I work a low stress minimum wage job in the service industry. A lot of the men I work with talk about their sɛҳuąƖ escapades on the weekend. They are either sleeping with girlfriends, or enjoying the bar scene. A lot of them have told me they have no desire to marry. Why should I get married when I have all the benefits of marriage (sex) without the committment? This is what one person told me. They are also scared of no fault divorce, which scares me as well.

One of the reasons why I am trying to get a higher paying, higher stress job is that it will give me the income I need to get married and support a traditional catholic family. And to be honest a big motivator for me to get married is that I get to have sex. I realize this drive to get married and to have sex is what has driven men in western civilization to be productive members of society

But something occured to me driving home. What if I just wanted to keep my low stress low pay job because its easier, and I wouldn't have to support a family? What if I purposely stay in the single state, and continue to stay chaste (with the help of the daily rosary, prayer, and mass) and refuse to get married, but also refuse to stay out of religious life. Would that be wrong/ or a sin?

First off - don't let anyone tell you your job isn't good enough to get married.  Only you and your future spouse are to decide that together, looking at the facts.  We live in a society full of very privileged older people who have sucked this country dry with entitlements and with jobs subsidized by government debt - they'll start saying "well you don't have to be able to buy a million dollar house" - when they start talking about how much money is enough money.

These people are middle class philistines living in the past and they care hugely about suburban American values - more than they care about a Catholic family life.

Secondly, don't marry a woman who cares about money.  Yeah, that's not easy.  But if having a certain standard of living is critical to a potential Catholic spouse - that person is probably interested more in living up to some idea of what her life is supposed to be like rather than being interested in you.  You should only care about girls who are interested in you for who you are, not what you can do for them.

Quote from: curiouscatholic23

I work a low stress minimum wage job in the service industry. A lot of the men I work with talk about their sɛҳuąƖ escapades on the weekend. They are either sleeping with girlfriends, or enjoying the bar scene. A lot of them have told me they have no desire to marry. Why should I get married when I have all the benefits of marriage (sex) without the committment? This is what one person told me. They are also scared of no fault divorce, which scares me as well.

One of the reasons why I am trying to get a higher paying, higher stress job is that it will give me the income I need to get married and support a traditional catholic family. And to be honest a big motivator for me to get married is that I get to have sex. I realize this drive to get married and to have sex is what has driven men in western civilization to be productive members of society

But something occured to me driving home. What if I just wanted to keep my low stress low pay job because its easier, and I wouldn't have to support a family? What if I purposely stay in the single state, and continue to stay chaste (with the help of the daily rosary, prayer, and mass) and refuse to get married, but also refuse to stay out of religious life. Would that be wrong/ or a sin?

First off - don't let anyone tell you your job isn't good enough to get married.  Only you and your future spouse are to decide that together, looking at the facts.  We live in a society full of very privileged older people who have sucked this country dry with entitlements and with jobs subsidized by government debt - they'll start saying "well you don't have to be able to buy a million dollar house" - when they start talking about how much money is enough money.

These people are middle class philistines living in the past and they care hugely about suburban American values - more than they care about a Catholic family life.

Secondly, don't marry a woman who cares about money.  Yeah, that's not easy.  But if having a certain standard of living is critical to a potential Catholic spouse - that person is probably interested more in living up to some idea of what her life is supposed to be like rather than being interested in you.  You should only care about girls who are interested in you for who you are, not what you can do for them.

Good Post, I like it.

I would also like to add that there is a canon somewhere that says noone can say that marriage is better then the virginal state.  So the answer to your question on moral grounds is yes you can.

I disagree with your last comment about how women should love me for who they are, not what men can do for them. That sounds kind of feminist. Before Vatican II and the sɛҳuąƖ revolution, women loved men not only for who they were, but what they could "provide" for them.

No, you're mistaken.  Feminism erroneously represents marriage as being fundamentally an economic relationship.  That's why they go to such lengths to make family law the domain of the woman's interests.

It's false to say that marriage if foremost about economics - that's a Marxist view.

A lot of girls don't think they need a man to love - they think they need a wedding, a house, children, and a respectable husband.  

Of course a good woman is grateful for what her husband does for her and a husband has economic responsibilities.

