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I’ve wondered a few times in the past months whether the Church devises Pre-Cana requirements just to test how much the couple in question really wants to tie that knot. My quest to enter the holy state of Matrimony has taken me through all kinds of thorny jurisdictional issues, and even required of me the painful concession of registering at the (very liberal) Novus parish down the street. (Because I was received into the Church in an FSSP parish outside the diocese in which I reside, no priest was in a position to be my canonical pastor and give me permission to marry outside his diocese. Needless to say, I did not explain to the very Novus priest at the local parish my precise reasons for not having registered sooner. I kept things vague, and I think he just assumed it had something to do with the frequent moving that is typical of students.)
But this week I had the great pleasure of completing the famous FOCCUS test, a sort of personality/relationship test designed by non-Catholics for the purpose of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the relationships of couples preparing for marriage. Although the test is not, as I say, specifically designed by Catholics, the particular version that we did has been “adapted” for Catholic couples. It is a Scantron multiple-choice test with fifty-some questions, plus add-on sections for religiously divided couples and couples who have been cohabitating before marriage. Yup, that’s the wonders of modern psychology… they can evaluate your relationship through just fifty-six filled-in bubbles! How great is that?
Actually, in some respects it was less bad than I had braced myself to expect. Based on the questionnaires sent us by the Pre-Cana workshop planners (which we were supposed to complete privately before the session), I thought the questions might be both vague and irritatingly blunt. At least fifty percent of those questions were all but impossible to answer. About half asked me to make wild generalizations about my entire family, i.e. “My family had a good sense of humor and enjoyed each other’s company,” or “Honesty was very important in my family,” or “In my family the message was, it is more important to belong to the family than to develop your own interests or do your own thing.”
Well, as a matter of fact, there are seven members of my immediate family, and we are not all exactly the same. We aren’t all equally funny or equally honest, and the precise balance between individuality and family togetherness was never settled to the point where I could capture it with a ‘T’ or an ‘F’. Had I been forced to fill in a Scantron for those questions, at least half of my answers would have been more or less totally arbitrary.
FOCCUS was less bad. That isn’t to say that there weren’t still a fair number of rather vague questions. The task is to select “Agree” or “Disagree” to a number of statements, and the statements included things like, “We have discussed and agreed upon ideas about our future home” (what does this mean, exactly? Are they asking whether we’ve settled the curtain colors, or whether we’ve agreed what city we’ll live in, or what?), “We agree on the parenting roles each of us will have” (well, I was planning to be the mother, and he the father. Presumably they want more than that, but do we have to work out who’s in charge of bedtime, who of bath time, etc., before the marriage is even consummated?), and “My family has positive attitudes towards sex” (ummmm, do I have to call and ask them?).
Some of the questions were pretty obvious red-flag indicators of a problematic relationship. Anyone who answers ‘Agree’ to, “I have at times been fearful that my future spouse will cause me harm,” needs a serious talk with their priest before anything further is done. And of course there are questions about substance abuse, problems relating to abuse or bad past relationships, and so forth. I suppose on some level going through the questions makes you feel lucky for all the problems you don’t have to worry about.
Some questions would potentially give a clear indication of a couple’s incomplete commitment to the Catholic understanding of marriage. I’m not sure they were intended in such a way, but if priests were to use them that way, the questionnaire might actually do some good. “We have agreed not to have children,” or “I could not under any circumstances remain married to my spouse of he/she were unfaithful to me” might indicate some places where the couple needs to be made to understand what a marriage is.
Some of the questions might actually make good conversation-starters between partners. “My spouse and I agree that it is not healthy for us to avoid all disagreements,” raises some interesting issues about when it’s better to stand your ground until your point is made, and when it is better to withdraw. “Our families understand that our marriage relationship will come ahead of other responsibilities to them” is a little bit hard to answer with a simple “Agree” or “Disagree”; while one’s marriage, and the family founded through it, should properly become a top priority in life, it doesn’t function like a trump card in Bridge. If, for example, an aged parent required support, this could not be denied even if the parent’s presence at home created some marital strain. Still, it might not be such a bad thing to meditate privately on the changes in priorities that marriage might entail.
