I don’t think the church changed any doctrine here. Marriage has always been a sacrament, as has holy orders. You can be holy in either endeavor. Afterall, Mary was married.
Lucy, the church never taught that marriage is incompatible with holiness. Mary, the most revered Saint of the Church, was married. Some individual church fathers may have implied that marriage was a less holy endeavor than the preisthood or religious life, but the Church has NEVER taught that marriage was incompatible with holiness. I for one agre that becoming a priest or a nun can be heroic, particularly today, but that doesn’t negate the fact that a person can be holy in the married state as well. Different people love in different ways… As for the Church, It has ZERO freedom to change its doctrines. It was taught the truths of the faith by Jesus himself and must faithfully hand those truths down.
No, the church doesn’t change her doctrines. They are eternal truths. What does change is how people describe them. As there is contention, the truths are clarified. For instance, there was always a Trinity, but the nature of the Trinity was clarified at the Council of Nicea so that everyone could understand it in the correct way.
If that’s the case, then how do you explain people like St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Alphonsus Ligouri, and St. Bridget of Sweden, and what they wrote about marriage?
Every time I bring this up, the answer is same. “That’s not what the Church teaches.” You know what it reminds me of? Muslim apologists. Every time a young man blows himself up as a suicide bomber, the Muslim apologists say, “Oh the Koran doesn’t really teach violence. It’s a religion of peace.” But they can’t seem to explain why so many young men seem to be under the impression that it does teach violence.
And actually, the problem is worse for Catholics than for Muslim apologists, in a way. The Muslim young man may be a teenager, poorly educated and easily manipulated. But, with the possible exception of St. Bridget, the rest of the men listed were very well educated. Two of them were bishops. Furthermore, the Church honored the four men as Doctors of the Church, meaning that they were honored
by the Church for what they
wrote.
If their writings were contrary to Church teaching, then why were they honored for them, rather than condemned?
Lucy, marrying someone outside your faith is a great driver of strife. Those that share the same faith, are much happier and likely to stay together. There is a gallup poll that shows that 50% of marriages end up in divorce. EXCEPT only 1% of marriages end in divorce when the couple attend weekly mass together. And its less than 1 in 1152 for those couples who pray together. The reason is simple. Marriage is a sacrament of sharing. If you can’t share your faith, which plays a real role in defining who you are, then your marriage is already starting at a disadvantage. The real stress comes with the children. What do you teach them?
I am aware of the risks, and I should qualify my statement. I believe it is safer to marry a devout Protestant than a devout Catholic. If the Catholic is lukewarm, or non practicing, it would proably be ok.
And by the way, what leads you to think that protestant men have less hangups than their Catholic counterparts?
It’s quite simple. Protestant churches, at least the ones I was raised in, have such a positive view of marriage and family. They don’t argue amongst themselves about when a married couple should give up sex, or revere men who abandon their wives and children to live in a cave. Most of the holy people they look up to are from the Bible, and most of them were married and had families.
Catholics on the other hand…