But love is not based on economic responsibilities.  The psychology of women has changed a great deal over the past 50 years.  You need to make sure the woman's attitude is one of genuine love, affection, and admiration for you.  Not something she's trying to convince herself of out of hopes for a married life.

What if I just wanted to keep my low stress low pay job because its easier, and I wouldn't have to support a family? What if I purposely stay in the single state, and continue to stay chaste (with the help of the daily rosary, prayer, and mass) and refuse to get married, but also refuse to stay out of religious life. Would that be wrong/ or a sin?

A vocation cannot be said to be of divine origin if it avails to the complacency and satisfaction of self-will in detriment to the greater glory of God and the exigencies of justice and charity that oblige an individual to contribute to the greater good of his community.

If an unmarried man purposely chooses to continue in the single state in order to eschew responsibilities and to have an "easier" life, then it may be interpreted as a sort of self-serving escapism. This is something I can understand, but it is ultimately perilous because it is essentially a surrender to self-will and, ultimately, to the mediocrity and laxity that are ineluctably concomitant with this.

However, I believe it is salutary for a young man to humbly recognize (after prayer, meditation, the counsel of a spiritual director, and ruthless self-examination) that he would be unfit for the care of a wife and children, and therefore to resign himself to a life of celibacy. In this case, self-will is actually mortified (since all normal men wish to be married, or to compensate for the lack of biological procreation and sublimate it by grace and holy chastity this natural impulse with the spiritual fecundity of the Priesthood or the Religious life), and humility and self-abnegation are healthfully exercised, when accompanied by prayer, good works and mortification.

Furthermore, if a young man, who recognizes he would be unfit to be a good husband or father, has also attained to a clear and humble self-knowledge whereby he acknowledges that he would also be unfit for the Priesthood or for the Religious life, then this is even more salutary insofar as the Priesthood and holy Religious are superior to sacred Matrimony. The sacrifice is greater because of the superior excellence of these sacred states, and the self is denied and mortified all the more.

The hypothetical young man in question would not feel relief that he has been spared the burdens of marriage, the Priesthood or the Religious life, so much as he would feel a sense of humbling inadequacy that would motivate him to give himself all the more wholly and earnestly to the cultivation of the interior life, especially illustrated by prayer and penance. Such a young man can be said to have a vocation to the single state, and thereby work for his salvation and that of his fellow neighbors; and even help the clergy and Religious with his support and prayers.

The single life in the present age is not to be derided as inferior, or as a necessary default brought about by demerits on the part of the individual in question, because such a life is: 1) essentially a calling to Christian perfection, as is holy Matrimony (the husband and wife help each other in the way of salvation and perfection, and thereby attain to the graces of state whereby they may impart to their progeny the graces of the faith) and as is the Priesthood and holy Religion in a greater sense; 2) essentially the following of Christ in the Via Crucis, because a Catholic can never escape the Cross, and the single life has its peculiar vexations and trials that are to be properly appreciated and understood by the single Catholics alone; 3) of the utmost utility in our age, for those who are free from the exigencies and obligations of the other vocations have the freedom and resources to study and defend the faith in a way that only they can (although their competence and authority are non-existent as laymen, but they may attain to a certain credibility by their own learning and sanctity).  

I know that the virginal state is higher than marriage. But does that apply to someone like myself? a 22 year old male who is in the "virgin state" not because he has consecrated himself to God, but because he doesn't make enough money to put himself in the married state?

Purity of intention is what determines the answer for such a query.

In actuality, you may not have the fiscal stability and resources to establish a Catholic family and are thus constrained to remain single. However, even by one act of divine charity whereby you offer yourself to God and selflessly abandon yourself in childlike confidence to the inscrutable designs of His divine Providence, you can make this situation all the more well-pleasing before God and meritorious for yourself; it may become a worthy oblation whereby you annihilate self and manfully espouse the Cross and carry it in the footsteps of our divine Redeemer. This is the way celibacy becomes holy chastity that is worthy of holy grace and very pleasing to God, for celibacy in itself is nothing if there is no purity of intention that can make worthwhile in the supernatural order. Even some of the heathen are celibate, and they are not by that fact alone pleasing before God (e.g., the Tibetan Buddhist monks).

