Just Get Married? :-o

Part four of four posts, based on a conversation with Mark Miloscia, Catholic Lobbyist for WA state legislature. Part one, part two and part three.

I asked him what he thought we should do about it. He looked at me as if I had asked a question to which the answer was obvious and said, "Get married." I appreciate the simplicity and directness of that answer, but I pressed him further. Given the fact that we live in a society that, for whatever reason, young men are not motivated to seek out marriage, I asked if he reccomended that we just get married out of a sense of duty. He answered unequivocally, "Yes."

I can agree with Mark in two points: I agree that marriage is a great good. For some people it may even be the greatest good this life has to offer, but for all it is a noble and worthy vocation. I can also agree that we are experiencing a shortage of Catholic marriages and that more Catholic young people should probably be pursuing marriage.

The streets having led on as they do, I am now come to the "overwhelming question."

What do we do about it. Mark's answer was one of childlike simplicity. "Just get married!" He even raised his eyebrows, like a ten-year old asking "Why aren't you married? I thought all grownup people got married."

From Shakespeare's dictum that the "path of true love never did run smooth," (at least I think that was the Bard, but I could be wrong) to the present day, it seems that that simple proposition "Just get married," has become fraught with complications. I notice that the ones who regard it with that childlike simplicity are either children for whom it is nothing more than a fuzzy imagination, or older people who have long since chosen their vocation, committed to it, lived with it, endured it, fallen out of love with it, all but given up on it, perhaps, but in the end stayed true to that commitment. From that perspective of a certain amount of security in their choices, even if it is only the security of having so much invested, no doubt it does seem like a simple choice.

One of my pet projects has always been trying to imagine everything from everyone else's point of view. I can see how, with a lifetime invested in living the marriage, all the decisions leading up to it might seem like not worthy of so much fuss. It's almost as if they say, "Mercy, child! You think this is stressful? You ain't seen nothing yet!"

An analogy would be the way I view basic trainees. I went through basic more than ten years ago. Since then I have been through multiple deployments, Sapper School, years of regular army training, Special Forces training, schools and places where a good day was worse than anything Basic Training had to offer. It is easy for me to look at the basic trainees and laugh with a certain superior attitude and say, "Awww! Did the big scary Drill Sergeant yell at you? Just wait until you get into the real army!" But I can't do it. I still remember what it was like. I was terrified. I was alone and isolated, I didn't like or trust my fellow soldiers and they didn't like me. We learned to get along but I had no real friends. To this day I do not like yelling, I don't like calling people names or hearing people called names. There is a certain irony in the fact that I practice killing people on a regular basis, but sarcasm shivers me to my very soul.

To the people in the midst of discernment it is a very real cross. It has to be. I didn't wake up one morning in the middle of Camp McCall North Carolina and find myself training to be a Green Beret. I had to go through everything that led up to it, and struggle and feel small and pitiful, and want to quit a million times. Of course to a Green Beret my little struggles would look small. But then again, I was small, and those struggles were making me bigger.

Mark's idea "Just get married," kind of appeals to me. That is, he appeals to duty, and I like duty. Duty is solid. Duty is not complicated. Just figure out what it is and the rest is simple. Everything is always simpler when you no longer have to worry about what or whether, but only how.

On the other hand, most people don't have that attitude, and I am not sure it is a correct one in regards to marriage. There is something to be said for doing the right thing, regardless of how you feel about it, but, as a reader reminded me in a post a few months ago, no woman wants to feel like she is a chore. The problem is at its root a problem of desire. Perhaps getting married out of a sense of duty is better than not getting married at all, and perhaps it is not. The problem runs deeper. The very fact that we are discussing what should be the most natural and desirable thing in the world as a duty, that in itself is evidence of a problem.

There are two answers to that. The first and simplest is that all we need is to be wakened. Most guys will probably find that it is pretty natural and even fun, being in love. Like when we were little and my older brother didn't want to do anything with the family on the weekends because he was a teenager. He would whine and moan about it, but once we got going he would get into it, and by the end he would be having more fun than anyone. I suspect that all those Catholic guys out there who, for whatever reason, just don't feel like dating, would probably find themselves enjoying it if they once got into it.

(Incidentally I also expect they would find themselves hating it often enough. Being in a relationship is hard work. It requires you to get up off the couch, stop playing WOW and pick up the phone and call someone, schedule activities and actually honor those commitments. Since this is a relationship with a view to marriage, it reuires you to get to know the person, pray with her, and ultimately to make a choice concerning her. It requires inventiveness, attention, commitment, sacrifice, and whole host of other bloody uncomfortable things. On the whole, video games are a lot easier. So is porn. So is hanging out with the bros (they don't give you hell if you don't call everyday.) Almost anything is easier. But that is not the way to holiness. For something that is handed out as free gift, holiness sure does take a lot of work.)

