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

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LOL, I must be getting overtired. All I could picture was Elsa from Frozen singing “The smoke never bothered me anyway”. . .
 
I was hungry for a Sir Sandwich. Just what I needed. Hoorah!
 
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stpurl said:
Well, a good GP is certainly better for you, all things considered, if you have a pain in your tummy, than your friend in town who has spent 30 years dealing with Crohn’s colitis and knows just what to do for that, and who swears your symptoms are exactly like hers. The GP can even refer you to somebody. But what if instead of IBD you have appendicitis or heaven forbid a tumor ? You could wind up with all sorts of complications if instead of heading to the ED you just decided to keep going with Tums
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This is kind of a moot point, given that priests probably don’t even want to teach all of those pre-Cana classes.

My future husband and I met with an older priest to go over our questions. I think that he did a very good job with regard to the stuff we talked about, but there were a number of future problem areas that we didn’t realize were problems. Housekeeping standards, for example, proved to be a major source of disagreement (husband is a slob and I am a lazy perfectionist). I feel like a married couple would be likely to realize that that would be a problem, but it’s also true that there are so many different situations that a particular couple’s solution wouldn’t necessarily work for a different couple.
 
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Edward_H said:
Any person can sling PowerPoint charts. Don’t need a ring on one’s finger.

And being affiliated with such programs doesn’t mean one can help other persons grow in holiness which is the key to living marriage well.
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Ok. You can do that except I have not seen a priest giving all the talks in different topics on marriage.

And not anybody can give the talks if they have not lived into the life itself. They are not only talks but counselling as well.

If you have not involved in running marriage programs and ministering to marriage problem, perhaps you should learn to listen and give credit to the work that people do.

Priests only can give so much but they won’t go into all the many aspects of marriage life. Anyway, I have not seen a priest doing that. Have you?
 
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Edward_H said:
Do you know about your parents’ marriage than a priest knows about his parent’s marriage?
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I have to go back to this.

The older I get, the bigger mystery my parents’ marriage is, but one thing that has given me more insight into them is walking through the same life stages. For example, my parents had three kids, and once I had our third, a bunch of light bulbs went off as to why certain things happened the way they did. I don’t think those light bulbs would ever have gone off had I not also had a third child at roughly the same spacing as my parents did.
Edward_H said:
Do you know more about your friend’s marriage than a priest knows about his friend’s marriage?
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What a priest isn’t going to have is a woman-to-woman talk with a sister or a female friend.

Even if a priest has the same level of insight as a married man, he can’t bring a woman’s experiences to marriage and parenting issues, because he’s not a woman. Hence, an experienced married woman with close relationships with other married women is going to have insights and experiences that a priest just can’t have.

But, I’d agree with a previous poster that there’s room for a lot of different kinds of expertise with regard to marriage, just as teachers can bring expertise to dealing with children, even if they personally aren’t parents–but their expertise doesn’t replace parents’ expertise, just as parental expertise doesn’t replace teachers’ expertise.
Edward_H said:
Do you konw more about your husband’s best friend marriage than a priest knows about his sister’s marriage?
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Eh, I think there’s need for discretion within a family. For example, one of my older relatives is a psychologist and does some marriage counseling, but I’m not blabbing to her. She has no idea what husband and I have disagreements over (at least not based on anything we’ve ever told her).
 
You’d be surprised at how much formation in the interior life of struggle the average priest has had.

Training in the human virtues (classically defined by Aristotle, and “elevated and perfected” by St Thomas Aquinas), training in matters related to “the dominant defect”, and how to detect what the dominant defect is and how to address it, how to make spiritual resolutions, etc, how to draw strength from the Sacraments, from prayer, from proper self denial.

I’ve been awed by what they’ve been taught.

And we, the lay, dismiss it so quicky and ignorantly.
 
Edward_H said:
And we, the lay, dismiss it so quicky and ignorantly.
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I think good, competent priests are humble and understand when a problem is beyond their competency.
Edward_H said:
You’d be surprised at how much formation in the interior life of struggle the average priest has had.
Training in the human virtues (classically defined by Aristotle, and “elevated and perfected” by St Thomas Aquinas), training in matters related to “the dominant defect”, and how to detect what the dominant defect is and how to address it, how to make spiritual resolutions, etc, how to draw strength from the Sacraments, from prayer, from proper self denial.
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I think that you’re seeing marriage as being much more interior and less interpersonal than I would. A too-interior view can be problematic.

When I married my husband, I assumed that what he wanted from me was exactly what my dad or my grandfather seemed to want from their wives–an immaculate house and lots of home cooking. It took a loooong time to realize that that was not actually what my particular husband wanted. (True story: As a newlywed, I once cooked something new and elaborate from scratch. Husband said, “This is almost as good as CostCo.” Husband also prefers a comfy mess to immaculate.) What I’ve realized many years in is that what my husband wants, above all, is a nice wife, and anything else is a very distant second.