What was most distressing about FOCCUS, though, was that it seemed not to reflect Catholic sensibilities regarding marriage. The psychologists who designed it were obviously of the school of people who think that communication will solve everything in a relationship. While I certainly agree that good communication between spouses can on the whole be a great thing, some things should not require discussion or even thought. Consider: “We have discussed and agreed on what being faithful will mean in our marriage.” Come to think of it, no, the Doctor and I never have had a frank conversation about the attitude we’d take towards an open marriage. Obviously, broaching such a subject would be perfectly absurd.
Further, some of the questions regarding sex seemed to me inappropriate for people who had heeded the Church’s direction to remain chaste until the marriage. “My future spouse and I agree on the relationship between sex and intimacy,” seemed like rather a silly thing to write. Who does understand such a mysterious thing, let alone agree on it? And what chance would my fiance and I have of grasping the nature of such a relationship when we’ve yet to experience it? The question, “I am uncomfortable about some sexual activities my marriage partner may ask of me,” also seemed inappropriate to me. How should I know? Was I supposed to be speculating about this beforehand? Does this seem a reasonable thing to ask of a virginal woman? Though they avoided directly implying it, it still seemed to me that FOCCUS worked on the assumption that you’d expect most contemporary psychologists to share: chastity is too hard, most people won’t do it, so just try to tread delicately on this point. I get very tired of the pervasiveness of that assumption, particularly since there’s usually no gracious and tactful way to oppose it. It’s discouraging to get the same impression from a test being given to me through my Catholic parish.
I imagine the benefits that have made FOCCUS so popular in Novus parishes are that, 1) it seemed modern and scientific and trendy, and 2) it saves the priest time when he only has to process a Scantron sheet and spend a few minutes looking it over, rather than really, seriously interviewing the couple. I understand the realities of a diocese in which there have been three vocations in the last five years, but it still seems there must be a place for something better than FOCCUS. I ask the Catholic psychologists of the world, to get together and work on the problem, so that the world’s engaged can feel that the Pre-Cana process was not only useful, but cCatholic.
I have some other ideas about marriage prep, but since the Doctor and I are attending the actual Pre-Cana workshop tomorrow, it might perhaps be better to wait until after that event so that I can evaluate Catholic Pre-Cana requirements more fully. (Also, it’s quite late, and I’m falling asleep on my keyboard!) Stay tuned, however, and if you’re willing say an Ave for us because I anticipate this being an ugly event.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Dear Miss Clara,
I had a kinder interpretation of the “We have discussed and agreed on what being faithful will mean in our marriage.” question, which I would like to suggest.
I saw it as asking whether you and your fiance had discussed the boundaries of friendship with friends of the opposite sex, since people may have a differing idea of what consitutes emotional fidelity.
Some people are suspicious of their spouse’s platonic friendships of the opposite sex, and people have different limits of tolerance. For example, would you mind if the Good Doctor spent time counselling/praying for a female friend in your absence? Took her to lunch? Dinner? Movie? And vice versa.
It’s one of those things that can lead to conflict if one party “minds” while the other one goes “but, honey, he/she’s just a friend!”
Anyway, good luck with pre-Cana. I’d be interested to know what happens there because we don’t have that in my country. Well, we have other programmes (none involving Scantron sheets) for engaged Catholics — I can tell you more about that later if you’re interested.
God bless!
Disclaimer: I am not a canonist.
“even required of me the painful concession of registering at the (very liberal) Novus parish down the street. (Because I was received into the Church in an FSSP parish outside the diocese in which I reside, no priest was in a position to be my canonical pastor and give me permission to marry outside his diocese.”
Don’t worry about it. Registration has no canonical effect in regard to a territorial parish you live in anyways. The pastor of that parish is your pastor anyways.
(I’m not sure what the situation is with quasi-parishes such as St. Joseph’s, the Latin Mass community in Richmond, VA.)
Clara,
I think the point of the question “We have discussed and agreed on what being faithful will mean in our marriage.” is one of meeting expectations.
