by Father Fulgence Meyer, The Youth’s Pathfinder, 1927
Lightly edited for clarity; editorial additions appear in brackets.
It Is No One Else’s Business
Why a certain person is leading the life of a celibate or a virgin in the world is no one else’s business. Vocation is a very personal and individual affair, and therefore a sacred domain into which others have no right to intrude.
It bespeaks not a little arrogance and impertinence, if one undertakes to dictate to another what kind of a vocation he or she should espouse, or asks for an account why one calling was given the preference to another. Not even parents have a right to map out, let alone to interfere with, the choice of a vocation on the part of their children.
In this choice everyone is free and responsible to no one but God. But while parents might cause great trouble and disaster to their children by an unwarranted assumption of power regarding the children’s choice of a vocation, or by wielding an undue influence over them directly or indirectly, they can also be of much service and material assistance to their children by their wise and unselfish counsel and advice.
Bachelors
Young men, it seems, are not so frequently as girls given a vocation to the single life in the world. It may not be without significance in this connection, that after God created man He said: “It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself” (Gen., 2, 18.)
He did not say: “It is not good for woman to be alone,” after He created her. At any rate, it appears that woman does better in the single life in the world than does man.
Aside from the young men who become priests or friars or religious brothers, some single men do very well in every way, whether they remain bachelors from mere choice, or because they want to devote themselves unhindered to the welfare of a parent or some other close relative that may require their care, or to some other charitable, professional, or artistic pursuit.
Their sacrifice is frequently as heroic as their virtue is saintly, much as they and their motives may be misunderstood and malignantly misconstrued by those, who are not only incapable of high unselfishness themselves, but also cannot conceive others as practicing it.
As a rule, however, unless there is a strong reason militating against it, a young man does better and prospers more in every way, if in due time he marries a good Catholic girl, than if in indecision and vacillation he toddles along from day to day into irresolute and shiftless bachelordom. In other words, to the majority of young men growing into manhood the words apply: “It is not good for man to be alone.”
Too Many Bachelors
Many of our Catholic bachelors—without reflecting upon anyone in particular, for the reasons stated above—would consult their own general growth, prosperity and happiness, and the welfare of society at large, if they ended their aimless bachelordom and took a good Catholic girl unto themselves as their helpmate in holy marriage.
It would give their life a distinct purpose and a concrete ambition; it would animate and stimulate them to high endeavor; it would render them solidly and substantially happy: in a word it would make their life worth living, and fulfill in their case the aim of God in creating woman to be a helpmate to man.
Of course, once married, man is to be as much a helpmate to woman as woman is to him, for this service is bilateral, mutual and correlative without distinction or discrimination. But woman seems not to need the help of man for a good and contented life quite as much as a man needs the help of woman.
In my own experience in the priesthood I have had men, who married late in life, delaying marriage more from indecision than any other cause, to tell me that they regretted keenly not having married many years sooner. If they only had known how much a good wife meant to them, they would not have dilly-dallied so long in making up their mind in marrying one.
Often God cannot give a bachelor a greater and more consequential grace than the efficient inclination to court and win a good girl as his wife. “He that hath found a good wife, hath found a good thing, and shall receive a pleasure from the Lord” (Prov., 18, 22).
Maiden Ladies
Owing chiefly to economic reasons, and to a material change of woman’s status in public life, the number of girls pursuing the single life in the world has increased much in late years. Nowadays a woman who remains unmarried is not the object of condescending pity or ill-concealed ridicule she once was, for the world knows she is quite able to take proper care and to give a good account of herself, and that she is usually more in a position to help others than to require assistance, and is consequently oftener envied than pitied; which is as it should be.
Girls remain single from various reasons. Many do not care to marry. They have never had the least desire for matrimony. The best offers and the most enticing prospects of marriage leave them indifferent and unresponsive.