The second answer to the problem of desire (two paragraphs up, if my parenthetical paragraph distracted you. [I am noticing I have a thing for parenthetical phrases]) is much more complex. In speaking of rekindling a desire and passion for marriage as a vocation on a serious cultural level we are getting into a problem too broad for the tail end of an already overly long blog post, and too in depth for my powers of analysis at 9:40 PM, even after two beers. (They weren't really great beers. Not bad, but not spectacular. For spectacular blogging I reccomend spectacular beer.)

Individual choices. That's what interests me right now, and so that is what I will stick to for now. Goodnight, Y'all.

Differentiation

Part three of four posts, based on a conversation with Mark Miloscia, Catholic Lobbyist for WA state legislature. Part one, part two, and part four.

I challenged his assumption we are all called either to the clergy/religious life or to the married life, and he acknowledged that there were exceptions to the general rule, but insisted that for most people marriage was the path to holiness. "That is the only way we learn how to love. I could have been more blunt about it. I could have gone around the room and asked every individual person, 'Why aren't you married? Why aren't you married?' But everyone needs to be if they are not called to the religious life."

The question of vocation is one I have written about before. I have thought about it a great deal for the last ten years or so, but always trying to make sure that, even in the midst of seeminly endless discernment I was at least trying to do something worthwhile.

For Catholics the typical options are:
1) The priesthood or religious life (which includes celibacy).
2) Marriage, family, children etc.

For Mark, these are the only two options, (with a few rare and grudging exceptions) and most people will be called to the married life. He approached the subject in conversation with a refreshing directness and firmness of choice reminiscent of a time with fewer options. When he grew up, perpetual singlehood was simply not a common choice.

Whereas in Mark's day "discernment" was almost an unheard of concept, in our day it is expected of every good Catholic girl and boy. Why? We as a generation, we young adults, have been given more options than any other generation. Careers are open to us, dreams, aspirations, hopes, nothing is out of our reach it seems. We have been given so much! From my experience most of the Catholic young people I know who take their faith seriously at all have a strong sense that much has been given us and much will be expected from us. We want to dare and do great things, but at the same time we also want the comfort of home and relationships. We have so many possibilities, but the very surplus of possibilities seems to have a paralyzing effect on us. We are a lot like stem cells, full of potential. However, the only way to realize that potential is to differentiate, become one thing or the other, giving up all other possibilities.

I think, as a response to the lack of priests and nuns that has plagued the Church for the last thirty or forty years, parents, parish staff, youth ministers and everyone else in authority has been pushing the idea of discerning a vocation to the priesthood or religious life. Sometimes it seems that marriage is veiwed as almost a second-rate vocation, for those who can't hack it alone. None of those who encouraged the young people in their care would ever say so, or even think it, but the effect is measurable. It is seen in that nagging feeling so many young people experience that we should be doing more, something better. The emphasis is on doing things for God, visible things.

I like Mark's idea that marriage is the only way most of us will learn to love. It counteracts the idea that holiness can be seized by doing great deeds. It does not deny the great deeds done by great Saints, like Mother Teresa. Instead, it acknowledges the true source of those great deeds. She did not become holy because she did great things. She did great things because she became holy. She became holy because she did little things with great love.

I cannot agree that marriage is the only path to holiness for most people. I believe it is the ideal path for most people, but, society being what it is, I have to acknowledge that some people will never find themselves on that path. Nevertheless, they will still find their way to holiness if they desire it. Some people, because of the wounds they have suffered growing up or in previous relationships simply do not have the capacity to live in a loving, respectful, human relationship. Others simply lack the desire, which is certainly a crippling emotional defect (not to be confused with an overabundance of desire for something greater, which is a great grace.)

The answer, I think, is to remember that marriage is not the end, it is only the means to the end, which is preparation for heaven. Heaven is relationship with God and with all other people in Heaven, and that relationship will be closer and more intimate than any relationship on earth ever could be. The purpose of marriage in this life is as a sort of purgatory, to draw the person out of himself and teach him to surrender his own wants and needs for someone else, constantly, day in and day out, in sickness and health, in richness and poverty. The purpose of the celibate life is to learn to let go of all temporal goods, including relationships with other people, for the sake of a deeper relationship with God. Both cramp our style. Both are necessary aspects of preparing for heaven, and whichever one we don't have time for on earth, we will make up in purgatory.

