If young ladies and men are willing to read this information, they will be enlightened and will have no excuses if they make dumb and dangerous mistakes along the path of courtship.
From the excellent little book Clean Love in Courtship by Father Lovasik
The Parked Car
Enemy number one to the chastity of young people is the parked car. With the cloak of darkness and seclusion thrown around them, young couples parked along country roads are deliberately subjecting their virtue to a great and violent strain.
Parked automobiles, scenes of passionate kissing, petting and necking, are truly graveyards in which are buried the innocence and purity of thousands upon thousands of young men and young women. Here so-called love turns out to be lust, the most selfish sin, which seeks impure self-satisfaction at the expense of another’s virtue.
If you are a decent girl, do not drag down a young man into the mire of impurity by consenting to have him park his car, thus giving him a favorable occasion for sin. Even under favorable conditions every young man has to struggle to keep pure.
God said, “He who loves the danger will perish in it.” Therefore avoid the parked automobile as you would a pest house, reeking with germs of fatal maladies.
At the end of the evening’s entertainment, do not let your friend accompany you into your home, but bid good night when you arrive there. This will be a protection for you both. To do otherwise at that time of night, when the other members of the family have retired, is to subject each other to substantially the same danger as that presented by the parked car. Many a pure courtship has been ruined through the failure to heed this caution.
Drinking
It is not a sin to drink, but it is always a sin to drink too much. If through excessive drinking you lose the use of reason, you commit a mortal sin and thereby descend to a level lower than that of the brute beast.
Even if drinking does not end in drunkenness, its effects on company-keeping are disastrous. Drink adds fuel to concupiscence and increases the force of temptation to impurity; it weakens the powers of the mind and lowers the resistance of the will, thereby leaving one open to sin.
Drink has always been one of the shortest roads to moral corruption and is the greatest contributing factor to the alarming increase of crime. Facts show that liquor figures in seven out of every ten crimes.
Drinking outside the home is usually the beginning of the drinking habit and other bad habits, especially impurity.
Many a young man and young woman who normally would not think of lust have ruined their courtship and destroyed their love through drinking. Do not fall a prey to this habit just to be sociable.
To say that a party without drink lacks good fellow-ship and sociability is stupid and betrays a low mental status. Among young and intelligent people drink should be in no sense necessary for a good time.
If you really prize your virtue and demand self-respect, do not drink at all. The achievement of true and clean happiness is worth the little act of self-denial involved in abstinence from alcoholic drink.
The fact that about three-fourths of broken homes are the consequence of drinking should be an argument strong enough to make you give up associating with anyone who, having a special liking for alcoholic drink, does not know how to control himself.
Indecent Entertainment
Another danger in company-keeping arises from frequenting burlesque theaters, night clubs, road houses, and taverns where salacious floor shows, off color jokes, and expensive drinks are the chief menu.
In these places semi-nude females perform lascivious dances and fill young minds with obscene jokes, plying them with drinks and turning them into sex-crazed maniacs. These are the agencies which poison innocent minds and prevent their normal development into wholesome manhood and womanhood, sending them out as criminals to prey upon society.
In our day perhaps the deadliest misinformant about the ways of true living is the motion picture show. Sometimes the scenes are so vivid that for all practical purposes young people might just as well be acting in the presence of men and women who are disregarding God’s holy laws.
Such indecent attractions offered by the screen lower ideals and distort the standards of young Catholic men and women. It has become all too common for those born and reared in the faith to forget the lessons they have learned: that their thoughts, desires, and acts must be chaste; that all near occasions to sin must be avoided; that the most priceless thing in the soul of a girl is her purity, and the noblest virtue in the young man is preservation of his moral integrity.
Many a boy and girl can testify that he or she was guilty of the first grave lapse from chastity after having witnessed scenes of love-making and lustful seduction created by much publicized movie stars.
Start a fire, inhale the flames of lust, and your soul will die. Let the Legion of Decency be your guide in regard to the choice of pictures. Refrain from seeking pictures that are even partly objectionable.
“A young woman who prevails on her fiancé to approach the Sacraments with her at regular intervals builds up a strong bulwark against improper advances and obtains the best guarantee for a happy future.True love gives strength of character and assists in the acquisition of self-control. It never takes advantage of another for the sake of personal gratification. Good and pure-minded women inspire respect and make the task of a young man easy, for he will have no difficulty in keeping the right distance.” – Fr. Lovasik, Clean Love in Courtship https://amzn.to/2x6KEkx (afflink)
“There is a dream of St John Bosco that is not well known but is about the virtue of purity. How can we protect ourselves from sins against purity?” This is an excellent sermon…worth the 15 minutes it takes to listen to it!
This is a must-read for Catholic youth. The do’s and don’t s of dating, how to keep pure, what is a sin and what is just a temptation, the qualities to look for in a good spouse, etc. It is small, but power-packed, straightforward and balanced! http://amzn.to/2niVm2T (afflink)
Here is a marriage blueprint that every woman can follow. Happy marriages do not just happen, they are made. It takes three parties to make a good marriage; the husband, the wife, and the Lord. This book is concerned with helping the woman to become the wife desired and therefore loved that every man worth having wishes to find and keep.<P> This book sold over a quarter of a million copies shortly after its publication in 1951, and it was read by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It is a practical manual. It should be read by every woman considering entering the matrimonial state and also by those women who are already married. It can also be read by men who may wish to see what a real challenge it is for a woman to live up to their expectations and how grateful they should be if they are blessed to find the woman of their desires…
Armed with Barbeau s wisdom, you’ll grow closer to your wife and to your children, while deepening your love for God. You’ll be able to lead your family to holiness amidst the troubles and temptations that threaten even the best of families today: infidelity, divorce, materialism, loneliness, and despair.
The Father of the Family makes good fathers and good fathers are the secret to happy homes….
This is all so true. These sort of truths are never outdated. I have slipped this amazing booklet “Clean Love in Courtship” to at least three young ladies at church now over the past few years when they entered relationships. One is married now with a baby and previously thanked me saying that booklet was an eye-opener and kept their courtship pure! It’s gold.
That’s wonderful! The booklet is a little timeless gem!
Very very good, thank you! I wish so much some would need these warnings.
This is very smart. But we need to update it for the world today. Young ladies and men who are 21 should carefully have any first drinks with family. Who can instruct them to have a healthy understanding of HOW to be moderate. I speak with knowledge that comes from pain. No one told me how quickly you can get drunk. And a person should NOT be away at college for a first drink. A drink should be drunk slowly. Very slowly and generally with food. And young ladies of 120lbs cannot drink a great deal. A mixed drink like a bellini might taste fruity, but its secretly strong. So its better to be at the house with family when you are young. Treat it like a “luxury”. I like a glass of wine with dinner. One glass. My mom actually splits a beer with my dad because she cant handle a whole beer. There is simply no reason to abuse alcohol. Its bad for your liver, kidneys, gut. And no drunk is attractive. I think of beer and wine as a gift from God to lift the boredom of water. What are we telling God when we abuse his gifts? We are abusing his generosity and his trust of us. Rather, say, thank you Lord for this fun champagne to celebrate New Years. And have one glass, and be done with it.