Having recently decided to offer my life as a lay celibate woman for the Counter-Revolution, I could not help but notice how little the single vocation is spoken about, if at all, in traditionalist circles.

As a young convert to traditional Catholicism, I find that the only vocations that are ever presented to us are the married life, the religious life or the priesthood. For those of us who could not “fit in” to any of these three vocations, there is an unspoken but very palpable feeling of failure, especially for women.

This erroneous idea about the vocation to be single can, therefore, be a source of great frustration, especially for those who are called to this life but are constantly dissuaded from it by those who follow the fashions and are ill-informed.

I hope to dispel this confusion and error by examining the vocation for lay celibacy more closely and, thus, show why it is the vocation that is perfectly suited to destroy the Revolution.

Vocations are ‘under construction’

The definition of vocations comes organically, from the ground up. When a certain vocational reality is presented to the Church, she defines it: In other words, the Church defines what comes as it comes.

She saw the Benedictines rise from the initial hermitage of St. Benedict of Nursia, the Dominicans from the zeal of St. Dominic in preaching against the heresies, the Jesuits from the desire of St. Ignatius to build an army for Jesus to conquer the world. Each one of the religious congregations that were born later had a similar history. The Church waits to see what is coming before trying to fit everyone into an already existing category.

She does not force a reality, she merely defines it. Vocations are based on the call of grace, which is made to assist the needs of the Church and, consequently, vocations are in constant development.

I must say that as I am writing this, I had a strong reaction against this process when I learned about it. Why? It is because we Americans have a tendency to fit in to already known categories. This tendency may have something to do with the “computer culture” in which we were raised. Vocations are not like this.

The four vocations we know now (married, priest, religious, single) were defined by organic processes.

 Vocations through the ages

The vocation to the priesthood has been around since the birth of the Church, but organized religious life as we know it did not come to its full fruition in the West until the monastic movement in the early Middle Ages. Up until that point, men and women decided to live a chaste life in prayer and sacrifice, many as consecrated virgins. Some lived in the world, and some chose to live as hermits, who were the precedents and founders of future religious orders. These men and women chose to live a life of chastity and virginity, dedicated to prayer and service for the needs of the Church.



In their time, there was no clear definition of their vocations – those celibate men and women simply wanted to not assume the life of marriage. They wanted to follow more closely in the footsteps of Our Lord as unmarried people.

After the expansion of monasteries and convents throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, the religious vocation often became the model for celibate life, since one could more easily live a chaste life as a religious rather than in the world.

It is wrong to think, however, that because of the prominence of religious life as a celibate vocation in the Church, the lay celibate life by itself was never a true vocation. There have been lay celibates since time immemorial. Our Lady and St. Joseph themselves were lay celibates before they married, and they kept the virginity of their previous life even after they were wed. There were many lay celibates in the beginning, including St. Catherine of Siena, St. Rose of Lima and countless other saints.

Vatican II spoiled the single vocation

Another reason the single vocation has been treated as the “ugly duckling” in traditionalist circles is Vatican II. The Council over-promoted the role of the laity, putting it on par with and even higher than the clergy. For this reason, it is understandable that there was an explosive increase in lay celibate organizations and a huge decline in priests and religious vocations. After all, why should one be a priest or religious if it is not as great as being a layperson?

Traditionalists saw this and were rightly upset. However, they over-reacted in the opposite direction: They over-stressed the vocation to the priesthood for men and religious life for women. Their mistake was to disregard the single life as a vocation. Their reasoning seems to be: “Since Vatican II over-promoted the laity, the lay celibate vocation is not really a valid vocation. So, let us promote only the married life, priesthood and the religious life.”

This mistake is incorporated into a Protestant mentality that we are so accustomed to as Americans.

Protestantism & the unfulfilled woman

The idea that every person should marry is intrinsically Protestant. For women, it comes from the old English idea that the unmarried woman is an unfulfilled woman (e.g. Jane Austen). It is the idea that “God has someone for everyone, and if you don’t have someone, then that means God is your ‘someone,’ so you have to be a priest or religious.”