So this is my principle, for now (until I learn more and revise it again.) Live life so as to love God and love your neighbor. Life is in time and therefore I cannot love both with totality yet. I can only love one at a time, and I must choose one thing and follow that with all the strength God gives me. True, I will not learn some things that I would have learned had I gone the other way, but by God's mercy I can finish the rest of my education in purgatory.

Why the Men are not Getting Married

Part two of four posts, based on a conversation with Mark Miloscia, Catholic Lobbyist for WA state legislature. Part one, part three, and part four.

1) I was specifically interested in his ideas on underlying causes for the dearth of marriages. He didn't have much idea as to the why of it, not on the level of social dynamics, which is what I was interested in. He went straight to the underlying cause: "We live in a selfish and individualistic society. It's all about sex, drugs and rock-n-roll." He left me to fill in the blanks for myself.

It's easy enough to see how marriage just isn't a priority for those living the casual sex, one-night stand, hookup cultural lifestyle. Marriage intrinsically involves sacrifice, commitment, responsibility, and these are not qualities exercised by the hook-up culture. Those who live in that culture find themselves ill-prepared to desire marriage, and ill-prepared to maintain it if they do get married.

For those who aren't in the hookup scene, but are cohabitating or having sex before marriage, the lack of marriage is also easy to account for. Why would you take the formal step, make that formal commitment, if you are getting all the benefits without all the responsibilities of it? In a non-married relationship there is always the walk-off option. No cost, no lawyers, no courts. Child support, of course, but thats what we have contraception for.

No, the lack of marriage in society at large is not puzzling at all. The demographic I was thinking about when I asked the question was the Catholic Young Adult scene, since that is my demographic and it was a Catholic Young Adult group that hosted the talk. These young folks are not sleeping around, not co-habitating, living out the Church's sexual morality, sometimes to an extreme extent. Modesty is practiced by the women, and respectful talk and behavior by the men. There is mutual respect, strong friendship, fellowship, community. There is just very little dating. Very few of my friends my own age are in marriage track relationships. Those who are dating are likely to date for years without getting engaged.

Why?

I am not really qualified to comment on the women. It seems to me most would like to be married and are willing to be pursued and won. There are exceptions, of course, and the world being what it is, most women have their share of baggage, either from families, previous relationships, or both. Some few cannot seem to decide whether they are called to marriage or not, but that issue cuts across gender lines among the most devout young people these days.

The men, on the other hand, I can take some guesses at:

• Financial climate: It is hard enough for a young man to support himself in our current economic climate, especially if he is going to college, or has no degree. The blue collar jobs that once kept America strong are not what they used to be. The worker has become a means of production and the cheapest workers all live in China. The lack of jobs means a lack of money. Men are far less likely to pursue marriage when they don't feel financially stable.
• Entertainment culture: Video games, facebook, youtube, etc. All of these are useful and enjoyable pastimes, but they can be traps. It is very possible for a young man to use facebook, or comments on a blog or video channel, or twitter followers as a substitute for relationships. They fill the immediate craving, lessening any sense of urgency to pursue a real relationship, but in the long run they do not satisfy the real longing of the human heart for communion. Not that any human relationship can, but a real relationship with a real person is a means to learning to love, which is the perequisite for that ultimately satisfying relationship.
• Pornography: It is an open secret that internet pornography is the plague of Christian manhood. Around the American Catholic Church and the Protestant churches very few men have never seen pornography, and far too many have viewed it deliberately and habitually. It is an issue that is too big to cover here, but I consider pornography to be a huge discouragement to marriage for two reasons: 1) It is an outlet for the sexual instinct that should be directing men towards marriage. It is not satisfying, and ultimately it frustrates and stunts the drive it professes to fulfill, but in the short term a man without that sexual tension driving him to seek a lawful outlet is not likely to seek out marriage. 2) It establishes an unreasonable standard of sexual attractiveness. No woman can hope to look like an airbrushed model, and shouldn't bother trying. A porno star never argues, never has her own opinions, and never suffers from PMS. The man who lives on a steady diet of such unreality will lose his ability to fall in love with a real woman. Even if he does "settle" for someone who is not quite as hot as the women on the computer screen, even if he falls in love with her personality or her character, he is still splitting himself. He is splitting the sexual desire from the personal desire and it will bear rotten fruit later on. So, whether porn use completely stifles his desire for marriage, or merely delays him in acting on it, I still classify it as a severe impediment to Catholic Marriage.
• Lack of Example: We are all, to some extent, products of our culture. Our culture does not value marriage. It values the "bro-life." Unbridled freedom from responsibility, self-actuation, self, self, self is our cultural idol. Guys who get married and work 9-5 and drive a minivan are not cool. They don't have big-screen TV's, they don't drive fast cars, they don't stay out late anymore. They are not the ones that young men want to emulate. They don't make marriage look fun. (No offense meant to the many wonderful married men I know. I am just generalizing.) This cultural reality bleeds over into the Church. Even though we may agree in theory that marriage is a worthy goal for "someday" the single life is fun, free of responsibility, and has its own business. We let the urgent override the important.
• Within the Church there is the phenomenon of endless "discernment." To which I can only say that, even if there is a "right" and "wrong" decision (which I am not convinced of), the worst possible decision is no decision. Rather like the three servants in Matthew 25:14-30. One made more than the other, but the only one who was punished was the one who did nothing with what he had been given.
• And of course we must not forget the individual story. Each particular man has his own background and his own call. Some men may very well be called to do some work for God which is their true vocation, and they are not able to marry. For that they are responsible to explain themselves to no one but God.

