time period and from individual to individual. You can’t come up with an exact cut-off point. In the USA you’re a minor until you’re 18, but that is a man-made rule. It will likely be a higher number than that 100 years from now.
Using prudence, we can also make a sound argument for why a young marriage with an old person is wrong. We could also use this argument in the past, it’s just that it’s not something we can say in a blanket fashion (that it is an intrinsic evil) because chronological age and biological age varies greatly and societal expectations can vary greatly. There is a difference between something that is evil and something that is intrinsically evil.
Abortion is always evil because there are no circumstances where it would be a moral act.
Two women or two men having sexual relations is always evil because there are no circumstances where it would be a moral act.
Age and social expectations vary greatly from time period to time period and from individual to individual. You can’t come up with an exact cut-off point. In the USA you’re a minor until you’re 18, but that is a man-made rule. It will likely be a higher number than that 100 years from now.
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stpurl
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You know, back when my Daddy was born at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, the average age a male child born that year could expect to live to was. . .47. In the US.
You know, back in the days when knights were bold, in the 14th and 15th centuries in Europe, those mighty knights BARELY topped 5 feet tall. Their ladies were even shorter.
The point is that in ‘the old days’ people lived shorter lives. The woman in the 6th-15th centuries per studies chronicalling life in Medieval Society had menarche averaging from age 12 to 15, the earlier range in the Mediterranean countries, and also among non-white women, and married earlier especially in the ‘upper ranks’ and had an earlier menopause in many cases especially if the diet was meager and/or the woman’s activity level was high. We see this phenomenon of an early cessation of menses today in girls who exercise to excess and also those with anorexia and bulimia, who often experience clinical amenorrhea.
It may seem that a menarche in the age range of 12-15 or so is not ‘earlier’ than today’s standards, but rather fairly similar. However again, in the early Industrial Age and especially in the West the age of menarche often went slightly up, with some women not achieving menarche until the age of 16 or 17. This age range was one with which my grandmothers, all born in the Years around 1870, were familiar with. My mother and her sisters, born in the 1920s, experienced menarche at age 16, and that was not considered abnormal in the least for the 1940s.
Further, while menarche in later centuries until the late 19th century actually among large groups of women increased, often to the ages of 15-17, this later menarche in many areas of the world over the 20th century appears, according to many studies, to have somewhat reversed, to the point that today it is claimed that the average Western girl’s menarche average is about the age of 12-1/2, with the range being 11 to 14-15.
Childbearing was taken seriously.
And as others have noted, children were not ‘children’ the way we know them. Once a child was weaned, no longer breast feeding, around age 2 or 3, he or she was put into ‘leading strings’, and started to have chores. Small children could feed the chickens. Girls by the age of 4 were put to sewing samplers. These small children could sow seeds, weed, walk behind the plow, gather eggs, pick fruits and veggies, gather wood for fuel, bring water from a well or stream, and start learning how to dip candles, bake, make ‘receipts’, etc.
A girl of 12 then had had about EIGHT YEARS of domestic training.
And while she may have married at 12, often in a move whereby either she brought some goods to her husband, or he brought some goods to her family, quite often after marriage she would remain in her home, or go to his parents, and be taught precisely what she would need to know in THAT locale, while he was off either getting training in his future job, making a ‘year of service’ to the overlord, serving in a battle or skirmish (if he died his wife, even if the marriage was not consummated, would have some kind of compensation for his death), etc.
You know, back in the days when knights were bold, in the 14th and 15th centuries in Europe, those mighty knights BARELY topped 5 feet tall. Their ladies were even shorter.
The point is that in ‘the old days’ people lived shorter lives. The woman in the 6th-15th centuries per studies chronicalling life in Medieval Society had menarche averaging from age 12 to 15, the earlier range in the Mediterranean countries, and also among non-white women, and married earlier especially in the ‘upper ranks’ and had an earlier menopause in many cases especially if the diet was meager and/or the woman’s activity level was high. We see this phenomenon of an early cessation of menses today in girls who exercise to excess and also those with anorexia and bulimia, who often experience clinical amenorrhea.
It may seem that a menarche in the age range of 12-15 or so is not ‘earlier’ than today’s standards, but rather fairly similar. However again, in the early Industrial Age and especially in the West the age of menarche often went slightly up, with some women not achieving menarche until the age of 16 or 17. This age range was one with which my grandmothers, all born in the Years around 1870, were familiar with. My mother and her sisters, born in the 1920s, experienced menarche at age 16, and that was not considered abnormal in the least for the 1940s.
Further, while menarche in later centuries until the late 19th century actually among large groups of women increased, often to the ages of 15-17, this later menarche in many areas of the world over the 20th century appears, according to many studies, to have somewhat reversed, to the point that today it is claimed that the average Western girl’s menarche average is about the age of 12-1/2, with the range being 11 to 14-15.
Childbearing was taken seriously.
And as others have noted, children were not ‘children’ the way we know them. Once a child was weaned, no longer breast feeding, around age 2 or 3, he or she was put into ‘leading strings’, and started to have chores. Small children could feed the chickens. Girls by the age of 4 were put to sewing samplers. These small children could sow seeds, weed, walk behind the plow, gather eggs, pick fruits and veggies, gather wood for fuel, bring water from a well or stream, and start learning how to dip candles, bake, make ‘receipts’, etc.
A girl of 12 then had had about EIGHT YEARS of domestic training.
And while she may have married at 12, often in a move whereby either she brought some goods to her husband, or he brought some goods to her family, quite often after marriage she would remain in her home, or go to his parents, and be taught precisely what she would need to know in THAT locale, while he was off either getting training in his future job, making a ‘year of service’ to the overlord, serving in a battle or skirmish (if he died his wife, even if the marriage was not consummated, would have some kind of compensation for his death), etc.