Offer to God this predicament as an act of the supreme adoration you owe him; an act of thanksgiving for the graces you have been given despite the fact that God does not owe it to Himself to give you anything; an act of propitiation for past faults; and an act of prayer for light and grace and He Himself will show you the way wherein you shall walk

I sympathize with your situation because I myself am in the same predicament, and I frankly do not believe I am called to sacred matrimony nor to Holy Religion, and I know with moral certitude that it shall never be licit for me to attain to Holy Orders.

Telesphorus said:  

No, you're mistaken.  Feminism erroneously represents marriage as being fundamentally an economic relationship.  That's why they go to such lengths to make family law the domain of the woman's interests.

It's false to say that marriage if foremost about economics - that's a Marxist view.

A lot of girls don't think they need a man to love - they think they need a wedding, a house, children, and a respectable husband.  

Of course a good woman is grateful for what her husband does for her and a husband has economic responsibilities.

But love is not based on economic responsibilities.  The psychology of women has changed a great deal over the past 50 years.  You need to make sure the woman's attitude is one of genuine love, affection, and admiration for you.  Not something she's trying to convince herself of out of hopes for a married life.

I have finally figured out why some of your ideas are a bit confusing and arbitrary.  It is because you are a pure romantic idealist cloaking that idealism under the guise of a "return to Catholic ways."   Your views on marriage are actually revolutionary, as I will explain ( at some length), but you are trying to reconcile them with traditional Catholicism, which must be crazy-making.  

 I recognize your romantic idealism because I was like that myself, in a big way, and have the same impulses.  The difference is that I'm now more detached from the world and from my passions than you ( with no desire to be married ) so I can see it more clearly.  But if you think that economic motivations were not a factor in Catholic marriages of the golden years of the Church, if you are saying that medieval and Renaissance European Catholics were not class-conscious, you need to go back to the books.  

I don't say money was the primary factor.  Not always.  But it was certainly a factor, and a big one.  Do you think wealthy girls in Catholic Spain, France or Italy often married into the lower classes?  Their families would have prevented this in many cases, and you would have ranted on the street corner about "machos.''  But there are reasons for protective families.

It is actually books you like, like Romeo and Juliet and Pride and Prejudice, that advocate a rupture with one's class through marriage ( the poor boy Romeo and the rich girl Juliet; with the roles reversed in P & P ) -- this is what is revolutionary, this is what is modern, this is what is feminist, at least if you extend exceptional cases to a general rule that should be followed.  Meaning that once in a while, people of different classes can make good marriages, but in general it is dangerous.  There are two reasons:  ( 1 )  It opens the doors to upwardly-mobile predators.  Here we can mention another piece of literature -- Washington Square by Henry James. ( 2 ) Not everyone is prepared for the hardships of poverty, and it can put great strain on a marriage unless the spouses are saints or at least extremely devout Catholics.  And even then...

Your hatred of "macho" Latins protecting their daughters is actually revolutionary, not traditionally Catholic.  It is destabilizing.  You often advocate that people of similar physical beauty should marry; why can't you see that it is the same with people of similar financial resources?  If your logic is taken to its logical conclusion, we come to morganatic marriages like that of Franz Ferdindand, and here we see people favoring the whims of their hearts ( or loins ) over all their duties and responsibilities.  This kind of action opens the door to the revolutionaries, it makes the monarchy weak and feeble, and you know what happened there.  It often sounds like this is what you're trumpeting though.  Marriage for love, which is very often "love," i.e. lust, divorced from any societal concerns.  

The kicker is that you then call the classical Catholic view "feminist."  You are now seeing the reverse of reality, which often happens when people get obsessed over something, like when I was obsessed about Jєωs or gαys and saw them everywhere and began to go blind.

I'm not saying that marriage is all about class.  But I am saying that the Catholic world was FAR more class-oriented than the "feminist" modern world.  In our feminist world, marriages between the rich and poor are common, because people buy each other like chattel.  The rich old man buys the pretty young Asian girl whose body he wants exclusive rights over, in return for paid dinners, luxurious lodging and vacations, and everyone knows what the bargain is really about.    This is what is modern, this is what is feminist, this is what is mercenary; not marriages between people of similar class.

