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Category Archives: Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955

Marriage Without Children, Catholic Girl’s Quandary ~ Young People’s Questions, Fr. Donald, C.SS.R.

07 Monday Nov 2022

Posted by Leanevdp in Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955

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Tags

can't afford children, catholic getting married justice of the peace, marriage without children, marrying outside catholic church

Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage

This post is so good. It is comforting advice and something to hang on to all through our married life. Parents who are open to life will often wonder how to make ends meet. We need to keep in mind what Father had to say to this young woman.

Marriage Without Children

Problem:

I am 20 years of age, and am to be married in June. I have a very serious problem.

My fiancé is making about $130 a month and I am making about the same.

You can see that after we are married we shall both have to work to make ends meet. I have heard so much about birth-control that it has been worrying me terribly.

We are both Catholics and do not want to practice birth-control. We want to have children, but I can’t see how we can for at least two years. How could my future husband support any children, let alone myself, on $130 a month?

As to putting off our marriage, we have been going together for two years, and recognize the danger of waiting any longer.

Solution:

This problem has worried many a young couple about to be married. Some it has led into habits of sin against marriage from the very beginning.

It is for all such couples that this answer is given. The issue is very clear.

On the one hand you have an opportunity to obey a grave law of God when this is difficult, and in so doing to trust yourselves to His loving and provident care, to rely on the friendship with Him that you will thereby win.

On the other hand you may foolishly decide on a certain period of serious disobedience to God, thereby renouncing any help that God could give, inviting His punishments, and trusting only in yourselves and your sins to provide for your future.

The folly of the latter course becomes clear from many angles. A couple about to be married do not know whether God will let them have children. They do not know whether they will live long enough to have children. They do not know in what strange and unusual ways God might raise their economic status before a baby could be born.

They should know, if they are Christian, that God is all powerful, infinitely loving toward His friends, intensely interested in their marriages, incapable of permitting any cross or trial to afflict them without a wise reason.

They should know that without God they are helpless, and that they choose to do without God by adopting practices of birth-control. Together the couple in our case is making about $260 a month.

Even if she becomes pregnant at once, the wife ordinarily would be able to continue working for four or five months.

Before a baby comes, the husband should be able to get a raise or two in salary, or to find a better paying job. They should be able to save something out of their combined salaries.

For any uncertainty that remains, they should have a fund of confidence in God that leaves sin out of the question. To start married life with sin is to make a failure out of marriage from the beginning.

Catholic Girl’s Quandary

Problem:

“I am engaged to be married. My boy friend is not a Catholic, but he consented to go with me to my pastor to make arrangements for our wedding.

When he found out from the priest that he would have to promise that all our children would be brought up as Catholics, he told me that he would never sincerely make such a promise. Now he wants me to marry him before a justice of the peace.

I love him dearly and cannot give him up. Isn’t there something I can do about this?”
Solution:

What should be done to meet a situation of this kind should have been done long before the impasse arose, long before any promises of marriage were given.

The very fact that you don’t know what to do indicates quite clearly that you entered upon company-keeping and permitted yourself to be propelled towards marriage without any clear, Catholic sense of proportionate values.

Now the fact that you are in love makes you want to find some way out of the duty you owe to God. For either of two reasons a courageous and well-informed Catholic girl would tell the boy in your case that she could not marry him.

The first reason is that he insists that she abandon a principle that must be rooted in the conscience of every Catholic girl, viz., that she must transmit her faith to her children.

The second reason is that he wants her to enter what would be an invalid marriage for her. To give in to a fiancé on either of these points is fatal to the soul of a Catholic.

A truly Catholic girl has such dangers as these in mind from the outset of her friendship with any man. She does not easily enter into company-keeping with a non-Catholic because of them. If she does start going with a non-Catholic, having a good reason for so doing that is stronger than the advice of the Church, she lets him know from the outset how firm is her own faith and how impossible for her is any compromise of its principles.

She tries to transmit some of her convictions, and their logical foundations, to her boy friend. If she finds him indifferent to all religion, or opposed to her religion, she becomes aware at once that marriage to him would be most unhappy.

The great tragedies of life begin with statements like yours.

What you are really saying is this: “I am in love with a man. I must abandon God to possess him. Can’t you suggest something that will let me have this man anyway?

