Clean Love in Courtship by Father Lovasik
The decision of supreme importance in your life is the choice of a helpmate for life. The consequences of that choice reach even into eternity. It follows that your choice should be made with the greatest care, prudence and wisdom.
Company-keeping and courtship have no other reason for existence except to assist you in becoming better acquainted and in making a wise choice. Acquaintance and friendship between the sexes should be fairly extensive. Dances, dramatics, and social affairs are designed to promote such acquaintance.
Meet many young people of good reputation and character. Mingle and talk with them in a friendly way. Learn their interests, disposition and character.
Out of many friendships you are likely to form one based upon disposition, character, training, outlook and convictions—one which will ripen into conjugal love. In courtship you must first of all be true to yourself. Because a choice is made while the emotions tend to disturb the even functioning of the mind, you stand at that time in particular need of guidance.
The advice of parents, the priest, and of other sensible people of experience should be sought. Do not make the mistake of confiding in no one about your choice of a helpmate in life. This would close the door to many helpful suggestions and perhaps open it to an unfortunate marriage.
Love is blind. Commonsense can give it eyes.
So keep at least one ear attuned to the voice of reason. Do not be content to gaze upon the beauty of the face of your sweetheart, but learn to penetrate to the disposition and character with which you must live when the bloom of youth has gone.
Be on your guard against elements which make for separation and divorce. One of the chief causes of these disorders is that the couple discovers after marriage that they are mismatched; they have little in common. They are uncongenial in temperament and disposition; they differ in moral character and in religious outlook, in culture and tastes.
Association loses its charm; boredom sets in and finally leads to aversion.Test yourself to find out if you are really called to married life with this particular person. As soon as you realize that such a union does not and cannot appeal to you, gently discontinue the courtship regardless of consequences.
It is better to part as friends in good time than to be compelled either to live together very unhappily for life, or to separate as enemies later on. After all, it is the purpose of courtship to learn this very thing.Courtship should be entered upon with a deep sense of responsibility and mutual respect.
Intelligent choice of a mate must not look only to mutual physical attraction, but more so to harmony of tastes,feelings, desires, aspirations, and of temperament. It must weigh spiritual more than physical values.
What has begun as a mere sex intimacy is not likely to end in a happy marriage.In courtship you must also be honest and honorable towards your partner.
Reveal yourself and your family and personal stature with sincerity and truth to the extent to which he or she has the right to this information. However, there are certain things of a family or personal nature one need not and must not tell, such as personal repented sin. They are best left buried and forgotten.
No one except God should ever know of past sins. As soon as you know that a person has no prospect whatever of marrying you,you are in duty bound to discontinue receiving his attentions.
After you are engaged to be married, you can no longer keep company honorably with others, as long as this engagement holds.Listen to the wise voice of the ancient Church which has seen millions of young couples through happy marriages and has only their earthly success and eternal happiness at heart.
The Catholic Church warns you in advance that you will pay a heavy penalty for negligence, haste, and rashness in choosing a partner.
Before she admits candidates to the priesthood, she requires them to spend long years in training and discipline, meditating all the while on the seriousness of the step they contemplate.
Yet Holy Orders imposes no obligation of greater duration than that imposed by matrimony. Refrain from beginning to keep regular company too soon. If you begin to do so at sixteen or seventeen years, you expose yourself either to the danger of a premature marriage with its frequent mistake of poor choice or you court the hardly lesser evil of an immoderately long courtship with the attendant disadvantages.
You tie yourself down to one person and thus lose the social advantages and contacts that will have a great influence upon your later life. You expose yourself in a special way to temptations against chastity, because this love affair may be a very prolonged one, and the danger of violating chastity increases as the affection is prolonged.
If you begin “to go steady” while you are a student, you will find it almost impossible to do justice to your studies.Since courtship limits your interest to a single person, it should not be undertaken until you are in a position seriously to consider marriage in the not too distant future.
This presupposes that you have attained the age to understand the great responsibilities of marriage and that you have enough financial resources to establish and maintain a home.
Marrying in haste nearly always means repenting bitterly at leisure. Do not prefer to be sorry to being certain.While the Church warns against courtships of undue brevity, she likewise counsels against those of excessive length.
No hard and fast rule can be laid down determining the exact length of courtship. It should be of sufficient duration to allow young people to learn the character and disposition of each other quite well.
This can usually be done in a period ranging from six months to a year. Ordinarily regular company-keeping should not be protracted much beyond a year. Aside from the obvious moral dangers involved, long courtships are undesirable because they often end in no marriage or in an unhappy marriage.
Grievous injustice can be done to the girl if the man terminates the courtship after monopolizing her attention for several years, and depriving her of other opportunities. Courtship is not the end but the vestibule leading to the great Sacrament.
What an awe-inspiring vocation is motherhood! We change the world as we live out our vocation. Dedication, love, and all the other virtues are so important in this journey…and we are imperfect vessels. So we bring ourselves to the feet of the Perfect Mother, asking her to fill in for our inadequacies, to assist us on our path, to pray for us that we may be given the grace to be a good mother. And she will not fail us. -Finer Femininity
Painting by Nellie Edwards, https://www.paintedfaith.net/
Lovely Review on the Maglet:
I have been reading this maglet and it’s has helped me so much with my marriage. I am realizing so many things. I have never heard these things before. I really wished I would of read this before I got married😩. I have been married for 18 years now. Thank you so much for making this maglet! I thank you from the bottom of my heart. May God Bless you. I am hoping that you are going to make more🤗.
“However, there are certain things of a family or personal nature one need not and must not tell, such as personal repented sin. They are best left buried and forgotten.”
I’ve always agreed with Fr. Lovasik heartily, but I found a slight exception today. A recent beginning courtship my daughter was in revealed some red flags, but she didn’t know whether it was awkwardness of character or something serious. So, she asked if he ever had a pornography problem. Turns out, he had a severe one for fifteen years from the very beginning of his adolescence and had only been clean for mere months. The results of that were showing through the cracks. That’s a lot of baggage for a young woman to accept, Momma, so I encourage mothers to tell their daughters to dig a little and ask questions when there seems to be a good reason to.
I agree with you.
Yes, yes and yes…. And I think an honest and upright young man would reveal things that he was very sorry for and wanted to make sure world not hamper a true relationship… Same for young ladies. Thank you.