Rather than assuming that your spouse-to-be has the same view regarding a faithful marriage, the question is meant to lead to a discussion. Expressing one’s expectations to one’s spouse is ALWAYS a good thing, even in the most trivial of matters.
It doesn’t have to be a sit-down discussion either. It could be as simple as, “Do you agree that marriage we will be married until death and that neither of us will cheat on the other?”
“Yeah.”
There, you discussed it.
EM
That aspect probably didn’t come to the minds of Clara and The Doctor because any such friendships as you describe should be considered out of bounds for any traditional Catholic.
I cannot think of any instance along the lines of what you mentioned where I would find myself alone with a woman not my wife, mother or some other relative.
Counseling and praying with a female friend?
That’s why we have celibate priests. That’s their job so they can provide this to women without any question of mixed intentions or purposes.
Going out to dinner or a movie?
Are you serious? Is there any conceivable reason why another person couldn’t also come along and thereby remove the apparent scandal?
There is some common decency that used to exist especially among Catholics regarding these types of things.
I think it’s totally New Order to think it’s ok for married man to have an emotional close friendship with another woman or to go out to dinner or a movie one-on-one.
EM,
Thank you for your note… I did actually consider that such things might have been intended, but in my desire to be snarky and sarcastic I didn’t elaborate on it. :-)
I don’t know if I *quite* agree with Joe Six Pack that opposite-sex friendships should be out of the question within marriage. I have a number of male friends from over the years and I haven’t delivered “end-of-friendship” notices to them because of my impending marriage. And since our field is rather male-dominated, I also work with (predominantly) men, and often may be alone with one by chance in an office (there aren’t very many female graduate students in our department, so I share an office with four men) or the department lounge. He likewise has some female friends, whom he sees under friendly circumstances from time to time, and he periodically will have academic meetings one-on-one with female students in his office. This has been true throughout our long-distance engagement, and yet I can’t recall our ever having an argument about jealousy.
The problem with the “you should always discuss everything just in case” rule is that in some cases, bringing up the subject for dicussion is itself likely to be interpreted as a concern or warning sign. I’ve never thought to be concerned about his relationships with his students; I take it as assumed that they are complately above-board and that he is trustworthy. If he were to ask me, “Does it worry you that I’m sometimes alone in my office with college-aged girls?” that would give me a bit of a shock. What is he saying? Should I be worried about it? Etc. Likewise if I said, “I grabbed a sandwich today with (male student from our department); is that okay with you?” It wouldn’t have occurred to him that there was anything suspicious in this… until I asked the question.
Jealousy is a monster that feeds on itself. Once the seeds of mistrust are planted, it’s hard to know how they’ll grow. Sometimes an issue may arise and need to be discussed, but these occasions should be well justified and carefully handled; a spoken admission that mutual trust may not exist can itself be damaging to a relationship.(This is what seems curious to be about James’ suggestion. We talk about the nature of marriage in the abstract reasonably often, so seriously posing a question like the one he suggests would certainly seem insulting to my finace, as much as if I asked, “You’re never going to beat me, are you?”)
It’s very hard to lay down hard-and-fast ground rules for what is and isn’t appropriate between people, because so much depends on the meaning the participants attach to them. A dinner can be perfectly innocent under some circumstances, and a glance passing in the hall can be laden with meaning. That’s not to say that nothing should be absolutely out-of-bounds for purely proprietary reasons (for example, one would need an very extraordinary excuse for staying alone in a hotel room with a member of the opposite sex other than one’s spouse) but posing hypothetical situations (would you ever…?) can again be insulting since it implies that the other doesn’t have good judgment about such things. Normally I agree with Joe Six Pack that I’d want an explanation why my husband needed to go to a movie with another woman without inviting me. Still, I could imagine a scenario in which a female friend was in town, they both wanted to see a particular film and I was feeling ill or had piles of work to get through… then I might possibly give my blessing to him and a woman to see it together. I’ve had dinner with a married, male friend before, with his wife’s blessing, when she was out of town for a few days at a conference. Normally all three of us do things together, but this time she was gone, and she knows perfectly well that she can trust both me and her husband to behave appropriately.