This is not meant to be an all inclusive list. It is just my continuing thoughts.

Catholic Marriage: the New Vocation Crisis?

Part One of a series of four posts. Part two, part three and part four.

I wrote about this before, and have put more thought into it since, but the idea was brought strongly before my mind last tuesday night at a talk I went to. Here in the Archdiocese of Seattle, the Office of Young Adult Ministries puts on a talk series called "Wine and Wisdom" several times a year. The premise is a lot like "Theology on Tap" except that it is specifically geared towards young adults. Last Tuesday's speaker was Mark Miloscia, a former Representative in WA state legislature, and now a Catholic lobbyist. He hit on a number of themes, including the need for evangelization, the need for political activism, and the need for solidarity among Catholics in the political spere. However, one of his most pointed themes was on the need for Catholic marriages. He couched it in much the same language that is used of the dearth of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. He even asked how many of us were married and when only one person raised her hand (the mother of one of our college kids) the look on his face was one of bewilderment. I could almost hear him thinking, "Wow! Do I put them on the spot or just let it go?" He let it go, mostly.

I asked him more about it after the talk, and came up with three major points I want to examine more closely:

1) I was specifically interested in his ideas on underlying causes. He didn't have much idea as to the why of it, not on the level of social dynamics, which is what I was interested in. He went straight to the underlying cause: "We live in a selfish and individualistic society. It's all about sex, drugs and rock-n-roll." He left me to fill in the blanks for myself.

2) I challenged his assumption we are all called either to the clergy/religious life or to the married life, and he acknowledged that there were exceptions to the general rule, but insisted that for most people marriage was the path to holiness. "That is the only way we learn how to love. I could have been more blunt about it. I could have gone around the room and asked every individual person, 'Why aren't you married? Why aren't you married?' But everyone needs to be if they are not called to the religious life."

3) I asked him what he thought we should do about it. He looked at me as if I had asked a question to which the answer was obvious and said, "Get married." I appreciate the simplicity and directness of that answer, but pressed him further. Given the fact that we live in a society that, for whatever reason, young men are not motivated to seek out marriage, I asked if he reccomended that we just get married out of a sense of duty. He answered unequivocally, "Yes."

I want to take a bit of a closer look at each one of these in subsequent posts.

"Protecting" the Kids From Dating

Part Two in a series on emotional modesty. Part one is here.

The very first line of the CD's very first post struck a chord.

The really old Italian priest at the Latin Mass chapel I attend when on the West Coast gave a sermon once about how parents shouldn't discourage their teenagers from having boyfriends and girlfriends. I thought it was pretty funny, and it didn't occur to me until about five minutes ago that maybe he was talking about that whole emotional chastity movement.

 When I read that paragraph I immediately thought of two concrete examples of this sort of idea taken to extremes. A family that I know quite well did not let their children date at all in their teen years. They were tacitly encouraged to be attracted to movie stars, fictional characters, etc. but crushes on other teenagers were implicitly forbidden. The girls, even into their twenties, were convinced that it was a mortal sin to like a guy, unless he liked them first.

In another family I know, the 21 year old son is still not allowed to drive female friends home by himself. There must be someone else in the car with them as chaperone.

The rationale, such as it is, behind both of these attitudes seems to me to be well-intentioned, at least on the most basic level. The parents grew up continually exposed to sex, drugs and rock-n-roll in their teen years, and so have a very acute awareness of the dangers of such temptations. They desire to protect their children from these temptations, so they make rules that perhaps they wish they had kept when they were young. They draw lines, thinking that as long as their children do not cross those lines they cannot be drawn into sin.

