It may not cause a 100% drop overnight, but it can act as a brake and a source of discouraging bad behavior, unlike today where bad behavior is encouraged outright by the secular society and excused in many religious circles under the guise of “better to ask for forgiveness than permission”.
It’s not being obtuse to try to delicately get her to re-evaluate her decision-making process which I hope will cause her to answer her own question.
Here’s the thing, its not my job to make other people follow the rules. It is not my job to set up a special reward system for them so that they will follow them. Instead it is my job to make them see why its good in and of itself to ‘follow the rules’ as you put it. Having some special rewards system in place not only does not help that but can also prevent people from recognizing that.
No, it certainly does not answer directly. I know that I do not have any such moral obligation, but your previous posts make it sound as though you think otherwise, so I am asking yoou to clarify whether or not that is your position. You have not clarified your position on this matter, but instead simply told us what you personally would do, not whether or not you think that it is a universal moral obligation. Please answer the question.
I already have an answer to that question that is quite determined. It is actuallly obtuse because you are avoiding answering the question directly.
There is something in the CCC about how we participate in the sin of others if we do nothing to hinder them or if we encourage them. I don’t have quote ready, and I ned to hit the gym - after all, I need something to else to appeal to all those “Catholics” who need more than just a person’s morality to attract them.
Don’t worry, I have just as many problems with offensive overgeneralizations about men as I do about women. For instance when people start talking about how men just want to use women for pleasure etc, it is just plain wrong and offensive to overgeneralize in such a way, whether it is about men or women. I just hae a more positive outlook of humanity in general, probably because I have knowwn more people who are genuinely trying to be good people rather than following the superficial trend in society today.Your life and world is no less real than mine, TW, true.
But you are not telling me anything I don’t know about “offending women.”
If I or another male overgeneralized women as gorgeous, kind, people that only want a “good man” not a single woman - or yourself - would get offended. But that’s as equal a generalization.
If I said men in general are just nice, caring, people not very concerned with the looks of women, and only want a “good woman,” people are culturally indoctrinated (the indoctrination is constant) to immediately object to that notion.
But here’s the thing. You can find men fitting that description I just gave like you can find women fitting the description you suggest.
In fact, let me go so far as to say the vast majority of men I know date and or marry simple, plain Janes’ of no particularly impressive characteristics. It’s a pretty observable fact. Most women are not a Halle Berry or Sharon Stone. So, is the frequent complaints of women that general men as X, Y, and Z justified?
Hey, I’ve personally courted women from very obese to physically deformed. Mainly mind you when I was much younger (still in the Corps or recently released) and still had an acne problem. I was rejected by all of them. Yet, for my entire life I’ve listened to women broad brush all men as simply chasing after Marylin Monroes’ (well… maybe not her because she’d be considered “fat” today among White-Americans).
One thing I found common among the 20ish year old obese women I courted (probably over 300 lbs) to the physically deformed (e.g., skin disease; missing limbs) to more attractive looking women, they all held out hope of getting the tall, financially impressive, suave LL Cool J types. All of them.
And the number of women on welfare I got rejected by - dismissed - while a hard working employed U.S. Marine are legion.
Ironically, once I got hooked on crack I started having beautiful women out of the wood work flirting with me and making advances on me. Because my looks ironically began to improve around that time.
Lesson for me: women are just as shallow as men.
I’m fortunate. A lot of men never get to experience this and learn the deeper human truths about women. They are told men are shallow and women are not. They have no clue. They crack stupid jokes and like nit wits think the girls laughing at their corny jokes is because they’re “so charming.”
Look… I crack the same corny jokes I now that I did when I was in my 20’s with severe acne and a woman sticks around now, leans her back against a wall and laughs. But I’m not one of these guys that chalks it up to me being so charming and “cool” and the woman so, so good. I’m fully aware of how superficial humans are (man and woman).
Sorry, that’s just the way I feel.
Yes, we are supposed to help them avoid sin if we can, but let me ask you this, if everybody all of a sudden decided that they would refuse to marry non-virgins, what do you think the non-virgins are going to do? All those who already fell or end up falling due to the strength of the temptations they had to deal with? They are going to despair of ever being married and so go on to have extremarital sex all the more. Sure, you might be discouraging those who have not yet fallen from sinning but you would only be encouraging others to sin. As you said yourself, we are supposed to avoid encouraging people to sin. What you are doing is trying to pick and choose which people you will discourage and which you will encourage. That to me is a very unchristian way to live. Only those who have not yet fallen are worthy of your help to avoid sin, instead you throw everyone else to the dogs.