I had a completely cookie cutter view of being a good wife, and it took a long time to realize that it’s not true that every husband wants exactly the same thing from his wife. A lot of being a good spouse involves listening to and understanding the other person, rather than being a generic good wife / good husband to a generic husband/wife.

Once you are listening to and understanding each other, the next step is figuring out how to happily live with each other, and making sure that needs are being met as much as possible, and figuring out how to achieve win-win solutions when needs and wants conflict, and above all, how to achieve marital unity.

At some point the stuff you mention comes into play, but I think it’s possible to make some serious mistakes by starting with self-denial, rather than first figuring out what you ought to be doing. (See, for example, The Gift of the Magi–they both sacrificed, but they sacrificed things that the other person did not want them to sacrifice.)
 
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I think you don’t understand how the interior affects the exterior of interpersonal relations.

Nearly all marriage problems begin with interior problems…pride in its hundreds of forms, vanity, love of comfort, untempered appetites, resentments, lack of cheerful self-denial, over-focus on self, moodiness, self-pity…these are all interior problems.

These express themselves in interior complaint first, but eventual lacks of charity, impatience, exterior complaint, argument, “claiming of rights”, yelling, territorial/attachments, etc and various acts of ‘disunity’.
 
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TheOldColonel said:
They get one class on Matrimony and one class on Pastoral Counseling during seminary. That hardly makes one a specialist.
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In seminary, perhaps. My priest has a post-seminary Master’s degree in Marriage and the Family. I know a number of priests who have undergraduate degrees in psychology, and more than a few who have graduate studies in Social Work, Psychology, or Counseling . As their time in the priesthood goes on, I think many priests pursue these further studies because they realize how beneficial this education can be to their ministries.
 
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Edward_H said:
Nearly all marriage problems begin with interior problems…pride in its hundreds of forms, vanity, love of comfort, untempered appetites, resentments, lack of cheerful self-denial, over-focus on self, moodiness, self-pity…these are all interior problems.
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I think it’s more useful to start with the exterior conflict and interpersonal relationships and work backwards to figuring out what the interior disposition ought to be, rather than starting with the navel-gazing.

It’s possible to be extremely self-sacrificing, but a terrible spouse or parent. See, for example, C.S. Lewis’s Mrs. Fidget from The Four Loves:


“Mrs. Fidget very often said that she lived for her family. And it was not untrue. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. “She lives for her family,” they said; “what a wife and mother!” She did all the washing; true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and always a hot meal at night (even in mid-summer). They implored her not to provide this. They protested almost with tears in their eyes (and with truth) that they liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family. She always sat up to “welcome” you if you were out late at night; two or three in the morning, it made no odds; you would always find the frail, pale, weary face awaiting you, like a silent accusation. Which means of course that you couldn’t with any decency go out very often.”

“She was always making things too; being in her own estimation (I’m no judge myself) an excellent amateur dressmaker and a great knitter. And of course, unless you were a heartless brute, you had to wear the things.”

“For Mrs. Fidget, as she so often said, would “work her fingers to the bone” for her family. They couldn’t stop her. Nor could they - being decent people - quite sit still and watch her do it. They had to help. Indeed they were always having to help. That is, they did things for her to help her to do things for them which they didn’t want done.”

“The Vicar says Mrs. Fidget is now at rest. Let us hope she is. What’s quite certain is that her family are.”

We have a male Mrs. Fidget in our extended family. He causes a lot of pain to the people he loves, while believing that he is self-sacrificing and living for his family.
 
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babochka said:
My priest has a post-seminary Master’s degree in Marriage and the Family. I know I’m number of priests who have undergraduate degrees in psychology, and more than a few who have graduate studies in Social Work, Psychology, or Counseling . As their time in the priesthood goes on, I think many priests pursue these further studies because they realize how beneficial this education can be to their ministries.
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That does sound very useful.
 
No, it’s always more productive to begin with motives. The externals become loud and embarrassing and self protective debating areas.

Begin as the prodigal son did, interiorly, with God.

This is why secular psychologists have such an abysmal record, and divorce attorneys set up their practices down the hall!!
 
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Edward_H said:
No, it’s always more productive to begin with motives. The externals become loud and embarrassing and self protective debating areas.

Begin as the prodigal son did, interiorly, with God.
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The Prodigal Son began with externals. “I’m hungry, miserable, feeding pigs… I could be so much better off as a servant in my father’s house.”
 
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That’s reassuring to hear. I personally think the seminary curriculums should focus more on these areas and a bit less on philosophy studies. A 24 credit hour prerequisite of philosophy leave little room for other important classes.
 
Edward_H said:
You miss the point…I’m not saying priests would be better husbands, but priests can help us to become better spouses even though they aren’t married…
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This was not what your OP claimed.

You said the know far more about marriage than most married people.
 
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