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

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At my parish, the priest who is responsible for marriage counseling is married himself. A married deacon is also available for marriage counseling. The celibate priests don’t provide marriage counseling and I think the parishioners find this to be a good set up.
 
These analogies and comparisons are off the chart. Marriage to a spouse and marriage to the Church while having some possible similarities, share nothing when it comes to intimacy that relates to insight in marriage.

While Eucharist is also an intimate sacrament, it also cannot be compared to marriage to another mortal human being in a way that provides insight into marriage. Your comparisons are tenuous. And I am not sure why you are advancing them. If you believe married people ought to confide more or seek counsel more from priests that is fine. I would agree. But not because most priests know more about marriage than they do. But rather, a priest can assist with more spiritual reflection on the married person’s experience of their marriage.
 
“off the charts”

Indeed; that’s how beautiful the Eucharist is…off the charts love, off the charts union with us.

You need to get some better understanding of what marriage is, what the Church teaches about marriage and the Eucharist.

Marriage is an act of union, a conjugal union, it is a foretaste of the union that God desires with each of us.

God seeks daily union with us, not just union with us in heaven.

God offers all Catholics a taste of this divine union not just in marriage, which is a form of communion, but also in the Eucharist.

The union we get with Eucharist is infinitely greater than we get in marriage.

Read up on both Holy Communion, but also on Holy Matrimony, until you see the far deeper connection and unity between them. That’s why they are both Sacraments, allowing us to share in the divine life of the Trinity.

Off the charts indeed, and you had no idea about this. Fortuitous use of the word.
 
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You need not be so condescending and pedantic. I have been married 25 years. I have pretty good idea about what marriage actually is. I also realize what an awesome and mystical gift the Eucharist is, as well as the Church.

But they have significant differences.

From my perspective, marriage requires a great deal of patience, forgiveness, maturity, self giving in very concrete and practical ways in which one can and will be held accountable by the spouse. Can that be said about Eucharist? We would like to think so because that is what God calls us to. But what is missing is the daily face to face, in the flesh encounter with something that is not a matter of faith and belief so much as it is another person who can give us immediate response whether we desire it or not. But you have dug your heals in and doubled down for some inexplicable reason .
 
I don’t care about your marriage, sorry. This subthread isn’t about your particular marriage.

I am telling you what the Church teaches about the sacraments of marriage and the Eucharist…they both bring us toward unity with God in different ways, the most profound way is through the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is the true source for all love in the world, for your little acts of patience and self-giving, and for that pagan’s little acts of patience. The presence of God in the world via the Eucharist is the SOURCE of all love.

That’s how big the Eucharist is. We are not capable of loving without it.

Receiving, and receiving it well disposed is food for our love in our marriage. It provides the strength we need to live our marriages with the heart of Christ.
 
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Stop please with the unasked for couch talk.

As OP I am trying to keep this on track and not have it meander off into “but I’m special” issues.
 
Shakuhachi said:
While Eucharist is also an intimate sacrament, it also cannot be compared to marriage to another mortal human being in a way that provides insight into marriage. Your comparisons are tenuous. And I am not sure why you are advancing them. If you believe married people ought to confide more or seek counsel more from priests that is fine. I would agree. But not because most priests know more about marriage than they do. But rather, a priest can assist with more spiritual reflection on the married person’s experience of their marriage.
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An excellent post and how true! The Eucharist is God, who is perfect, without blemish, all-loving, all-life giving, etc. Even the most perfect human spouse can’t be what God is.

I agree about counseling from a priest. It’s value derives not from the priest knowing more about marriage, but from his ability to provide spiritual guidance and neutrality.

I agree with you totally.
 
Shakuhachi said:
Exactly, You are not talking about particular, concrete, daily lived marriage. You are talking about an intellectual abstraction.
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Which cannot be compared to a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood marriage partner with all the good and not-so-good qualities every marriage partner possesses.
 
No I am talking about concrete issues, just not your particulars.

I am talking about all the reasons that lead to ungenerosity in a marriage, to the nursing of resentment, to the tiredness, to the joys, to the work related to family life, to the cases of “rights claiming”, to “territorialism”, to sources of selfishness, to lack of charity, to impatience, to ugly vanity and pride, to any source of disunity in a marriage, to laziness, to a lack of vitality in a marriage, to worry, to jealousy, to lust, to acts of self-seeking, to unopeness to life.

Those are issues that a priest can help immeasurably with, and are obviously and clearly part of the topic.
 
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Edward, why is this so important to you? All that you list represents only the dark side of some marriages. If that is the priest’s source of greater knowledge it is certainly slanted as well as theoretical since it is not he who is living in such a marriage.
 
I may know a lot about India but I have not walked on its ground and breathed its air or lived there. I have talked with many, many Indians and read all about it though. I suspect the same is true with priests and marriage.
 
Edward_H said:
No I am talking about concrete issues, just not your particulars.
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As @Shakuhachi has pointed out, I see the intellectual abstraction, but not the concrete particulars, and I am looking well enough and I am intelligent enough.
 
I specifically listed “joys”.

You’re not a counter are you?

Marriages don’t go off the rails because of the Christ like generosity that the couple shares with each other and the world around them.

Marriages don’t flounder because of patience, acts of charity, chaste love.

I think you just want to disrupt a thread that you don’t like.
 
Shakuhachi said:
I may know a lot about India but I have not walked on its ground and breathed its air or lived there. I have talked with many, many Indians and read all about it though. I suspect the same is true with priests and marriage.
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True. I knew a lot - intellectually - about Switzerland before I ever set foot there. But when I actually lived there, when I was in relationship with the country, I saw, and lived, many things I could not have known had I simply read about Switzerland in books or saw films or talked to others, even the Swiss. To really know Switzerland, I had to experience it myself.
 
Shakuhachi said:
You need not be so condescending and pedantic.
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How dare you! Your post is litter! Now sit up straight and mind your manners before Edward smacks you with a ruler, young man.
ConstantLearner said:
Edward, you’re taking it personally now. You seem to want to control other posters when you write things like that.
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Exactly. The need for everyone to fall in line is…intense.
 
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There’s nothing intellectually abstract about “no routine kisses”, acts of charity, demonstrations of patience, acts of unity, acts of self-denial, acts open to life.

Nearly every post above of mine is filled with concrete aspects of marriage…

There’s a subclass of cranks here who aren’t open to the work that a priest could help with in these very practical matters
 
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