It would do much in the home if all the members of the family were to be as kind and courteous to one another as they are to guests. The visitor receives bright smiles, pleasant words, constant attention, and the fruits of efforts to please. But the home folks are often cross, rude, selfish, and faultfinding toward one another. Are not our own as worthy of our love and care as is the stranger temporarily within our gates? -Fr. Lasance, My Prayer Book

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Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.

You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.

This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.

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Young People’s Questions: On Caring for Aged Parents/Should I Marry for Reputation ~ Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R

10 Tuesday May 2022

Posted by Leanevdp in Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955, Youth

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691042340ba6b18edcd3e621fcd46629Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage ~ by Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R.

On Caring for Aged Parents

Problem:

Is there any obligation that one member of a large family sacrifice his or her life to the care of the parents in their old age? I am thinking of the case in which the parents are financially independent, but partially, not totally, disabled by old age.

Some parents insist that one son or daughter stay with them, giving up any thought of marriage or a vocation of their own. Others whom I have known are willing to make any sacrifice to have all their children follow some vocation, even though it leaves them entirely alone.

The question has been raised in our own family and I wish to know what is right.

Solution:

In the case as given, in which the parents are financially independent, thus presumably able to provide whatever care they need themselves, the true Christian attitude is that of those who want to see every one of their children established in their own vocation, even though it means sacrifice and something of loneliness for themselves.

It would not be wrong, of course, for one of the children to choose to make a vocation out of staying with the parents, thus freely sacrificing opportunities for marriage and a home of their own.

This would be a form of charity and sacrifice worthy of high praise, so long as the one who adopted it based it on spiritual motives, accepted the sacrifice without later grumbling and complaining, and cultivated a solidly spiritual life.

But such a sacrifice would not be of obligation in the case mentioned, and parents should be most highly commended who would urge that it be not made.

There are frequent examples of selfishness and even interference with God’s evident plans on the part of parents.

Thus, those who, in no great physical need and financially secure, refuse to permit a son or daughter to follow a priestly or religious vocation because they won’t give up their companionship, would even do wrong.

The same would be true of parents not in need who would, prevent the marriage of a son or daughter in love and desiring to marry, just because they don’t want to be left alone.

The case is different entirely if the parents are destitute and helplessly ill. In that case some kind of an obligation arises among the children to take care of the parents. Even in this case, however, it can sometimes be arranged that, through the cooperation of all, the parents can be taken care of and none of the children prevented from following an evident vocation.

Should a Girl Marry for her Reputation?

Problem:

Should a girl who has fallen into sin and thus become pregnant insist on marrying the man who was her companion in sin?

Should those who have influence over her insist that this be done to salvage her good name and to provide both a mother and a father for the child?

I am a social worker, and come into contact with these cases every now and then. Is there any general rule to be followed?

Solution:

The one general rule that can be set down is that the decision to marry or not to marry should not be made by such a girl solely on the ground that the marriage would (doubtfully) save her good name and provide a home for the expected baby.

The preservation of her good name would be little comfort to a girl if this were effected by entrance into a marriage that could be foreseen to have little chance of success.

Moreover the providing of a home for an expected baby would be of little advantage if there were little possibility that it would be a good and happy home.

Therefore each case of this kind must be decided according to the circumstances connected with it. If the circumstances reveal that there are good prospects of the marriage turning out successfully, it should be recommended.

This would require, of course, that the man in the case show some solidity of character, true repentance for his lapse into sin, readiness to assume the responsibilities of marriage, etc.

It would also require that the couple love each other sufficiently to be good companions and help-mates. It need hardly be added that both must be free to marry validly.

If the circumstances make it clear that a marriage between the two would have little chance of success, because of the weak character of the man, his lack of sound morals, his obvious inability to support a family, or because, as quite often happens., the girl has come to feel an antipathy for him, or is herself too immature to take up the duties of marriage, then there should be no thought of urging marriage.
Even though the ideal thing is that every child born into the world have a real home with a mother and father, the ideal must yield to the practical and prudent judgment that a particular couple could not establish a good home.

Surely a girl who has had the misfortune of falling into sin should not be coerced nor even strongly urged against her wishes to marry the man involved.

The tasks of protecting her good name in so far as possible, and of providing for the child, can be taken care of in other ways.