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Sarcelle
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The brings to mind marriage validity.
If a twelve year old is considered mature enough to enter the marriage contract are they also considered mature enough for other legal contracts? They should be. They should be old enough to drink, drive cars, get jobs.
If they aren’t considered mature for the aforementioned why are they considered mature enough for informed consent to marriage?
After all marriage is a big deal right?
If a twelve year old is considered mature enough to enter the marriage contract are they also considered mature enough for other legal contracts? They should be. They should be old enough to drink, drive cars, get jobs.
If they aren’t considered mature for the aforementioned why are they considered mature enough for informed consent to marriage?
After all marriage is a big deal right?
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tuffsmurf
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Most of this is very inaccurate.
Puberty didn’t begin earlier, if anything it began later. Some research has suggested that average age of menarche was as late as 16 years compared to 13 today. although moden science has figured that is proabably an exaggreation and that menarche age was likely at around 14, which is still a bit later than today. The age of menopause has not changed, in fact most women gave birth for the last time between 40 and 45.
Average male height during the middle ages was 5’5.
Puberty didn’t begin earlier, if anything it began later. Some research has suggested that average age of menarche was as late as 16 years compared to 13 today. although moden science has figured that is proabably an exaggreation and that menarche age was likely at around 14, which is still a bit later than today. The age of menopause has not changed, in fact most women gave birth for the last time between 40 and 45.
Average male height during the middle ages was 5’5.
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Theban
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I agree with you, but it seems to me that many people here are afraid to criticize what is a clearly bad thing in the Church’s past. Yes, age is theoretically just a number. That doesn’t mean the Church didn’t fail terribly in her responsibility to protect the innocence of children by making clear boundaries regarding their marriages.
I couldn’t possibly disagree with you more, I think on the contrary that one of the worst problems is that people assume that “people back then” were different from us.
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stpurl
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Actually, it’s not inaccurate at all.
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tuffsmurf
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What you said about puberty and menopause is completly wrong.
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stpurl
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People back then WERE different from us in some ways. To ignore that is to miss the entire point of history itself.
Did you note I said, “Just like us —thought like us, KNEW like us?:”.
You really missed the entire point of what I said.
I am not saying that the knight of the 15th century was a totally different ‘kind of human’, but he had a different worldview, a different life style, a different base set of knowledge, a different ‘thrust’, a different conception of what life meant’. The average Christian European of the 15th century would be considered wildly intolerant compared to today, and grossly ignorant, and far too focused on ‘the hereafter’. Those things alone made the person’s life and worldview radically different.
Did you note I said, “Just like us —thought like us, KNEW like us?:”.
You really missed the entire point of what I said.
I am not saying that the knight of the 15th century was a totally different ‘kind of human’, but he had a different worldview, a different life style, a different base set of knowledge, a different ‘thrust’, a different conception of what life meant’. The average Christian European of the 15th century would be considered wildly intolerant compared to today, and grossly ignorant, and far too focused on ‘the hereafter’. Those things alone made the person’s life and worldview radically different.
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stpurl
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No it is not.
In some cases especially in Spain and Italy, girls reached puberty at a younger age. Spain and Italy are part of Europe.
Menopause and perimenopause were often affected by things like diet and activity.
In some cases especially in Spain and Italy, girls reached puberty at a younger age. Spain and Italy are part of Europe.
Menopause and perimenopause were often affected by things like diet and activity.
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tuffsmurf
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Do you have any sources to prove these claims? Because I can provide several sources that prove the opposite.
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TK421
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“Clear boundaries” is exactly the problem. It’s not so much an ecclesial problem as it is a secular problem. When is there a clear boundary? Let’s look at some scenarios:
A 39-year-old marrying a 40-year-old. Good or bad?
A 30-year-old marrying a 40-year-old. Good or bad?
A 25-year-old marrying a 45-year-old. Good or bad?
A 20-year-old marrying a 40-year-old. Good or bad?
An 18-year-old marrying a 35-year-old. Good or bad?
A 17-year-old marrying a 35-year-old. Good or bad?
A 16-year-old marrying a 35-year-old. Good or bad?
A 15-year-old marrying a 35-year-old. Good or bad?
A 15-year-old marrying a 30-year-old. Good or bad?
A 15-year-old marrying a 25-year-old. Good or bad?
A 14-year-old marrying a 25-year-old. Good or bad?
Sure, a 65-year-old marrying a 12-year-old does seem really creepy and wrong. I admit it. So then what is the appropriate cut-off? What about a 60-year-old marrying a 14-year-old? What about a 55-year-old marrying a 16-year-old? What about a 50-year-old marrying an 18-year-old? What about a 45-year-old marrying a 20-year-old? When does it cease being creepy? What objective test can we take to determine when something stops being creepy?
How do we precisely determine which is good and which is bad, when on top of that difficulty we have the other difficulty that the experiences, preparedness, and development of one individual can be very different from another individual even if they are exactly the same chronological age? That is why this is something that falls under the purview of prudential judgment.
The only thing we can objectively lean on is biology: somebody who hasn’t hit puberty has not developed their sexual organs. We can also argue about their mental/emotional capabilities, but this takes us back on the path of prudential judgment. What if a 40-year-old has many very immature and destructive habits? Are they mentally and emotionally equipped for marriage? Nope. Does that mean it should be illegal for them to marry? More prudential judgment.
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tuffsmurf
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Decline in age at menarche among Spanish women born from 1925 to 1962 - BMC Public Health
Background While the timing of reproductive events varies across populations, a downward trend in age at menarche has nevertheless been reported in most of the developed world over the past century. Given the impact of change in age at menarche on health conditions, this study sought to examine...
bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com
This is an article about the age of menarche in Spain specifically.
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