Unfortunately this approach is not true to human nature. There are a couple of major flaws in it:

1)    First, it gives the wrong impression. It assumes that boys and girls cannot behave when they are alone together, and therefore must constantly be under supervision. Often there is an unstated emphasis on the boy in the situation, as if the girl needs to be protected from his boyish nature, and he needs to be protected from himself. This is a terrible assumption. Not only is it unjust, and it has something of the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is just as wicked and dishonest as the worldly version of manhood that tells boys that they need to lay as many girls as possible to be a man, and it has the same root, and the same effect. The root is the assumption that “That’s just how men are,” and “Boys will be boys.” The effect is to give men the impression that we are helpless slaves of our biology, and consequently we should either despair of ever being pure, or just laugh off our sins as simply “boys being boys.”

2)    Second and more foundationally, we were not put on this earth to avoid sin. We were put on this earth to know, love and serve God and our neighbor. This means that we must live. Sinlessness is not a requirement for entrance into Heaven. Love is. Avoidance of sin is a crabbed, stilted, pitiful imitation of the boundless energy, the joyous vitality, the fierce, unconcerned freedom of the pursuit of holiness. Sometimes simply avoiding sin is the best we can do. I admit that. I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t. However, categorically basing the raising of teenagers on the principle of merely avoiding sin is dangerous. It gives sin more power than it ought to have.

3)    In most societies prior to ours, teenagers of 16 or 17 were regarded as adults, and expected to behave as such. It is our society that keeps pushing the limits of adolescence further and further and further, by not requiring maturity of teenagers, then of highschoolers, then of college students, and now we do not even require maturity of grown men of thirty years old. My entire adult life has been spent as a leader in the military. Because I could keep my nose clean, I was put in charge of my peers right from the beginning, and told to keep their noses clean as well. I have over ten years of experience in leadership, and the one rule, the only thing I have learned with any certainty, is that people cannot be pushed into maturity. They can be pushed or coerced into meeting a standard, as long as that standard is mediocre enough, but no human being can be forced to mature. They can only be invited, and then allowed the chance to succeed or fail. In my experience, more often than not young people rise to the level of trust placed in them, but there are no guarantees. Sometimes people fail, and a leader must give them that opportunity. 

4)    As with anything having to do with people, you cannot fight nature and expect there to be no consequences. Teenagers are designed to be interested in the opposite sex. God made them that way. It is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It draws people into relationship with each other. Does it also provide opportunity for temptation? Yes. But to quote Catholic blogger Seraphic Singles "Eros… is above everything else an impulse to escape the prison of one's own ego to connect with someone or something else." To hear a lot of Catholic speakers, writers and leaders on the subject, (and my younger self was guilty of this at, say, 15 years old) one would think that the burgeoning of human sexuality in the teen years was a bit of a mistake. A miscalculation on God’s part, if you will, which puts all of us in a devilish awkward position, what with having desires that can only be satisfied by marriage, and yet being too young to marry. Best thing to do is teach the kids to ignore those desires for relationship, lock them in a closet until your 21^st birthday, and then let them out when they are mentally, emotionally, and financially ready for marriage.

There are consequences for stifling these budding romantic attractions. Most of the time it is done by making the kids feel that there is some sort of stigma attached to those feelings, or even that they are somehow dirty or bad. Whether the parents intend this or not, that can be the result.

I think what is needed is to recognize things for what they are. Here are three facts that I can think of off the top of my head which ought to be recognized:

1)    The truth is that teenagers are going to have crushes on other teenagers. If they are not that is probably not healthy. Something is very wrong when young men and women are not attracted to one another, or have no desire for relationship with each other.

2)    Teenage crushes are not permanent, nor are they necessarily very profound. This does not mean that they are not real. It is one thing to remind a teenage girl that her crush on a boy is not on the same level as the love Grandma and Grandpa have for each other. All kids need to be reminded of this, and the perspective is priceless. It is quite something else, however, to laugh at her feelings, or to make fun of them. Her feelings are real. She is really feeling them. They are probably immature, and perhaps a bit silly. Perhaps they are a lot silly, but they are the best she can feel for now. No one makes fun of a toddler for falling over while learning to walk. Why should we make fun of teenagers for bumbling clumsily about while learning to love?

3)    No one (except the teenagers themselves) expects teenage romances to be permanent. The kids are going to get their hearts broken. There is no point in deliberately courting heartbreak, but neither should parents be overly concerned with protecting their kids from it. We learn from heartbreak. It presents us with a choice, whether to grow or to shrink back into ourselves, and this choice is the meaning of our very lives.