“A decent young man really respects the young woman who quietly refuses to be ‘pawed over’ and ‘necked’; he wants a wife who has kept pure.
A decent girl breathes a sigh of relief when she finds that a young man respects her as a human being, as a friend, and as a lady.
There is nothing so beautiful and so powerful as virtuous loveliness. Riches, high position, physical beauty—none of these entrances as does sinlessness. Self-control, purity, exalts the soul while preserving it from defilement.” – Fr. Lawrence Lovasik, Clean Love in Courtship http://amzn.to/2sSyFUA (afflink)

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Kissing, Resisting Advances – 1955 – Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R

25 Monday Apr 2022

Posted by Leanevdp in Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955

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This small book called “Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage” contains problems that serious, young Catholics might ask when looking at the many scenarios of young love. It is written by a Catholic Priest, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., in 1955.  Great information!

You may find this advice old-fashioned….well, this world could use a lot more “old-fashioned” advice! Last time I checked, human nature was still the same as it was in the old days! 🙂

To Kiss or Not to Kiss?

 Problem:

Most boys expect to be permitted to kiss a girl at least after one or two dates. Is it permissible or advisable to go along with their wishes? Some girls with whom I have talked say that if you don’t permit it you will lose every boy-friend.

 Solution:

Let’s bring this question down to some fundamental principles and reasoning, leaving out of consideration for the moment whether “most boys expect it” or “all girls advise it.” Little of value for one’s happiness is ever learned from what “everybody happens to be doing.”

The purpose of dates between marriageable young people is that they may become acquainted with each other’s characters and so find out whether, when the question comes up as it should eventually, there is a good chance of their being happily married.

Let it be noted that the purpose of dates is not primarily and exclusively “a good time”-with no further implications.

Of course, every boy and girl want to have a good time on a date, but this should be subjected, in their minds, to the more serious purposes that justify company-keeping and its dangers.

It is because so many young people think of dating as just a means of “having a good time” that so many fall into sin on their dates.

A decent boy and girl will never think of a good time as permitting anything contrary to God’s law; nor will they be unmindful that on their dates they are making a test of each other.

Passionate kissing, it has been shown in this column, is forbidden to unmarried people. There are different kinds of kissing, and the above problem can only be considered as pertaining to that kind which is not gravely sinful.

There is no question about the other. Even that, however, we say, indulged in on a first or second or third date, is a serious obstacle to the fulfillment of the purpose of company-keeping.

Kissing, even though it be quite modest, stimulates physical attraction to another. In proportion as it does so, it lessens the ability of intelligence to judge the fitness of a companion for marriage.

Many a girl who permitted a boy to kiss her on short acquaintance has been swept into marriage by her feelings, only to find that he was anything but the person to make her happy.

Many a girl who permitted kissing to a near stranger has been swept into sin and into a forced marriage.

The above principles are so true that even if all boys expected a girl to consent to kissing, and all girls advised it, (which is not true), they should still be followed by an intelligent, self-respecting, God-fearing girl.

Following them is the only known way of finding an intelligent, self-respecting, virtuous boy for a partner in marriage.

Different Views on Kissing

 Problem:

Why is there so much difference in the advice given by different priests in regard to kissing on dates?

Some say it is all right if we don’t go too far; others warn us against it under any circumstances; others make us feel that it is seriously wrong.

If we girls tell the boys we don’t think it is right, they almost always answer that some priest told them that it is not wrong. We are confused and want to know what stand we should take on this matter.

 Solution:

The subject of kissing on dates is an involved one, and different statements of different priests regarding it are almost always due to the different ways in which the questions are presented by young people themselves.

The priest who says it is not wrong is usually answering a question put somewhat like this: “Is it wrong to let a boy friend kiss you goodnight?”

The assumption in the question is that the kiss is but a brief affair, registering affection and even respect, but without passion-stimulating side-actions or prolonged and dangerous embracing.

Of course the answer to this question, on strictly moral grounds, is that it is not sinful any more than an affectionate kiss between mother and son or brother and sister is sinful.

The priest who tells you that kissing on dates is sinful has properly gathered from the way the question is put to him, that he is being asked about prolonged kissing, kissing “for the sake of a thrill,” kissing and embracing as a pastime in which ordinarily there are thoughts, desires and inclinations toward indulgence in bodily pleasures that are sinful for the unmarried.

Such kissing is not merely an expression of affection, no matter how much young people may protest that it is.

It is an unnecessary and highly provocative occasion of sin. No priest can say otherwise than that to thrust oneself into an unnecessary and extremely dangerous occasion of sin is a sin in itself.

