Gee, more name-calling.
Norseman, you may be surprised to know you weren’t the only person in the world who followed rules and didn’t get what you wanted.
You brought up your past and many have tried to understand why you are so rigid in denigrating anyone who may have ever sinned sexually as being unfit for marriage. As if that was the only sin. My comments were only to question if your losing your family is at the root of such an attitude.
You are wrong, wrong wrong about the regard in which I hold people who play by the rules. I’m a rule follower. But I also know that God alone judges and we are called to be the voice of compassion to others. What do you make of those who play by the rules and look down on those who haven’t had the grace or the gift of faith or the strength to do so and don’t see that they only by the grace of God are one step from falling into the sins they themselves abhor?
I never told you to find your own church. I said you have set one up figuratively where there are greater and lesser people. Those of us not worthy of marrying can all sit in the back, right? No. Christ died for everyone. If everyone played by the rules, He wouldn’t have had to die. He loves those who sin. Even as they drive the nails into his hands and feet. I’m not going to be less than Christ in that respect. We’re called to imitate him.
Seeking God first does not mean He promised He would give you a spouse. We don’t need a spouse to live. Many do quite nicely without one. It’s not like food or oxygen. Maybe God has other plans for people. I’ve had to be alone for years. I may spend the rest of my life alone. I am open to God’s plan for me and wont’ dare tell Him what I deserve.
I’m not playing mind games. But let’s examine your particular viewpoint from another perspective. You are very vocal about your contempt for anyone who had sexual relations before marriage. (Disclosure. I was one of those virgins in the white dress who played by the rules and never used ABC and was faithful and prayed for her convert husband and still got the shaft. Okay?)
How are YOU looking out for the female readers on this board who may through little, great or no fault of their own, bad example, weakness, immaturity or whatever reason have fallen in their past and come to know God and turned their lives around? Having realized the difference a good man can make in their lives, they come here to find out how Catholic men think. Instead they read your constant comments about what a lowering of standards it would be for a good Catholic man to marry one of them. That is a “particularly spiritually sensitive area of life that can affect one’s salvation.” How do you feel about yourself that you may be making some of these women think “what’s the use. I try to play by the rules but no good man will ever want me now. Norseman said so. I may as well never have tried to be good.”
Your comments make me angry because they do the opposite of what you don’t like in your life. You make those people feel like they will never be rewarded for turning their lives around. Once down always down. Right?
By the way… a priest from a divorced family doesn’t compromise his ability to fight divorce any more than him coming from an alcoholic family compromises his ability to say getting drunk is a sin. In fact, he would know the pain more and be less likely to condone it as anything but a terrible last resort. And I hate to tell you, I did not grow up in a situation where divorce was anything but a scandal. However my convert xh who used to pretend to be a nice Catholic man took a different attitude. The laws of this country are in his favor.
There isn’t a darn thing you can do about it except get a lawyer when someone serves you papers and carts their stuff out the door.
Have you ever thought, when you’re accusing me of dishing out bad advice and garbage, that you may be making some people lose heart and give up? Because they read how you constantly get on here and call women names, insult them and rag on their low morals. Maybe some of them quietly back out of the forums and think that if that’s how Catholic men think nowadays, maybe they better quit now.
Many posters have tried to get you to see that women can pick up on hostility like a laser beam. It drives them away. Big time.
So does namecalling. We’ll add Donna Corleone to the pile now.
Thanks.