I think all parents fear for their children. They think about their children falling in love with other children, and they see all the worst case scenarios: STD’s, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sin, and disgrace. They try to shield their children from these consequences by shielding them from the relationships that could be a temptation to them, without realizing that these relationships are also opportunity. We fear the possibility of failure, so we have a tendency to pass up opportunity for victory.

On a larger scale, that is why our culture is the way it is. We Christians are not going out and living and loving fearlessly. We are isolating ourselves in communes so that we will not be corrupted, rather than going out and carrying the gospel into the very teeth of the world.

Re-Examining Emotional Modesty

Charming Disarray has started a series of posts on “Emotional Chastity” which I have been following since the first one appeared, and periodically going back to re-read. It is of great interest to me because I have written an entire book about modesty for women (a fact which I am sure does not recommend me to CD at all) and in it I actually spoke about emotional modesty; and also because I have written a book about manhood for young men, in which I posited a sort of emotional modesty for men.

Emotional modesty for women could very simply be defined as not sharing on an intimate emotional level, or allowing a man to share on such a level, unless he had openly declared his commitment to that relationship.

Emotional modesty for men could be defined as saying only what you mean, and no more. This means don’t act like you are pursuing a woman unless you do intend to commit to that relationship. I also discouraged the idea of dating without a clear intention of discerning marriage, and hence discouraged dating for young men who were not ready to get married, personally or financially.

Like all of my theories, they were formulated in response to a perceived problem. As I saw it, the women that I knew tended to be too ready to commit their hearts to relationships that very clearly weren’t going anywhere, because the guy was not committed at all. He, for his part, more often than not, was well content to let things go on, enjoying the attention and emotional (and/or physical) attachment, but apparently unable or unwilling to get tied down. That was the most common scenario that I saw, and so it was the scenario I wrote about. I was aware at the time that both theories could be taken too far and hence tried to balance them in my writings, but there is only so much you can do.

Three or four years later I am revisiting those theories, interested in finding the flaws. Surprisingly, I don’t find too many obvious flaws in formulation in the books. As I said, I was quite careful to balance out my theories with common sense. What I find, however, is that those theories play right into the hands of a certain attitude, which I have come to call “Fear Based Ethics.”

What is a “Fear Based Ethic?” It is an ethical proscription put forth out of fear of the possible consequences. I oppose it to “Love Based Ethics” which are embraced for love of the good that comes from them. A fear based ethic is, “You had better go to Mass on Sunday or you will go to hell.” A love based ethic would be, “I go to Mass on Sunday because I want to grow closer to God.” Currently (I am only 27 and my ideas are constantly under renovation) I am a bit suspicious of fear based ethics. They are suitable for two year olds, “Don’t run into the road or Daddy will spank you,” but hardly for adults. I recognize that sometimes a little fear of damnation is all that stands between myself and… well… damnation; However, I believe the ultimate goal is to move away from fear based ethics, and move towards love based ethics.

I recognize that fear of evil consequences is an inevitable component of any system of morals. The question is how much, and for how long, and how do we move to love?

It is not enough simply to avoid evil. We must learn to pursue the good with all our hearts. Even that is not quite love based. If I could write well enough, I could portray the good as it really is, and I the writer and you the reader would fall in love with that good, and be consumed with desire to pursue it. “Should” and “Want to” would be synonymous.

With that in mind, I want to take a cue from CD in examining the concept of “emotional chastity.”

Thoughts for the Men

"It’s been more than ten years since I first noticed something odd about the generally pleasant—and generally Catholic—students at the college where I teach. The boys and girls don’t hold hands.

 

Let that serve as shorthand for the absence of all those rites of attraction and conversation, flirting and courting, that used to be passed along from one youthful generation to the next, just as childhood games were once passed along, but are so no longer. The boys and girls don’t hold hands.

 

I am aware of the many attempts by responsible Catholic priests and laymen to win the souls of young people, to keep them in the Church, and indeed to make some of them into attractive ambassadors for the Church. I approve of them heartily. Yes, we need those frank discussions about contraception. We need theological lectures to counter the regnant nihilism of the schools and the mass media. But we need something else too, something more human and more fundamental. We need desperately to reintroduce young men and young women to the delightfulness of the opposite sex. Just as boys after fifteen years of being hustled from institutional pillar to institutional post no longer know how to make up their own games outdoors, just as girls after fifteen years of the same no longer know how to organize a dance or a social, so now our young people not only refrain from dating and courting—they do not know how to do it. It isn’t happening. Look at the hands."