If a boy ever quotes a priest as saying that this is lawful, you may be sure he is either misquoting or deliberately lying.

The priest who warns you against too much freedom in regard to kissing is aware of the fact that the first kind of kissing here spoken of often leads to the second among young people keeping company.

He wants you to know that there is a tendency in your nature and in your boy friend’s nature to carry kissing too far, and that you must be aware of that tendency, must discipline it in yourself and be watchful to resist any weakness with regard to it in your boy friend.

It is not, therefore, the moral law that is confusing in this matter. It is the fact that, while you want to be good, there is a strong inclination within you toward what is dangerous and bad.

It is your lower nature that suggests that you make the law of God seem confusing, so that it will be free to do what it pleases.

On Resisting Advances

 Problem:

“I am a high school senior, 17 years old, and I find that I hardly ever go out with a boy but that he makes some kind of evil advances.

It seems, to me, and most of my girl friends will tell you the same thing, that all the boys want on a date nowadays is to indulge in kissing, petting, and even worse things.

How can a girl stay decent when everybody she goes out with seems to be interested only in doing the wrong thing?”

 Solution:

It is not easy, we readily admit, but we quickly add that it is supremely important and worthwhile.

There are two reasons why so many girls find that “all the boys they go out with” seem to want to engage them in sinful kissing, petting, etc.

One reason is that there are so many boys in the United States who have been brought up without any real religion, certainly with no powerful religious motives for resisting the strong inclinations of their lower nature.

Public grade and high school education has no way of providing such religious motives, and without them it is difficult for anyone to be chaste and pure.

Even Catholic high school and college youths who received no solid religious and moral training at home, will often appear just as unprincipled as those who never went to a Catholic school.

This only proves that the best of schools cannot accomplish much without the cooperation of the home.

The second reason why sinful petting and kissing and worse things are taken for granted by so many boys is that so many girls are unprincipled enough to give in easily to such practices.

No matter how bad many of the boys are, it is certain that they would not be so bad if they did not meet with cooperation in their evil instincts by the majority of girls.

A girl of 17 surely has little reason to complain that it is too hard to be good. She is too young to think that it is necessary to get married in the immediate future; even if she is in a position to marry soon, she still has plenty of time in which to choose a good partner.

She should be willing to give the gate to a dozen boy friends, one after the other, if she finds that each one in turn demands privileges that come under the heading of impurity.

And despite the pessimism of our correspondent, it is certain that a girl who is herself devoted to purity will be able to make some of the boys she meets as devoted to it as she is. Girls have more power in this regard than they realize.

“It is wrong to deny one’s self all diversion. The mind becomes fatigued and depressed by remaining always concentrated in itself and thus more easily falls a prey to sadness. Saint Thomas says explicitly that one may incur sin by refusing all innocent amusement. Every excess, no matter what its nature, is contrary to order and consequently to virtue.” – Light and Peace, Quadrupani, 1793

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How does one develop a space for one’s children free from the worst aspects of the surrounding culture? How to foster a spiritual life where children can develop a vision of God, themselves, and the world, and an approach to Him through prayer and the habits of daily life? Mary Reed Newland, in We and Our Children, here offers wise counsel on making the home a domestic church for the raising of Catholic children in holiness, truth, and the Christian virtues. All things central to a child’s life–play, work, school, creative activity, family responsibilities, prayer, the sacraments, and the Mass–are shown to be occasions for encouraging a spiritual outlook and the formation of sound Catholic habits.

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Is Love Necessary, Is Love Sufficient? – Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955

08 Wednesday Sep 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955, Youth

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From Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1950’s

Question:

Is love necessary for a happy marriage?

 Answer:

It depends on what you mean by “love”. I might add that it also depends on what you mean by marriage, but we shall take for granted that you mean what the Lord meant, viz., an indissoluble sacramental partnership between a man and a woman who pledge themselves to help each other toward happiness on earth and in heaven, and to beget and rear children for the kingdom of God.

What do you mean by “love”? Do you mean that violent feeling of attraction, that all-suffering sense of helpless infatuation, that overpowering “can’t-think-of-anything-else” emotion, which the pulps, true story magazines and mashy novels describe as love?

