Chevaliers response to the OP highlights exactly why the family is in decline.
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Originally Posted by **Tom317** [forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_khaki/viewpost.gif](http://forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=2351087#post2351087)
*Many people are distressed over the record-high rates of divorce, illegitimacy, teenage pregnancy, marital infidelity, and premarital promiscuity.*
How insensitive. Illegitimacy is a personal fault now? Should an illegitimate child be sorry that it exists? Or is having a non-marital child (pre- or extra-) worse than having non-marital sex with the use of contraception? Or should illegitimate children be aborted? Come on. I really hate that kind of approach.
Chavalier has taken one word out of context and made a quantum leap in logic, suggesting that the distress many people have over record high levels of illegitimacy suggests that people therefore look down upon the illegitimate as socially inferior, when the post actually refers to high levels of illegitimacy as one obvious aspect of the breakdown of the family unit. By definition, if he is concerned at the breakdown of the family unit, then he should be also concerned at the symptoms, yet he professes to excuse illegitimacy as acceptable, even though they are part of an unacceptable problem. He even asks if having an illegitimate child ranks worse than non-marital sex with contraception. In other words he compares two symptoms of the breakdown of the family to denigrate the post which posits the symptoms of the problem which are causing people distress. His liberal thinking on one aspect of the problem, which he acknowledges, makes it difficult, if not impossible for him to support the general proposition.
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*The very terms--"wooing," "courting," "suitors"--are archaic; *
As is the concept and thatâs a good thing. 19th century mating rituals were not good and people who complain about todayâs mores (as do I) should know better than pretending otherwise. What we need is equal rights for the man and the woman, not bride-bargaining. We need both virtue and equality. Not virtue and wife shopping, daughter selling and whatnot.
Here again he makes a quantum leap in logic. He assumes, or presumes, that the words âwooingâ, courtingâ and âsuitorsâ are simply 19th century constructs. Many would be able to tell him that those constructs still apply today and are part of the process of âdiscernmentâ, which we know is in short supply in todays society. As for his idea of âwife shoppingâ, doesnât that phrase itself suggest a process of discernment?
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and if the words barely exist, it is because the phenomena have all but disappeared.
And as socially conservative as I am, I donât weep after most of them.
Chevalier states he is socially conservative, yet decries socially conservative mores, the decline of which distresses many people as being a cause of family breakdown. He states that wooing, courtship and suitors are part of a âphenomenaâ which is conservative as he is, yet he tells us they have all but dissapeared.
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*Today, there are no socially prescribed forms of conduct that help guide young men and women in the direction of matrimony.*
People arenât factory lines. People can live their lives without having a detailed guide how to live every hour.
On this statement, Chevalier would be hard presses to defend the need for a moral code of any sort. Moral codes are prescriptive. The old courtship rituals as described above laid down a set of guidlines for the conduct of a process of discernment, which is the same thing as a moral code.
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*This is true not just for the lower or under classes.*
First illegitimacy as a taint and fault, now social classes. Is that a morality-related article or a snobby rant?
Again Chevalier is making quantum leaps in logic.The obvious implication which arises from his response is that there are no classes of people, that all are the same class. The OP is telling us that today the problems of family and marriage breakdown is now classless, and Chevalier seems to want a society which is classless. He is getting his wish, yet he is not discerning the price that is being paid.
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Even--indeed especially--the elite, those who in previous generations would have defined the conventions in these matters, lack a cultural script whose denouement is marriage.
Eeek. Thatâs awful. The concepts, the pretentious language, the whole vibe of it. Sorry, Iâm not going to read further. They call me a snob, but that thing is just too much for me. Sorry.
Here Chevalier demonstrates his lack of understanding of what certain words mean. The OP says ââŚthe Elite, who would have defined the conventionsâŚâ. In other words the âEliteâ have been given a definition and have been defined as those who define the conventions⌠The OP tells us that today, those who should be guiding the rituals which underpinned families and marriage no longer have the necessary skills to bring about the correct and socially required outcomes.
If that was me, they would be covered in a brightly colored cocktail.
Itâs been an eye opening experience, think I need to get out more. 
Now, there are some fabulous women Iâve met, and for that, Iâm grateful. I am reminded a lot lately, of how Christ must have felt when people were spitting on Him, making fun of Him, laughing, jeeringâŚas He carried His cross. When you see what is happening in the world, itâs not hard to feel isolated and alone, like He probably did.