I think the key to opposite sex friendships within marriage is not excluding the spouse from the friendship. My fiance has a good friend from graduate school (herself now married) and I hope we will keep in touch with her and her husband over the years. In some sense she’ll always be more “his friend” than “my friend” given their many years of friendship prior to our marriage. But we do things all together when we see them and it’s clear that nothing about the relationship is closed to me. I think this is particularly important if you’re wandering into “emotionally charged” territory like EM mentions. If one of his female friends, or one of my male friends, were to be in some kind of trouble, then of course we would pray for them… together. Why would one of us want to exclude the other from prayer? Likewise, if “counselling” were needed, or something as emotionally charged as that, it would seem most appropriate for the person to come over when we were both around, and make us both feel involved. (I probably need not add that the same is not necessarily true of same-sex friendships. All reasonable husbands or wives should accept and even encourage some friendships between their spouse and members of that person’s same sex, since there are some activities or conversational topics that are best suited to groups of men or groups of women.)
Sometimes the requirement to let one’s spouse in on the opposite-sex friendship may mean that the friendship fades over time. So be it… not every friendship can last, and obviously one’s marriage must be given priority when a conflict exists. But so long as they’re not suspiciously exclusive, it seems unnecessary to rule out such friendships entirely.
Clara,
I was speaking more to the intent of the FOCCUS question(s). The survey is trying to ensure that the couples are not entering the marriage with any of the BIG unexpressed expectations, and that assumptions are not being made.
When my wife and I took the FOCCUS test 13 years ago, I assumed that I would do the financial planning for our family. My wife assumed that she would be performing that role. Each of these assumptions was based on our family backgrounds. The FOCCUS test revealed that this was an area for discussion.
You said that you and your fiancé have discussed marriage in the abstract quite often. Perhaps it is time to have a sit-down to discuss the concrete, putting the discussion within the context of complete trust. Asking a question of your prospective spouse should be completely natural. Fear of rejection or judgment should be cast away as a barrier to the deep intimacy sought by the two of you. No nagging question should go un-asked or un-answered.
Unfortunately, most of the questions posed by the survey are not addressed by engaged couples. It should raise a lot of questions regarding spousal roles and lifestyles for these couples.
James, I agree with you that some sort of Pre-Cana can be a good thing. And I’ve tried to acknowledge in my post places where I thought the test was reasonable and possibly helpful. You’ll note that I ended, not by suggesting that engaged couples should be left alone entirely, but rather by suggesting that it would be better to give them a test developed by Catholics, rather than one developed by non-Catholic psychologists who presumably make all the same assumptions about couples and about marriage that other American professionals would tend to make. We’re aware that it’s necessary to discuss practical aspects of building a life together (finances, chores, child-related issues, where to spend holidays, and on and on) but very likely we’ve missed some and I’m not too proud to have a test help us to identify those areas. And many people, I know, have neglected to discuss almost any of these issues and are much more seriously in need of a reality check, as you might say.
But it’s much harder to take the test seriously when you feel that unflattering and unCatholic assumptions are being made from the outset. And while I will respect that you have more experience than I in such matters, I’m inclined to disagree that no question should ever go unasked. Open communication is generally good, but sometimes we all have ugly thoughts that it really would be much better just to dismiss or suppress. “Are you secretly attracted to that man?” or “Do you think that woman is prettier than I am?” are probably good examples.
I’m not sure that I ever asserted that such questions should always be asked. Those types of loaded questions smack of distrust and/or paranoia. No good can come from them. If I did assert as such, then I recant.
Persistent questions regarding one’s motivation (the lawn always needs to be mowed) or outlook on life, should be asked. The man you marry today is not going to be the same man (with the exact same views and motivations) in 5 or 10 years. We all grow and mature throughout life, and situations will present themselves in the future that are unthinkable at this point in time.
What I am advocating is continued open communication between spouses — even when there is a fear of rejection. God desires an open, loving relationship for every marriage. Your spouse-to-be loves you and wants to spend the rest of his life making you happy (as you do him). These fears are a barrier to the kind of relationship that God desires for you.
Clara
I wouldn’t go to a movie with a female friend not because of some subjective feelings of jealousy that this may inflict upon my wife, but for the objective reason that it would be wrong.