If you do, my answer is a quick “no”. This kind of love is not necessary because there have been thousands of happy marriages without it, from those in which the bridegroom was chosen for the bride (or vice versa) by elders, as was customary for centuries, down to the latest marriage of two young people who kept their wits about them all through their company-keeping and engagement.

The wild infatuation that some mistake for love is a minor form of hysteria, and hysteria is not only not necessary for, but a positive drawback to, a happy marriage.

But if you define love correctly, I say that it is absolutely necessary for a happy marriage. Love is an intelligent willingness to surrender self-will, to make sacrifices, to place fidelity, charity and duty above feelings, in behalf of a person whom one has found to be a good companion, a sturdy character, and a believer in the same purposes of life and marriage as oneself.

The degree of physical and emotional attraction behind this determination of the free will may vary greatly, but it is never the essence of love.

Too many young people have thought otherwise, to the effect that, with the inevitable lessening of infatuation after a year or two of married life, they have considered themselves no longer in love.

Love is a function of the free will, and it can last as long as the free will exercises itself according to the above definition.

Therefore, to say “I am in love” should mean “I am willing to surrender my will, to sacrifice my desires, to place duty and fidelity above all else, in behalf of one person whom I have found suitable for a successful marriage.”

 

Is Love Sufficient for a Happy Marriage?

 Problem:

If one is deeply in love with a certain person, is not that sufficient for a happy marriage, even though others advise against the marriage?

I am in love with a young man, and want to marry him, but everybody tells me he won’t make me happy.

I am so happy just being in love with him that I know I’ll be happy in marriage.

 Solution:

It has been set down as one of the most futile things in life to argue with a young person already in love, who believes that the happiness of being in love is a true measure of the happiness that will be found in marriage.

However, those of us who are interested in the happiness of married folk will still go on trying to convince young people of the danger of this mistake.

You say that everybody tells you that the young man you love cannot make you happy in marriage.

I presume that this means your parents, your pastor or confessor, your close friends. Such unanimity can hardly be a result of conspiracy against you, or unfounded on good reasons.

With eyes undimmed by the infatuation that makes you a poor judge of your boy friend, they must see something in his character that makes him unfit for the responsibilities of marriage.

Perhaps he is shiftless and undependable; perhaps a drunkard; perhaps unprincipled or irreligious.

After all, there are thousands of divorces in America each year, and tens of thousands of broken hearted wives.

Can’t you see that most of the latter married because they were breathlessly in love, and only afterward, too late, found out that love is not sufficient for a happy marriage?

You did not tell me on what ground everybody opposes your marriage to this boy, and therefore I do not say for certain that their opposition is justified.

There is a good presumption that it is, however, from the fact that it is unanimous.

I do say firmly, however, that you are clinging to a false principle when you say that “because you are happy just being in love with your boy friend, you know you’ll be happy in marriage.”

It takes more than love, I assure you, to make a marriage happy, and sometimes it is only your parents, pastor, and good friends, who can tell you whether that something is present or absent.

On Love at First Sight

 Problem

“Do you believe in love at first sight?

I recently met a man and fell head over heels in love with him on our first date. He seemed to feel the same way about me.

If he asks me to marry him even after only three dates, I feel that I will just have to say Yes. Is not such a love sufficient to make marriage very happy?”

 Solution

No, it isn’t, and if you look around, you will see hundreds of proofs of this fact. Love at first sight may be the preliminary to a happy marriage, but there is no guarantee that it will be.

I should say that the chances are definitely against a happy marriage, if love at first sight and three dates are the only  preliminaries.

The reason should be clear: as a rational creature you are expected to use your head as well as your heart in all the important actions of your life.

There are few things more important than getting married, and once married, you are married till the death of either yourself or your partner.

This love at first sight that you talk about is an emotional reaction to someone who seems to have many fine qualities on the surface.

It cannot possibly see into the heart, into the conscience, into the will, into the past.

It is easily possible that a man for whom a girl would feel love at first sight would be able to present a very lovable appearance for a time, while under the surface he was harboring any number of vices and evils.

It takes time to find out whether a man has the interior qualities necessary to make a good husband and a happy marriage.

And it takes common sense on your part not to say such things as that “you would have to say Yes at once if he asked you to marry him on your third date together.”

By that time you might not even have found out whether he was married before; whether he had an ungovernable temper; whether he was subject to epilepsy, melancholia or alcoholism.

Most of the divorces result from short courtships and so-called love at first sight. Don’t be like the foolish ones of your generation.