I saw this link in my blogroll today at Seraphic Singles. I must say I find it fascinating, and a bit incriminating. While I cannot agree that being single is necessarily bad, as long as it is purposeful and not simply due to laziness or fear, there is no denying that this article does point out a real problem. Young Catholics are not getting married young, they are waiting until they get older and desperate. (Not to put it too unkindly for those of my readers who may find themselves in the older-than-they-hoped-they-would-be-and-still-unmarried crowd.)

As a member of the generation that the article speaks about I can say that the causes are many and varied. On one end of the spectrum there are the homeschoolers who were forbidden to date ever!!!! until they were ready to get married, in the hope that this would forestall the problems their parents ran into in regards to dating and the threats to chastity. "Dating was nothing but temptation for me and everyone is doing it wrong, so we'll just cut it all out entirely and that will solve the problem." Done out of love and a sincere desire to protect the youth, but often misguided in the application. On the other end of the spectrum are the Catholic young people who have gotten so sucked into the dating game that they either cannot conceive of a permanent relationship, or got so well and truly burned that they cannot trust anyone. And these are just the three options that come to mind off the top of my head, to say nothing of the effects of social media, pornography, entertainment addiction, perpertual boy/men and a whole host of other possible factors.

Whatever the causes may be, (and well worthy of pondering), the immediate fact is clear, that there is a problem and it needs to be fixed. I would go further and say that the initial impetus for solving that problem must come from the men, the side that it is least likely to come from. Pointing fingers is all very well, you know, but why point out a problem if you don't have a solution? Or aren't at least willing to work towards finding one? So my point in this post is purely practical. I am interested in answering one question and one question only: what am I (me, Ryan Kraeger) going to do about it?

I don't speak about my love-life (as it is called) on this blog. It isn't really a concern to my readers, except the few who know me in real life, and it's a bit personal. Suffice it to say that the vast majority of my history has been the result of deliberate and intentional choices. Whether those choices were wise or foolish is another question entirely, one I ask myself every day, but I have (thus far) done what I thought was right. On the other hand reading this article reinforces a feeling that I might well be part of the problem, or at least not a part of the solution.

So it is a quandrary, something I must think about, and sooner or later do something about as well. This is the first thing I am doing.

I am well aware that most of my readers (at least the commenting ones) are women, and this blog is really not addressed to you. I don't much care if you read it, but it is really for the men. You see, when I read the article above my biggest reaction was a feeling of responsibility. There is a problem, and we men are the ones who need to start the process of fixing it. I ask that you single men think about it and pray about it. I plan on sharing it with the men in my Bible Study group and discussing it with any of them who want to talk about it.

I don't think a movement is called for. I certainly don't think that what we need is a bunch of Catholic guys making a pact to go out and find steady, marriage-able girlfriends by this time next week. We don't need a club, we don't need a pledge or any nonsense like that. I think what each man needs to do is think about it and examine himself. If I am single I should be thinking about why I am single. Is it because I have a purpose best served by singleness? Is that purpose worthy of the sacrifice? Is it a sacrifice at all? Or is that purpose merely an excuse? Am I simply afraid? And if afraid, afraid of what? Or whom? Or am I simply lazy, just drifting along, not willing to put in the work, not willing to fight for a relationship?

Think and pray. But thinking and praying are not enough. If we think long enough and honestly enough, and if our prayer is listening and not merely talking incessantly, I think most of will find a call to action.


Oh, and I just thought of something to say to any women who might still be reading this:
It takes two to tango.

When Men were Men and Could Pay for the Date

“The major concrete achievement of the women's movement of the 1970's was the Dutch treat.” -Nora Ephron.

This quote always makes me laugh a bit. Of all the things in the world to be hailed as a great achievement, seriously? But my initial amusement is something of a discredit to the woman who said it, because it does her the discourtesy of not listening to her. It interprets her words through my set of ideas and assumptions, which is the surest way to avoid ever hearing what a person is saying. Obviously to her it was no laughing matter (at least I don’t think it was. I can find no reference to her as a humorist.) She meant something by it.

It turns out, when you take the time to listen, that she saw it as a symbolic victory. In her mind, up until then, men have viewed women as helpless, fragile creatures who simply couldn’t manage to provide food for themselves if the big, strong, manly men didn’t give it to them. Worse still, the big, strong, manly men were intent on keeping it that way because, deep down inside, they were all afraid of these fragile little women. They couldn’t feel manly without someone to dominate, so to protect their own egos they had arbitrarily forced women into a position of subservience.