Sleeping in a hotel room with a member of the opposite sex other than my wife is objectively wrong. There are no excuses. (No more rooms in the hotel? Then sleep outside.)
My wife would trust me 100% and I would trust her the same. That is not the issue. The issues are objective right and wrong and also basic Catholic decency.
James,
Everything you say sounds right. Of course I agree that communication is vitally important in a marriage. I just think that, in some cases, mutual understanding is well enough established that to bring up a topic for serious discussion, just because a book says you need to, might disturb the shared understanding more than helping it. For example, one book I saw really did advise engaged couples to always discuss the question of physical abuse, just in case, “even if it doesn’t seem to be an issue.” If my fiance were prone to violent episodes, or if I had ever felt threatened by him, then such a conversation would be warranted. But he isn’t, and I haven’t, and if I broached the subject seriously he would understandably be hurt. (”Don’t you know me better than that?”) Couples should discuss things that worry them, but they shouldn’t always be pressured into discussing things that don’t worry them. That’s all I was saying. But I appreciate your remarks.
Joe Six Pack, dropping the phrase “objectively wrong” to support your point about moviegoing is just childishness and I’m not getting into it. As far as sharing hotel rooms, I agreed that the circumstances would need to be “extraordinary.” Obviously “it will save us each fifty bucks” is not at all a sufficient reason. But it’s a matter of strong prudential considerations, not a matter of the thing being sinful per se. (This is similar to the “man going into a brothel” sort of case… there are almost no circumstances where this is okay, but entering the building isn’t actually a sin in itself. If he’s a policeman arresting a dangerous criminal inside the brothel, that could make it okay.) Consider the following scenario: my husband is on his way to a conference and an enormous blizzard comes up and makes it impossible to move any further on the highway. He manages to pull into a tiny town with just one hotel, and gets the last room. Meanwhile, a female friend of mine on the way to the same conference calls me in desperation because she has been stranded in the same little town and now there are no available rooms. Her choices are to sleep outside in below-zero weather, to knock on random people’s doors at eleven o’clock at night begging for shelter, or to go the police station and ask to sleep in the drunk tank. Or I could call my husband and say, “Sorry, I know it’s awkward, but given how bad her position is, could you let her have the extra bed in your room?”
Under those circumstances, I would call my husband and ask. You should not confuse questions of propriety (which do matter, but can be overriden non-sinfully when the reasons are strong enough) with activities that are sinful in themselves.
Clara, Excuse me if you have already tried to have a Traditional Wedding Mass and failed but I didn’t get that from this post. There must be a few parishes in your diocese in which you can look around for a sympathetic priest. If he doesn’t know how to offer the Traditional Mass you can tell him that you have a priest who wants to do it—the one who brought you into the Church or perhaps Fr. Rigorous. A Pastor can delegate any priest who is in good standing and he wouldn’t even have to consult the bishop. Tell the priest your background, that you travel two hours to Mass every Sunday, and this would make your day the most memorable event, etc. It’s worth a try. I have some friends who did this. And I have heard of others who married by the priest after telling him they would forgo the Mass if it couldn’t be Traditional. After the simple ceremony, they went somewhere else for the Mass. I don’t think you have to be married in Ithaca either.
Thank you so much for your concern, Discipule! But don’t worry. Actually, we will be married by Fr. Carl Gismondi, FSSP, in a Tridentine Nuptial Mass, Deo gratias! The issue with the FOCCUS is this: my father works at a Catholic university in California, and they have an absolutely beautiful chapel with a gorgeous high altar. So we booked that chapel and more or less got him to pull some strings for us to get the university’s permission to have a Latin Mass. (He’s not even Catholic, of course, but he did it anyway because he loves me. :)) Fr. Gismondi generously agreed to come out for the wedding and marry us, so we were all set. But the wedding chapel coordinator (a very silly, very Novus woman who is more than a little disgruntled that the university has approved our request for the Tridentine Mass — she obviously likes to run the show herself with the weddings, from the set-up to the photographs, and this was NOT how she liked to do things!) is supposed to ensure that everyone gets all the proper paperwork before they’re allowed to be married… and the diocese requires that we do Pre-Cana and FOCCUS. We might be able to get out of it in virtue of being Latin Mass Catholics, but we’ve had to fight enough battles as it is just to get the Mass and it’s better not to provoke another one. Taking a Scantron test and doing a weekend workshop isn’t that painful, especially when the payoff is a Tridentine Nuptial Mass in a *gorgeous* chapel!
