Most priests know far more about marriage than most married people do

[Xantippe]

Edit: I don’t think a priest has ever experienced a relationship like this. The missing each other when you’re apart, the anticipation of seeing the one you love, the joy of simply spending time together, the love you feel just knowing the other is right there beside you. Maybe a few priests have experienced this before their calling to the priesthood, but most of the priests I know, and I’ve known many, have never experienced a relationship like this. And, whether you like it or not, experience really is the best teacher.

Yes–experience is very important here.

Congratulations on your engagement!

 

[ConstantLearner]

Thank you, Xantippe. He’s a wonderful man, and I feel very lucky to be engaged to him, but I suppose all engaged women - and men - feel that way.

 

[TechieGuy]

It may seem unreasonable to people who have a low appreciation for the importance of marriage and for the trust we should have in priests to help us with our marriages.

Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I can’t think of any issue I’ve had in 18 years of marriage for which I’ve needed a priest’s advice.

 

[ConstantLearner]

Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I can’t think of any issue I’ve had in 18 years of marriage for which I’ve needed a priest’s advice.

I honestly don’t think most people go to confession because of marital problems.

 

[Xantippe]

Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I can’t think of any issue I’ve had in 18 years of marriage for which I’ve needed a priest’s advice.

I have, but for issues outside of our family. For example, we had a spectacular implosion of a large family in our parish, and my husband and I didn’t know how to approach the issue, as our Baptist brethren were going into full gossip-and-shunning mode (which is the Baptist way). Our pastor gave us excellent advice when we made an appointment with him:

–if a rumor is true, you’ll find out sooner or later
–if a divorce happens in such a large family, it’s not over nothing
–some of the information we were getting was obviously not information that should have been shared if true, so the purveyors of the information should not get a lot of trust
–shunning is not a Catholic tradition

As it turned out, the rumors were largely true (the dad eventually married the woman that rumor said he’d been caught in flagrante with by one of the kids), but we did not need to devote any brain space to thinking about the situation (we weren’t close to the family), so we were well-served by following our pastor’s advice.

Again, we have two pastors in our area who are exceptionally sensible and wise. (We also had a year in which two of the pastors at our old parish flamed out and committed gross financial mismanagement before leaving–but they’re gone now. They both had what seem to have been serious mental health problems and we had one after another after our old pastor–the wise one from my story–got reassigned.)

 

[Shakuhachi]

Besides orgasm there are all the points ConstantLearner articulated so well.

 

[Shakuhachi]

Yes! Of course! A priest has a most intimate, nuptial, covenantal bond with the Church! I assure you, conjugal love is not the most intimate connection one can have

"The “Church” is an abstraction. A spouse is a living breathing emotional with needs and expectations.

 

[Edward_H]

That’s too bad.

Selfishness and pride pop up in a hundred ways, no a thousand ways, and a good priest can help you find it.

A good priest can also help one develop a far more lively and fruitful interior life, not just to identify our defects and to begin chipping away at them, but to help us pray better, to examine more sincerely, to see God’s will for us in our marriage, opening us up to horizons not possible by ourselves.

In fact, the “thanks but I’m fine” remark is a good sign that pride is not just active under the surface, but has already reared its head in public.

 

[Edward_H]

We go to Confession to return to the Father, who is eager to help us.

Sin clouds our intellect, saps our will to do the good, makes us less sensitive to the will of God.

These issues then affect not just marriage, not just our relationship with God, but our view of our work, our availability with our children, our mood, etc.

Nearly all marital problems begin as interior or spiritual problems…tendencies to unlove, to self love, to build resentment, to claim rights, etc. All of these begin inside, they are spiritual work items first.

 

[Shakuhachi]

They may not know about a few aspects of married life…but they hear and learn about thousands of marriages in great detail.

They know in ways married people will never know.

I would have to agree with what someone else said. They learn through the filter of the confessional and that is a secondary knowledge of the problems. You were better with your first sentence. “They may not know about a few aspects.” Though I think more than a few.

 

[Edward_H]

Married people only know about their own marriage. If they learn anything more it too is through a filter of someone else.

So priests may not know that one’s wife gets upset that the husband doesn’t put the toothpaste cap back on, but they know how irritations build, how resentments are created and nursed, how people can begin to “count”, how their resentments affect their prayer life, how their annoyances impede conversation, how pride changes its form, how vanity can rear its head…where love of comfort gets in the way of personal generosity in the marriage.

And ten thousand other concrete facts about married life that most married people have never ever thought about at any depth, nor have they done much self examination about these and a hundred other matters.

A priest can help enormously with these spiritual and practical tools because they’ve learned about them at a depth and breadth that is striking.

 

[Shakuhachi]

Priests know about marriage as an abstraction. To say that most priest know “far more” about marriage than most married people do is an absurd exaggeration.

 

[Xantippe]

Selfishness and pride pop up in a hundred ways, no a thousand ways, and a good priest can help you find it.

A good priest can also help one develop a far more lively and fruitful interior life, not just to identify our defects and to begin chipping away at them, but to help us pray better, to examine more sincerely, to see God’s will for us in our marriage, opening us up to horizons not possible by ourselves.

In fact, the “thanks but I’m fine” remark is a good sign that pride is not just active under the surface, but has already reared its head in public.

I think most of us find that our spouse and teenagers do a pretty good job of helping us with pointing out areas in need of improvement.

 

[BoomBoomMancini]

Use creativity and judgment…sorry, I was assuming a bit more Catholic crowd.

Geez, dude. Can you not get so defensive and passive aggressive? Starting a thread is an implicit invitation to discussion. You can’t get all wound up when people actually start, you know, discussing your ideas.

 

[Edward_H]

Not so. Good to get an objective view, especially from one seasoned in the areas that I mentioned.

The nature of sin, the obstacles to growing in virtue, substantial topics. They’re not going to be broached by family members. Better to come from someone with a bit of detachment. A priest can also help us understand what’s involved in our married vocation: total and daily self gift, like Jesus.

I don’t think an 8 year old understands very well what’s involved in fully living out one’s vocation to God in marriage.

They may give little signals, spurred on by the Holy Spirit, but if one is already clouded in various venial or mortal sins, it may take a more seasoned and clear mix of help from a good priest, before damage is done to one’s marriage or parenthood.

Little things early, especially help in building a lively interior life with God.

I doubt an 8 year old will mention these things.

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

I don’t think an 8 year old understands very well what’s involved in fully living out one’s vocation to God in marriage.

Xantippe was talking about teenagers. Eight-year olds are not teenagers.

 

[TechieGuy]

In fact, the “thanks but I’m fine” remark is a good sign that pride is not just active under the surface, but has already reared its head in public.

Or it could be a sign that the person is actually doing pretty well and is happy with his life and relationships…

 

[Edward_H]

And we’re really really bad judges of how we’re doing, so influenced we are by the effects of original sin. We see what we want to see; we hear what we want to hear; we remember what we want to remember; we work on what we want to work on.

A good priest will help us see matters more closely to how God sees our behavior, and less how we want to see our behavior.

A pilot without an ATC is a dangerous pilot.

 

[Xantippe]

I don’t think an 8 year old understands very well what’s involved in fully living out one’s vocation to God in marriage.

I didn’t mention 8-year-olds. I said spouse and teenagers.

At around 12/13, kids eyes open (much like Eve in the garden) and they start seeing deficiencies in their parents. They’re not always fair, but they don’t miss much.

 

[Edward_H]

Same thing with a 13 year old. Crazy sub-thread.