For women, this fixation is promoted with the idea of “Mr. Right”: “God has someone prepared for you, just wait until you meet Mr. Right.” This disregards an important reality: Some young men and women are not concerned about pursuing particular lives for themselves, but their attention is turned toward the cause of the Church and her needs. So, for them, there is no Mr. Right or Mrs. Right. They look forward to serving something nobler and broader – the Catholic Church in her present day needs: to free her from the progressivist infiltration she suffers and to restore her to her past glory.

Not to see this is to deny that the Catholic Church should count on laypersons to help her. This is one of the results of the American Protestant influence. For this reason, traditional Catholics should purge this idea from their mentalities.

 The single vocation as a weapon against the Revolution

The fact is that the Church needs lay celibates at this time. Why? It is because the Revolution infiltrated the Catholic Church through Progressivism and threatens to destroy her and our world. She needs lay celibates more than religious people and priests because most of the clergy and religious institutions are corrupted by bad doctrines and customs. Consequently, single laymen and women seem to be much less infected by the revolutionary-progressivist virus and easier to convert to an anti-progressivist mindset.

Besides, in this vocation men and women can devote all their time to destroying the Revolution and building the Reign of Mary, which must be built on purity, something that lay celibacy should have as a state of life.

Those who choose marriage cannot devote all their time to the Counter-Revolution because their time is consumed with making a living and raising sound Catholic children in the midst of a Revolutionary world, which is already a noble and colossal task in itself. Even good priests and religious cannot devote all their time to the Counter-Revolution either, because they must spend their time administering the Sacraments or they are cloistered and bound by obedience to their superiors, who may be making concessions since they are directly or indirectly linked to the progressivist Hierarchy.

Since we are in the midst of battle, the only logical choice is to fight, to focus all our time on destroying the enemy. In our day, the best vocation that is perfectly suited for this fight seems to be the lay single life.

 Young people and heroism

As a millennial, I can say that young people want to heroically fight for a cause and devote their whole life to it. Furthermore, we need this heroism today. A youthful vigor and militancy is an important factor to destroy the Revolution and restore Christendom to its rightful splendor.



I will conclude this introductory article to a series on the single vocation with these words from Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira:

“The great sense of the vocation of the generation of the present day youth today is sacrifice. Either this generation will face the hardness of its vocation with the generosity of martyrdom, or it will inevitably be demolished by the tempests that previous generations cuмulated through their mistakes, and are about to fall upon the contemporary world.

“But the sacrifice required is not necessarily that of blood. It is not death that grace imposes on the youth of today as the supreme danger to face, but life itself. It is no longer the time for believers to attest to their faith by the bloody witness of martyrdom. What the Church today asks of its faithful is the witness of an exemplary life and the generous sacrifice of our whole persons to the great cause because it is necessary to fight.” (“The Indispensable Sacrifice” in The Legionario, São Paulo, n. 173, June 9, 1935)

I leave my readers to meditate on Dr. Plinio's inspiring words on the single vocation as I go to prepare my next article in this series.

Continued

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. - St Paul

The only vocation is to the priesthood. How long must we suffer women teaching?

I have no idea what you're referring to. What does the existence of nuns have to do with women teaching men? 

The opening paragraph says it all. If I wanted women teaching I would join the Anglican abomination. Women have no place teaching online or offline.

How exactly is an opinion article "usurping authority over a man"? When your wife makes a suggestion or tells you an interesting fact she heard, do you start screeching about her "teaching" you an "usurping authority over a man"? The verse refers to women actually being adult men's tutors or leaders, etc. 

The OP is from TIA, and approved by Atila. Atila then goes on to misrepresent St. Thomas Aquinas in an attempt to justify his own odd attitudes regarding the marital act. He says:

• In the human body the organs that are the most shameful are those that are used to discharge the filth produced by the body; they are the penis, the vagina and the anus. The last is more shameful than the first two because it discharges solid detritus, while the others discharge liquid detritus, but these organs also are disgusting and shameful. Now then, the male and female sɛҳuąƖ functions are put into practice by these shameful organs. Therefore, it is undeniable that they share something of the same disgusting character of their other function.
  
• Even though the function of reproduction is much nobler than the function of eliminating the impurities of the body, there is a universally accepted association of those functions and, consequently, a natural psychological repulsion to view these organs.
  