Even as our Blessed Mother Mary they have had a strong inclination to a life of holy virginity from their very childhood. In the beginning of their life our Lord wooed them, so they might reserve all their love for Him, and let no earthly lover enter into rivalry for it with Him.
Although they may have no call to the religious life, or be barred by circumstances from embracing it, they aim to present themselves “as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor., 11, 2).
The Blessings of Virginity
To these maidens St. Paul refers in the glowing words: “The unmarried woman and the virgin thinketh on the things of the Lord: that she may be holy both in body and in the spirit. But she that is married thinketh on the things of the world: how she may please her husband . . . He that giveth his virgin [daughter] in marriage, doth well; and he that giveth her not, doth better . . . Let her marry to whom she will: only in the Lord. But more blessed shall she be, if she so remain, according to my counsel. And I think that I also have the spirit of God” (1 Cor., 7, 34 sqq.).
As long as they remain true to their divine Lover in purity and virginity, their life, although not consecrated by a sacrament as is the state of marriage, is much more agreeable, saintly and meritorious in the sight of God, and is also more blessed and happy for themselves than wedded life.
The Non-Appeal of Marriage
There are girls who remain single not so much from a strong fondness for virginity as from a fear of the burdens, risks, and responsibilities of married life. Perhaps at home or elsewhere they have seen married life at its worst, or, anyway, from an angle which rendered it forever uninviting and unappealing to them.
At any rate, they prefer not to take a chance. They want to live in a certain degree of personal comfort and well-being. They decline tempting proposals of marriage, and are satisfied to stay at home with their parents, or to work for their own living in offices, stores, factories or in the homes of other people. They want to be and remain personally independent and unencumbered. They are disinclined to exchange what they know they like for something they may not like.
They have a secret dread for a step that, no matter to what unhappiness it may lead, cannot be retraced: hence they cling to the single life. It is their right as well as their pleasure. No one can charge them with a lack of good sense.
Even happily married women will agree, that these girls usually escape more than they miss. A certain womanly intuition seems to tell these girls this. Many non-Catholic maidens pursue the single life from this motive. It is by no means an unworthy one. Provided such a girl keeps herself straight and good, and remains modest and chaste, she pleases the Lord by being good to herself.
Another Kind of Single Woman
There is, however, another kind of single woman — one the Church has always recognized with sorrow rather than admiration. She is not unmarried by vocation or by generous self-gift. She is unmarried by pride, by impossibly high standards, or by simple inattentiveness to what God placed in front of her.
Having missed what she needed, she turns the injury outward. She becomes critical of others, difficult to live with, and a quiet source of discord in whatever community she inhabits. The tragedy is that she blames the world for what was, at its root, her own choice — made slowly, perhaps unconsciously, but made nonetheless. The remedy was never a husband. It was humility, and the willingness to give herself away.
Editor’s note: The final 2 paragraphs reflect the priest’s original argument, rendered in updated language.
Marriage and the single life are not rival paths. They are two roads up the same mountain, both ordered toward holiness, both demanding self-giving, both capable of great beauty and great failure. Vocation, whatever form it takes, must be embraced with courage, lived with generosity, and held with open hands before God. The man who drifts, the woman who waits for something better that never comes, the soul that turns inward rather than outward — these are not cautionary social types from another era. They are warnings about what happens when grace is refused. The remedy, in every case, is the same: say yes to God, in whatever form He is asking — and mean it.
“Before a girl permits courtship to begin, she should ascertain whether the man is a Catholic and a good Catholic. The single state in life is a thousand times preferable, in most cases, to a mixed marriage. When husband and wife are of the same faith, there is a bond uniting their very souls. In joy they will rejoice more abundantly, and in sorrow they will have an unfailing support. To sum up, therefore, let me say again that choosing a husband is, humanly speaking, the most consequential thing in a girl’s life. In regard to it, there should be exercised more deliberation than on anything else.” ~Fr. Martin J. Scott, S.J., 1950’s
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