If you like this man at first sight, remember that you must use second sight and third sight and twentieth sight to know whether you can have reasonable assurance that he won’t be giving you black eyes in the second month of your marriage.

Love at first sight is all right if after six months of going with the person you find that he is as good inside as he is outside, and that you won’t offend God or renounce God by marrying him.

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Sex Before Marriage, Second Marriage – Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R.

16 Monday Aug 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955

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From Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1950’s

Sex Experience before Marriage

 Problem

I recently attended some lectures given at a secular university on the subject of preparation for a happy marriage. In one lecture it was stated that some sex experience before marriage is necessary for happiness in marriage, on the ground that by experiment one learns whether married life will be happy. Is there any truth in this? I am not a Catholic, though I read your column, and 1 feel that this sort of teaching can do an immense amount of harm. Do you agree?

 Solution

This sort of teaching has frequently crept into marriage courses given to young people in secular colleges and universities today, and you are right about its being very damaging to all who take it even half seriously.

Both on religious and on practical grounds it can be proved that any sort of sex-experimentation before marriage is bound to result in unhappiness.

This should certainly be clear to every God-fearing, Christian boy and girl.

Impurity, the right name for “sex-experimentation” before marriage, is a violation of nature and a transgression of God’s law.

It is an inexorable law of nature and a demand of the justice of God that every sin must be atoned for, and most sins are atoned for not only in the next world, but also in this. “The wages of sin is death.” There are many forms of death by which such sins are atoned for, and one of them is the death of that true happiness, built on the love of God and obedience to His law, that is looked for in marriage.

This religious truth is forcefully confirmed by experience. We recall a statement made by the head of a modern marriage problem clinic, who professed no particularly strong religious convictions.

He said that his experience with the problems of married people forced on him the conclusion that not one in a thousand marriages that had been preceded by sex indulgence turned out to be really happy; none turned out to be as happy as marriage should be.

It stands to reason that this should be so; the law of chastity is so deeply engraved in the conscience that it cannot be violated without major repercussions on the whole personality, nor without spoiling the whole relationship of marriage.

Marriages do suffer, sometimes, from ignorance on the part of husband or wife.

Even before marriage, all ignorance about marriage should be removed by proper instruction. But sin is never a good or  prudent preparation for anything.

Second Marriage

Problem

I am a widow, thirty-one years old, with two children. Before my husband died two years ago I promised him that I would never marry again.

I did that of my own accord because I loved him so much and we had been so happy together. He never asked me to make the promise, and only smiled when I did so.

Now in the past few months I have been going out with a single man of 35, and I already know that if I continue to go with him, he will ask me to marry him.

I want to keep my promise to my husband because I feel bound by it, but at the same time I find it awfully difficult to think of giving up this new friendship. Can you advise me?

 Solution

There are two things to be considered in solving this problem for yourself. The first one is this, that if you were unequivocally determined to carry out your promise and to remain single, it would be obligatory upon you not to enter into company-keeping at all.

The reason is that you would be in danger of falling into serious sin if, on the one hand, you were prepared to resist all inclinations and invitations to marry again, and at the same time you were making it possible for yourself to fall deeply in love.

It has been said here frequently that regular company-keeping is lawful only if there be a possibility of its ending in lawful marriage.

If you yourself exclude the possibility of marriage from your future, you must go the whole way and exclude regular company-keeping as well.

If you do not, you shall suffer mentally, physically, and probably morally.

The second thing to be considered is the fact that adherence to your promise, under the changed circumstances of the present, may prove to be very foolhardy and imprudent, because of your relative youth and evident inclination toward male companionship.

Unless you are motivated by deep spiritual principles, fortified by strong spiritual habits, and are willing to live a more or less secluded life for the love of God and for the sake of your children, the next ten years may be very difficult ones for you, unless you accept an invitation to marry again.

If you are a Catholic, the best thing to do is to lay your case before a confessor and permit him to decide for you.

After questioning your motives and studying your character for a while, be will be able to tell you whether you may be freed from the promise you made, and whether to marry again may not be the will of God for you.

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Mixed, Wrong and Sinful Company-Keeping, – Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R. 1955

05 Monday Jul 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955

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Sin or Virtue doesn’t change. These articles are timeless…..

Is Mixed Company-Keeping a Mortal Sin?