To her, the groundswell of support from countless women around the country saying “No thanks, I can pay for my own meal,” was a vindication. It was like Gandhi, refusing to walk in the gutter, insisting that there was room on the sidewalk for all people regardless of color. Every Hindu who followed his example and calmly and quietly walked on the sidewalk, even for a few steps, was a blow at the institution of oppression. In the same way, I think Nora Ephron saw every woman’s purchase of her own dinner as a small, but significant demonstration against the patriarchal establishment.

Whether she was right or wrong, is another thing entirely, and not the point of this blog. I will say briefly that while I cannot agree with her, I cannot completely disagree with her either.

Instead of worrying about that, for the moment, let’s fast forward thirty-odd years to the 2000’s and early ‘teens. Now we have the cultural phenomenon of blogging, and in that blogging world, the delicious irony of posts and comment threads like this one, in which the women are the ones reminiscing longingly over the days when men were men and could pay for the date. In still another stroke of genius, men are now the ones who are calling for “equality”. If they want equal rights as men, let those women share some responsibility. They are adults, let them pay for their own dang meal.

Lo! I fear we have created a monster!

Actually, no. We have created nothing. We have simply put an old problem in new clothes, and even the new clothes aren’t really new. They are just the old clothes, turned inside out.

Why were a few vocal, and admittedly often eloquent women, able to launch a movement that, with very little organization and almost no direct conflict, was able completely to change the face of a society in a few short decades? As a professional student of revolutionary tactics in general, I can tell you it was a pretty bit of work. They had a base of support. Their message hit home, and resonated with women. For one reason or another, deep down inside, thousands of women heard this message of liberation and it meshed with a fear in their hearts. They felt like their rights were not being met. They were being used.

Can we argue against it? Possibly, although every individual’s story is always different. That really is beside the point. The point is that they felt used and denied rights which should be theirs. There was a reason they felt that way. There always is!

And now that the tables have turned, and men choose not to pay because generations of women have told us, “No, thank-you, I have a job and I can afford it,” the cry is different. Women lament that men don’t think them worth the time or money it would take to treat them to a nice, thoughtful date. They feel used. I doubt any would argue that their rights are being violated. That is now the man’s cry. Why does the man always have to pay for everything? Why is it now our job to be gentlemen while women have apparent carte-blanche to pick and choose which of the traditionally lady-like gestures they will or will not use? Why do laws on anything and everything from divorce, to civil disputes, to domestic quarrels favor women?

The few men who can put this succinctly find an audience. There are murmurs of assent, that instant leaping of recognition, aggrieved to aggrieved. Men feel like their rights are being violated.

Like I said, old problem, new look, same clothes just turned inside out. The root of both issues was, and is, the fear of being used. We are inveterate cynics, we human beings. Always on the watch lest someone pull the wool over our eyes. Someone is out to deal us out of the game, cut us from the line where all the good bargains are. It isn’t that we are necessarily greedy. We don’t want to take anything that’s anyone else’s but I will not be gypped of what is rightfully mine. If you don’t look out four your rights, someone else is going take you for everything you have.

Mutual suspicion is as old as fig leaves.

So what is the solution? Simple. Let go of the fear. Give someone the benefit of the doubt, for a change (which is not the same thing as pretending there is a doubt when there isn’t). Speak honestly and sincerely, expect others to do the same. It’s okay to be surprised and hurt when someone lies to you. You should be surprised. It’s a surprising thing. It is utterly unnatural and unreasonable and you ought to rebel against it with every fiber of your being. But don’t believe that lie. You see, if you take one woman who lies to you, or ten, or fifty, or a hundred, and then extrapolate that all women are therefore liars, you have bought the lie, hook line and sinker. You really have been hoodwinked.

That is not the Truth! The truth is that people lie, from time to time. (Some people tell the truth from time to time.) But there are people who believe in the truth. There are people who believe in honor, integrity, and generosity. There are people who will guard your rights far more zealously than you ever could. Seek them out, take the years it takes to get to know them. Because when you can let your rights go, confident that they will be taken care of, it frees you to live something better. Rights exist and are important because they protect us from ourselves, but they are the lowest common denominator. In a relationship, if you have to worry about your rights, you are already behind the power curve. Relationship exists so that we can forget about our rights, and move deeper into the realm of self-gift.

This is what a man says by paying for a date, even a first date. He’s saying, “I don’t need to stand on my rights. I can give of myself, and I hope you can do the same. I don’t know, but I’m giving you the chance. You deserve it.”