By the way, I found your last comment on the “forming hearts and minds” post quite fascinating, though I didn’t get a chance to say so. I’d love to hear more sometime about your principled decision in adolescence to forego college… I’ve never known anyone who did that before. Really interesting.
That’s great news, Clara. I thought there was something missing in the puzzle and should have known for sure that you would work and fight for nothing but the best for this great Sacrament. Congratulations.
Regarding the college bit, there’s really not much to it. It had more to do with Irish stubbornness than principle—for which my father gets the credit. Maybe sometime I’ll address it in a short email as you might regret offering me a soapbox; my hackneyed clichés and stale jokes are annoying enough. Thanks for asking.
Marriage is a very complicated canonical procedure, and a piece that some readers may be missing is that 1)those to get married must have domicile which then determines which parish you are in, and 2) the canonical pastor of the parish in which you reside has the right to marry you. It is for the pastor to then give permission for you to marry elsewhere.
These are just two canonical points which then open the door for all kinds of particular law established by the diocese and in the wake of particular laws one finds many hoops to go through like Foccus.
Today’s world is pretty messy and unfortunatly most of those who approach Matrimony don’t know what they are approaching thus all the rules. I’m glad that you and the Doctor are playing by all the rules in your local area because in the end the rules are for the good ordering of society (and some even determine validity!). Can’t wait to hear about Pre-Cana.
I think that Clara’s answer to EM actually underlines EM’s point. Yes, it would be awkward to raise certain issues such as the kind and degree of association with people of the opposite sex will/should provoke jealousy. That’s why it might be useful for an institution to force the issue. If the Doctor asked “Do you have a problem with me spending time alone in my office with college-age girls?” you might, as you say, think… why? should I be worried about that? But if he says, “I’m just asking because it’s require for this questionnaire,” then that’s should relax you. And if perchance you *do* have a problem with it, justifiably or not, and were afraid to tell him, this could break the ice. There could be a lot of similar situations.
Fair enough, Nathan. That might be a good reason for forcing people to talk about things in Pre-Cana. But I’m not sure it’s helpful to put it on a Scantron test like this one: have you discussed this, yes or no? You’re supposed to fill in the bubble without consulting, and that’s it. The answer to a question like that isn’t necessarily indicative of anything important, and the fact that the question is on the test isn’t necessarily enough to justify bringing it up in conversation (since the questionnaire doesn’t require you to talk about the stuff.) And implying to engaged couples that they should be more jealous than they are isn’t necessarily a good idea.
On the other hand, making people discuss such things in a seminar might sometimes be beneficial for precisely the reason you suggest. “Well, it’s not that I’ve ever worried about it, but since we’re here…” It sometimes is better to discuss very sensitive things at a time other than the time they’re worrying you (the other person’s annoying habits, things about their family that make you uncomfortable, etc.) in order to make them less defensive. And sometimes a workshop environment can put people in the right mood to look on stuff like that constructively.
Don’t know how much of that happened at our Pre-Cana, which was in large part just tedious hours of aging hippies telling personal stories that had very little to do with anything. I’ll say more about the Pre-Cana workshop in another post perhaps, but later… it made for a pretty exhausting (though extremely boring) weekend, and I might need to recuperate for a little first.
