Chatting about: Marriage from the Introduction to the Devout Life

Ruth (Guest): Hi Judy! How are you?

Ruth (Guest): I found some of today’s questions a little confusing –– maybe because of the time in which SFdS wrote. Today the presumptions are so different.

Ruth (Guest): People do not ordinarily, these days, think of marriage as only meant for bearing and raising children. But some go to the other extreme and think it is ONLY for “unitive” or even less, mutual satisfaction or socioeconomic “advancement.“

Ruth (Guest): Hello Sr. Susan Marie. Thanks for all you do to keep this group going/learning/sharing, and that in addition to “mothering” the whole monastery.

Ruth (Guest): Lisa, did you know about the field day from having studied at Visitation School? Is it a tradition on Trinity Sunday?

Ruth (Guest): Oh, FB. I check this site sometimes during the week, but rarely FB.

Ruth (Guest): True Sister, but I understand that if a marriage is not consummated –– for whatever reason, even physical disability, it is not considered a marriage, by the Church. Is this not still the teaching?

Ruth (Guest): Why do you think that is off-base, Sister.

Ruth (Guest): It seems to me that wherever there is love –– and there should be love even in an arranged marriage –– this is a permanent bond. It probably goes even beyond death. Think e.g. of the final passages in Song of Songs.

Ruth (Guest): Love is stronger than death.

Ruth (Guest): But a Jewish marriage has a lot in common with a Catholic marriage. And the marriages that are NOT Christian, have, until very recently, also the clear intent to be life-long unions. Trouble is, young people these days, are not so clear about the possibility even of a life-long committment, let alone, covenant.

Ruth (Guest): Lisa, do you mean that you could not, emotionally feel that it would “work” or be right for you?

Ruth (Guest): I think that we are in some very fundamental way CHANGED by who we love, and even by what we love.

Ruth (Guest): An annulment essentially means that the marriage never really existed, even if it was, on paper, truly a marraige.

Ruth (Guest): A very devout friend of mine when I was in medical school –– we lived in the same dorm –– had a Jesuit spiritual director. His mother and father had been separated since he was a small child, although they had been married in the Catholic Church with a sacramental marriage. He spoke with her by telephone from Germany every week. She had a “boy friend” and was in the process of getting an annulment. When it was complete, and she was free to marry, he happily told his spiritual director.

Ruth (Guest): The priest’s response (I think a bit tongue in cheek ): “So how does it feel to be a bastard?“

Ruth (Guest): Haven’t been able to post.

Ruth (Guest): Just refreshed in a new frame. Maybe I’ll see if my comment is still there, in the original.

Ruth (Guest): No, I do not think the priest was being evil, or mean. That is a logical conclusion of the child (now, by the way, a priest, but of the Episcopal Church), having been born to a non-married couple. Annulment means the marriage never truly existed. Jim was amused by the priests pushing the meaning to its extreme. This is not letting me post any more –– multiple tires. with this.

Ruth (Guest): Guess I just had to leave it alone for a while. Everybody –– even the computer –– gets tired of hearing from me!

Ruth (Guest): Not, in the civil sense, but I think it was accurate, as far as Church law is concerned –– and for some religious orders –– at least at one time, the marital status of the candidate’s parents can be a church law legal obstacle to being accepted by the order.

Ruth (Guest): Glad of it, Sister.

Ruth (Guest): My parents were different religions. My father became a death-bed convert to Catholicism. I had prayed for his conversion for over ten years. I am so grateful that I was able to witness this. He had, in fact, been studying the Catholic Faith, with lessons sent in plain envelopes, which he read in the attic (!) for a long time before that.

Ruth (Guest): And his challenges to my Faith (as well as my mother’s) actually made me –– by the grace of God –– stronger.

Ruth (Guest): Good way to inform yourself, Judy!

Ruth (Guest): I think it providential that we are talking about the Sacrament of marriage on the feast of the Holy

Ruth (Guest): Trinity.

Ruth (Guest): Lisa, I think that –– about the civil marriage –– varies with the state. In some states the sacramental marriage is accepted as also a civil union.

Ruth (Guest): What is really crazy now, is the effort of the US government, through the Supreme Court to equate the shared life of homosexual partners to marrage.

Ruth (Guest): Are you able to share the videos here? Maybe it would require permission from the original publisher?

Ruth (Guest): I mean on this site, or on FB.

Ruth (Guest): Not necessarily on Chatroll.

Ruth (Guest): If they are on YouTube legally, then all we need are the links.

Ruth (Guest): Some videos on You Tube become “unavailable” after the owner objects, but it is not very frequent.

Ruth (Guest): Wonderful, Judy, that you will have an “adopted” priest in your family. I’ll be on an SSJ Associate’s retreat on the 24th, God willing. Will remember you dear friend/son –– particularly for joy and for perseverance in his vocation to the priesthood, until the good Lord takes him/us home.

Ruth (Guest): I have eye surgery on the 22nd –– prayers welcome! It is “just” YAG lazer surgery; I expect to be able to drive myself home the same day AND to see more clearly afterward.

Ruth (Guest): God bless you!