• The repugnance for the exposition of these organs – either when they are in action or not – is universal among civilized people. Even among primitive and pagan people these organs are normally covered by clothing. To reach the point of boldly exhibiting these organs in public, a person or a group needs to have reached a great degree of moral degradation by losing any reserve of pudor or shame.
  
• The fact that the sɛҳuąƖ organs trigger the process of concupiscence and as such become greatly attractive – either in marriage or outside of it – does not nullify the normal repulsion they raise. So then, reactions of both shame and attraction are present regarding these organs.
  
• As it is known, regarding sɛҳuąƖ activity outside of marriage, the Church has two Commandments – 6^th and 9^th – that oblige Catholics not to engage in it, either in thought or deed. Regarding the licit sɛҳuąƖ activity inside marriage, there are also precise rules to control concupiscence and avoid lust.
  
• Reinforcing this general moral, psychological and hygienic reserve regarding the sɛҳuąƖ organs, the Church has always recommended modesty in dress, prohibiting even the remote exhibition of these organs, which she wisely calls pudenda pars (shameful parts). Morally speaking, the pudenda pars include the three mentioned organs plus the female breasts, whose exposition also ignite concupiscence in men and induce them to lust.
  
• Therefore, we see that the sɛҳuąƖ organs are tainted with the shame proper to the function of eliminating human waste, which is another function they have parallel to that of procreation. Consequently, the marital act shares an analogous repulsion.

6. The marital act produces an impression of dishonor

• Confirming the general sentiment of shame regarding the sɛҳuąƖ act – either inside or outside of marriage – here, I offer the reader an in-depth explanation of the first instinctive reactions of dishonor and indignity that man has to the marital act, which invite him to refrain from it and, collaterally, oblige it to take place in the secrecy of the private life.

https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/c048-Single_8.html

The opening paragraph says it all. If I wanted women teaching I would join the Anglican abomination. Women have no place teaching online or offline.

That's three posts out of 10 harping on about women teaching.
All you're missing is a post or two from Pastor Joe Fox, Pastor Dowell, or other "Hebrew Israelites".
I think you've had many accounts here that have been banned. Feel free to add "Crysostom" to the list.

I always found it funny how Croix pretends he's just trying to stand up for tradition and not being misogynistic, when he can never shut up about women. It's a strange fixation, especially when he wildly swings from boasting about how they all love him so much to screaming them down for perceived attempts at "usurping his authority". He really crossed the line when he randomly accused a married woman of being attracted to him in the middle of an argument. In the real world Mister Croix "Manly Man" de Fier would've been knocked to the ground for saying something like that. 

So, how about a serious discussion of the role of the single woman in Tradition today?  Those too old for marriage and without vocation to sisterhood?  We do exist, after all.

As do young women that are called neither to marriage nor sisterhood.  
I know of a Traditional Catholic woman who married a Traditional Catholic husband.  Beautiful, devout Catholic, devoted to her husband and their four children (all under the age of 10) a consummate homemaker who home schooled the children.  

Her husband had an affair, and left her to live with the adulteress.  He insisted on a divorce.  He had no desire to see his children.  
The Traditional Priest investigated, determined it was the husband's fault, and couldn't even get him to send the children's clothing to her parents home (she couldn't afford to stay in their home) let alone agree to couples counseling with him.  

Of course, she had no marketable skills.  She couldn't date, let alone remarry.  In the unlikely event that she could obtain an annulment, what are the odds of finding a Traditional Catholic man willing to take on providing for four young children that weren't his?

She was 29 years old.  Left to raise four children on her own after obtaining a minimum wage job--no marketable skills, no history of employment, no energy left at the end of the day.

I wonder how the men on this list would feel if she had been their daughter or sister.

Traditional Catholic women are hesitant to discuss our peculiar situation in these days of apostasy without fear of being harangued as feminists by our fellow Traditional Catholics (male and female).

I think of St. Mary Magdalene, the other woman at the foot of the Cross.  Recall that Jesus told her sister (Martha) that Mary had chosen the better part and it would not be denied her. 

In a traditional Catholic society the brothers and other relatives of the wife would track down the husband and give him a good beating...

In a traditional Catholic society divorce would be illegal and even if he just ran off man would likely end up behind bars for child neglect.