The irony of your entire philosophy is that you are a supporter of the monarchy and the old-world Catholic European system yet for romantic reasons, you are  advocating the kind of marriages that helped to bring down that world.  The Catholic aristocracy of Europe were PRECISELY the "machos" you deplore.  You may say that class-conscious old-world Europa had more to do with the rich than with the Church itself, that the Church never told people to marry based on class.  That is true.  It never said the opposite either.  And it does say -- if not dogmatically -- that the security of the wife should be a major factor in her choice.  That is common sense; that is why "macho" parents wanted to make good matches for their daughters, and studly young men seeking a quick buck are not that.  Sometimes -- GASP -- even sincere young men who genuinely love the wealthier girls are not the best matches for these girls.

If you doubt what I'm saying, let's put it into clearer perspective using what you know of history and its trend away from duty and discipline and towards revolution and collapse:  What do you think was more of a danger to the monarchies, marriage between those of similar social status, or people from the upper classes marrying for love or lust alone, often to upwardly-mobile, ambitious scuмbags seething with jealousy who want to bring the whole thing down, due to their feelings of being excluded?  By this description I think you can see that I am describing the kind of person apt to become a Freemason...  What better way to bring down the "old guard" than seduce the daughter and insinuate your way into the family...  Granted, not everyone who marries into a wealthy family is like that.  Some of them fit right into their new milieu and even bring something to the table.  But it is just harder to know if someone really loves you if there is a huge class divide, because you will always wonder how much of it was about money.

Your view, again, is the modern and feminist one.  It is in the modern world where marriages, all too often, are about one wealthy person using their money to buy the toy they want, the trophy wife or trophy husband.  Two people with similar bank accounts marrying have greater security in knowing that they are not loved for their wealth.  Don't you see that marriages are MORE about money when they involve a class divide?  It creates all kinds of problems.  For instance, let's say a poor boy marries a rich girl, and her father gives him a job at the company.  But this guy doesn't know what he's doing and everyone considers him a joke, they say he's only there because of nepotism, which is true.  He starts to feel like he is not a man at all, so to reassert his pride, he begins to sleep with the secretaries.  The secretaries, in their turn, see this as a chance for social advancement, to be wined and dined on this guy's wife's money...  The family of the woman is humiliated.  

I'm not saying this always happens.  I am saying that when one person is from a lower class than another, it creates more OPPORTUNITES for friction, and for situations like this.  The poorer person may always feel at a disadvantage, so to get leverage, he or she will have to use sɛҳuąƖ power, the sɛҳuąƖ hold they have over their spouse.  In some cases, it is their sɛҳuąƖ power that allowed them to contract the marriage in the first place... The rich girl wanted her trophy boy and daddy couldn't say no.

Ultimately, it's all very flexible.  The character of the potential spouse should be assessed, as well as his or her bank account ( yes, it matters ).  The trick for us is to get over our jealousy of those who have more, and accept our lot, if we don't happen to find a rich spouse.  There is someone for everyone, or at least, if marriage is your vocation, God will find you someone.  There are women out there for whom a husband making $25,000 a year is $25,000 more than she already has.  

While I guess it's natural to a degree, the license to have sex shouldn't ever be a motivator for anyone. Think about it for at least a minute... Is it worth committing yourself for life to living with a woman, supporting her, bearing with ALL her faults (and I haven't even brought up the raising of children yet), just so you can have 30min. of pleasure with her every year or so? It's kind of like making the trade off of your soul suffering in hell for a short lived pleasure that will afterwards be less than a memory of no consolation.

Most people miss the boat on what marriage is all about, because what they envision differs from what God intended, and if they don't believe in God, well no wonder. There is MUCH MUCH more to marriage than sex, because it's all about working and toiling to save your own soul, the soul of the person that you have sworn to love (for God's sake), and bring into existence and shape other souls to populate heaven, and strive to create the conditions that favor that while on earth. Without the supernatural ends in mind, marriage is actually pretty empty, let alone a sɛҳuąƖ relationship. And it's no wonder because man was not designed to live for the sake of sex like an animal. He was created for the adoration and service of God, and it is in that that he finds completeness.

I think one of the reasons why divorce is so widespread in secular society today is because wives hold sex out as a bargaining chip with their husbands, instead of offering the marital debt whenever asked.

I find this type of feminist post-modern attitude quite clear in these posts.

Dissapointing to say the least.