I visited a close friend from a different city a couple of months ago. He's very aware of the 'woman problem' in society and tradition. He suggested a woman from a different city he met at a YAG for me to get to know. This woman is in her early thirties, a public advocate for some different causes, very busy, she engages in dancing with the opposite sex, among other things. She has a public website for her advocacy. She may be virtuous. She may have a pleasant personality. I don't know her. But I could very easily argue with what he told me and what her website says, that is not a woman I want to marry or someone I would suggest to my friends.
Several years ago, another close friend of mine told me one of the women at church was interested in me. She was white and had a black child out of wedlock and her social media did not have flattering information about her. I said I wasn't interested and he and I were bickering about it for a few minutes before he conceded. He actually had a problem with me holding the line for my standards. My standard being I am not interested in being the step father for a mulatta.
I've had my other traditional Catholic friends and leaders give questionable advice too. I'm still friends with all of them. But these suggestions really made me realize you can't even trust your closest traditional friends to have your back. I really am alone in regards to the courtship and marriage question. And it is daunting. Heads you win, tails I lose. If you stick to principles, you are stubborn and uncharitable. If you don't stick to principles, you are a coward and effeminate. I imagine many more traditional Catholic men are out there in a similar or identical situation.
People can do what they want. I can't stop them. But I don't know how these people who get married in a worldly way are planning on addressing this question when their children become of age. You can teach them the importance of parents helping their children find spouses all you want. But your example is x1000 more convincing then doing apologetics. If you met your wife at a YAG and you want to monitor your daughter's choice of suitors much more closely, good luck convincing her to do that.
Well, I hear you, Buddy. It is tough, no question.
There's a lot of people that give advice pretty freely, in fact some are downright forceful about it. They like to think they know what they're doing, even more they like for YOU to think that they know what they're talking about. But the sad truth is, no one really knows what the hell they're doing. If someone wants to object to that, I say to simply look at human history, look at your everyday experience.
Even more sadly, subscribing to the Catholic Creed doesn't seem to really change that. It doesn't change the fact that every single one of us pays with our lives for decisions we didn't make. One can throw the term "effects of the original sin" on it, but giving it a name doesn't really seem to help much.
If you want my 2 cents, to a very real degree each one of us is on our own and it is our own responsibility to work out our own life. That's not to say that there is no good in people, I believe that there is. I feel blessed to have people that I consider friends. I think they genuinely care. But a human being is complex. We're often blind to our own motivations and ignorances even if we mean well.
The reasons that I've never married are actually a bit complex, the major reasons being, however, choices made by, and of, others. I still have a serious responsibility, not really of my own choosing, to carry that precludes actively seeking a wife at this time. But I can't honestly say anymore that I'd be all that interested even if circuмstances changed. I've recently had a brief respite and I'm not really sure I'd want to give up the peace and deal with someone else's problems. I'm not interested in being someone's savior or in having them be mine.
It's most likely that I'll be the last of my family line. I'm starting to be more OK with that than I have ever been. If someone doesn't like that, they can suck rocks, I've paid my dues.
Topic: Outside of indult (Read 1088 times)