Clara said
“Joe Six Pack, dropping the phrase “objectively wrong” to support your point about moviegoing is just childishness and I’m not getting into it. As far as sharing hotel rooms, I agreed that the circumstances would need to be “extraordinary.” Obviously “it will save us each fifty bucks” is not at all a sufficient reason. But it’s a matter of strong prudential considerations, not a matter of the thing being sinful per se… Consider the following scenario: my husband is on his way to a conference and an enormous blizzard comes up and makes it impossible to move any further on the highway. He manages to pull into a tiny town with just one hotel, and gets the last room. Meanwhile, a female friend of mine on the way to the same conference calls me in desperation because she has been stranded in the same little town and now there are no available rooms. Her choices are to sleep outside in below-zero weather, to knock on random people’s doors at eleven o’clock at night begging for shelter, or to go the police station and ask to sleep in the drunk tank. Or I could call my husband and say, “Sorry, I know it’s awkward, but given how bad her position is, could you let her have the extra bed in your room?”
I would hope that The Doctor would be enough of a Catholic gentleman to offer his room to your female friend - and himself sleep in a chair in the hotel lobby or in his car with plenty of blankets - rather than put your female friend in the position of sleeping in the same room as a married man or herself sleeping in the hotel lobby or in her car. (If he dies in his car overnight what a message to the world: “Catholic Married man freezes to death while sleeping in car rather than share hotel room with another woman.” Now instead in the Novus Ordo world we have the likes of Monsignor Clark making excuses for sharing a hotel room with a female. You know, we cannot presume sin and all that pretentious, over-educated nonsense.)
I remember sleeping one night in a cramped Ford Escort (very uncomfortable!) rather than share a room with my fiancée.
If you saw The Doctor sitting on a crowded bus with a young lady on his lap, would you accept the excuse - well dear, there were no more empty seats for her to sit?
What is indeed childish is your compulsion to always state that certain acts of Catholic manners and decency are not always matters of sin. No one would suggest that a police investigation be hampered simply because all the police officers are traditional Catholics who would not enter a brothel. This is crazy. But you offer this constant example and leave the issue of entering a brothel open ended since you’ve managed to apply some sophistry to the issue.
Several years ago a devout Catholic Air Force lieutenant risked court-martial rather than share a nuclear missile silo bunker with a female officer. They work in small bunkers alone for 24 hour shifts or something like this. He refused to be partnered with a female officer. I never heard the final outcome of the case, but it made national news. My guess is that he probably was given non-judicial punishment (requiring no court-martial and was dismissed from the service.)
What a silly traditional Catholic though, huh? Why risk his livelihood and also receive, at a minimum, an other-than-honorable discharge and potentially even a felony conviction and prison sentence over something that is “per se” not sinful? He obviously didn’t study Catholic morality at Cornell.
What hotels allow random people to camp out in their lobby? And what kind of sick person would admire a man for freezing to death and letting his children grow up fatherless, rather than breaking a guideline (admittedly a fairly strong one) of etiquette/propriety? If you’re going to die for something, make it something that is itself important. You evidently have not grasped the difference between sins (which cannot be sanctioned at any cost) and occasions to sin, which can sometimes be risked when need is strong enough. No reasonable person would be scandalized by such an incident when the details had been related.
Well, the Air Force case is possibly different; if the Air Force had the capability to prevent such awkward situations from arising, and simply chose not to, it might be heroic to take a stand about it. But the message would not be “no circumstances are desperate enough to justify this” but rather, “the military should at least make an effort to spare people this impropriety,” which is a much different, and much more reasonable, position.
Given your attitude toward compromise rather than death, you’ll probably make it through any coming Christian persecution pretty fine.
If only St. Hannah and her seven sons had received Novus Ordo theology classes, they would have been spared so much agony and pain. ‘Sons, just bite off a little bit of pork and spit it out when they’re not looking. Then we can all just go home.’
Friend, I hope you do get a chance to be a martyr someday, and you’re better placed for it at present than most of us, but do keep in mind that in order to achieve martyrdom, you must die for the faith. Inventing moral laws and then dying for them only makes you a fool, not a martyr.
Clara,
I understand the difference between sin and the near occassion of sin. Do you understand the difference between ‘good enough’ and heroic virtue?
I hope that you and the Doctor are working on a write-up of the Pre-Cana gathering this past weekend? Though some members of our Society got to hear the story, others did not, and I’m sure that they would be delighted and entertained.
Also, I think that this point about the primacy of conscience is deserving of some development as a hallmark of Novus, heretical thought.