I believe the parable in scripture is as Jesus told it to us. The “bad son” was expecting the father to be like you, to hold his past sins against him. He thought mercy would be taking in the son as a servant - and human mercy would have been that. But the mercy of God the Father is above and beyond what is fair. Once the Father sees that the “bad son” has changed his ways, he is fully back in, and not made an example of because he didn’t follow the rules. If that’s how God treats his children, I believe we are to treat our brothers and sisters in Christ the same way. God wants us to join in the celebration, not pout because we didn’t get a goat for being a “good son.”
Wrong Dude so Wrong!
Excellent post! Spot on! :clapping::clapping::clapping::clapping:
Thank you for saying what I tried to say much more eloquently.
Thanks Shana!
Aww thanks so much Lucky, I’m very happy to be in RCIA, so many blessings have come my way since I’ve been actively seeking God in His Church.
It is a generalization, but not an overgeneralization. If nonvirginity isn’t a dealbreaker for you, then obviously you won’t reject people on those grounds. For others it is. But more men consider it a dealbreaker than women, and that is where the generalization starts from. Again, it is undeniably true that women are more likely to accept non-virgin men, than men accept non-virgin women. This is a societal and biological reality. It’s the reason why women lie about partner counts to reduce them, and men lie about partner counts to increase them. It’s the reason why male virgins suffer a great deal to stay that way, but a female will encounter far less resistance. Again, a generalization for the whole population. Devout Catholic men and women are of course in the population but not necessarily bound by the tendencies of it. Devout Catholic men and women both can fornicate and repent and be a target of mercy for their future spouse, obviously, but that still doesn’t ignore the realities of the human condition.This is again a ridiculous overgeneralization, and one which most certainly does no apply to me as I have already made clear so it’s quite unfair of you to claim that since I fall into this generalization I just can’t understand what’s being said.
I can entirely understand why someone (male or female) would want to marry a virgin. I most certainly would prefer to marry a virgin. But that does not mean that virginity should ever be the sole guiding factor in one’s decision. I would prefer the person I marry to be a virgin, but if I had met and fell in love with a good loving man who later admitted to not being a virgin I would not then immediately discard him just because he wasn’t a virgin and go for his virgin friend instead. To do so would would be callous and unkind. It would certaibly effect my ulimate choice but, it would not mean that he gets tossed out the window as though virginity were the only thing that mattered.
I think the main reason I replied as harshly as I did was not because of the generalization, but because you seemed to be dismissing me as someone who just doesn’t understand what is being talked about, like a little child that you pat on the head and say, ‘thats ok sweetie, we get that you just don’t understand these things’ and then send them off for the real discussion to begin. Its quite possible you did not intend it to come across that way, and if I reacted too harshly I am sorry for doing so.
See, I am by no means saying that virginity isn’t important, so I hope you don’t think that that is what I am saying.
I agree entirely and have tried to make both of those points on this thread at different points depending on who I was replying. But if people are misstaking what is being said then it is good to make sure that this point is being made clearly. No one (so far as I can tell at least) is trying to say that you should go out of your way to find non-virgins so that you can show them mercy and marry them. Maybe the reason the responses on the thread come across as biased is because they are trying to answer the question of whether or not marrying a non-virgin is wrong. It makes sense that in answering that question they would emphasize mercy, because that explains why it is of course not wrong to do so. Thanks for stating it in such a nice clear way.
Excellent post.
I just thought I should add, that a lot of the recent responses have come up because of Norseman82 and his extreme position, not because of anyone who wants to emphasize the goodness and value of virginity, being a virgin is better than being a non-virgin. The problem is that Norseman82 is essentially claiming that we have a moral duty to marry a virgin. That is something that I (and many others, and I would assume that would include you also) just cannot accept and that is the position we have been arguing against.
No, I don’t think we have a moral duty to do so. The benefits and witness to others makes it compelling, but in no way is it a moral duty. I can understand the disappointment of people being unable to find their (close to) ideal spouse, but I don’t think that’s a reason for making overarching claims such as his. I can certainly also empathize with people finding someone who’s past causes them too great a discomfort and thereby forces them to keep looking (even if that were the only problem). Those are of course the consequences of our actions that we can’t/don’t see at the time. We may, by sinning today, cause a good person to reject us down the road. That’s life.
And I can understand why you feel so threatened:
I never said that non-virgins should not marry. There are plenty of fellow non-virgins for them to choose from - in fact, the pool there is probably bigger - so they should not have to steal from the pool of virgins. It reminds me of the parable that Nathan told David of the rich man who had a whole flock to choose from but instead robbed a lamb from the poor family and left the poor family with nothing.