If you mistakenly discern marriage and get married, you can’t get out of it.
I understand what you are getting at but if you are discerning the will of God, close to him in prayer you will know if God is calling you to do this life. If you sit back in fear of getting married by mistake you will never be certain if God is not calling you to marriage because you never tried it.
If you mistakenly discern the priesthood, you have all of seminary etc to realize your mistake before your ordination.
this is not exactly correct, you can go into seminary with discerning God’s call in the wrong way. For what ever reason you are able to fly under the radar at seminary, the formatters never realize that God really isn’t calling you, you go to the major seminary and then to ordination riding on a false emotion bad desire for the priesthood. You get ordained then you realize as a priest that you had a bad desire in deciding to become a priest, now you are stuck.
some of the examples are as follows
you struggled to get dates in high school in college so you think you should be a priest.
Your parents divorced and you had a bad father figure, you don’t think you could be a good father so you become a priest.
There are other bad desires for wanting to become a priest, and if you go at seminary formation in the wrong way they formatters may not notice your errors and your bad desire. Now granted they know what they are doing and they can pick those people of out of a crowd but there is no guarantee that they will find.
This is how I see it.
First and most importantly have a spiritual director he can get rid of these false desires if you are completely transparent with him.
Second and just as important be close to Christ in prayer and don’t hid anything from him.
Third God isn’t going to come down as a dove and tell you, you are called to be married you are called to religious life, or you are called to priesthood. God uses our natural decisions our natural process of living our life to do his will. So if you feel called to Marriage date and see if the life attracts you and if you are attracted to a certain women to live your life with. If you feel called to priesthood go visit seminaries talk to your vocation director and talk to priests. If you feel called to religious life research religious orders visit them and see if any of them attract you.
You need to be deliberate in your discernment don’t sit back and expect to know what God wants for you just because you sit in adoration for a couple of hours. You should pray and grow in relationship with Christ but for most people finding their calling actually takes going and seeing, stepping out of the boat so to say, or dropping everything and following him. You have to actively discern your call to what ever he is calling you to, not a passive
The way I see it, it’s just safer to go to seminary and realize you’re not meant to be a priest, than to date, perhaps let your emotions cloud your judgment, get married, and then be stuck.
your emotions can cloud your judgement in seminary too just because you are discerning religious life or priesthood doesn’t mean emotion can’t get into the way. Also just because you are dating someone doesn’t mean emotion will get in your way.
Or this…
Dating is not meant to discern marriage in general but rather marriage to the person you’re dating. You shouldn’t even start dating unless you already know you’re called to marriage.
I ask you this question if you never date someone can you really know if God is calling you to marriage?