 Problem

I am a Catholic nineteen year old and have a non-Catholic boy-friend whom I like very much. Recently my father told me that I must give this boy up because it is a mortal sin for a Catholic to keep steady company with a non-Catholic.

I am sure that this cannot be true because if it is there are surely hundreds of Catholics committing this mortal sin.

My father reads The Liguorian and I beg you to write the truth about this question so that he will understand.

 Solution

Your father is considerably nearer the truth than the many young Catholics who are endangering their happiness and their souls by mixed company-keeping, even though there are some distinctions to be made in the matter.

Your father no doubt bases his statements on a principle that is clearly set down in the Canon Law of the Catholic Church, according to which Catholics are seriously forbidden to enter into mixed marriages.

The law goes on to state that this prohibition arises from the divine law whenever there is danger of loss or lessening of the faith of the Catholic, whenever there is danger that the children of such a marriage will be deprived of a full Catholic upbringing, and whenever there is danger of scandal or weakening of the faith of others. (Experience proves that in most mixed marriages some of these dangers are to be found.)

But even apart from these dangers which one may not deliberately encounter without breaking the divine law, mixed marriages are forbidden to Catholics by the universal ecclesiastical law.

Since mixed marriage itself is thus forbidden, the conclusion can surely be drawn that, since company-keeping is only lawful when it may be a preparation for a good marriage, mixed company-keeping is unlawful for Catholics.

There may be exceptions to this general rule, but the exceptions can be based only on definite reasons for which the Church grants dispensations for Catholics to marry non-Catholics.

Some of the exceptions would be based on the following circumstances:

1) If a Catholic lives in an area in which there are very few Catholics, so that there is little chance of marriage except with a non-Catholic.

2) If a Catholic is well past the ordinary years in which marriage is thought about, and thus has greatly lessened chances of finding a partner for marriage.

3) If a Catholic starts going with a non-Catholic who almost at once shows a sincere interest in the Catholic faith and thus gives solid hope that he (or she) will become a Catholic, preferably before marriage or even engagement.

In any case the company-keeping is forbidden if there is obvious danger to the faith or morals or future children of the Catholic.

As a girl of nineteen, living in a city with a large Catholic population, you cannot defend your mixed company-keeping on either of the first two counts.

If you are on the sure way to making your boy-friend a Catholic, you need only convince your father of that and all will be well.

Wrong Company-Keeping

 Problem

If you are in love and cannot possibly marry for a number of years, is it better to give up the person you love or to continue keeping company in the hope of eventual marriage? My case is this. I got married during the first World War, and a few years later my wife ran away and divorced me.

Now I have met a girl who, I believe, would make an excellent wife. I want to be married as a good Catholic, by a priest, but have been told I cannot because my first wife is still alive.

I am 42 years old. I am still determined to be married only by a priest. The girl wants to wait until I am free.

Should we continue to keep company until something happens to make it possible for us to be married. or should we separate?

 Solution

There is a principle of Christian ethics that must be applied directly to your case. The principle is this: Only they are permitted to keep close and continuous company who are free to marry within a reasonable and foreseeable time.

The reason for this is that company-keeping between a man and woman who are attracted to each other ordinarily becomes a greater and greater danger to their souls the longer it goes on.

It is intended by nature to lead, not to sin, but to marriage. If it cannot lead to marriage, as in your case, it will almost surely lead to sin of one kind or another.

You are not permitted to risk so great a danger when you can escape it by giving up the company-keeping.

Having a lawful wife, even though divorced, you are not free to marry within a reasonable or foreseeable time, and therefore, the security of your soul demands that you forego company-keeping till such time as you are free to marry again.

A second reason why you should not continue to keep company with the girl is that, despite her expressed willingness to wait for you, you are doing her an injustice by limiting her freedom to go out with someone whom she could marry.

It is also a sin of scandal to keep her in the circumstances that can so easily lead to sin, and of bad example to others in the same situation as you are.

It must be remembered that the evil of adulterous thoughts, intentions and actions is not changed by the fact that a married man does not happen to be living with his wife.

His marriage vow binds him till death breaks it, and in the meantime he may not think of another marriage or those things that led to marriage.

Sinful Company-Keeping

 Problem

I cannot see the justice of your statement that company-keeping is lawful only when there is some prospect and intention of marrying.

I have a boy friend with whom I have been keeping company for ten years.

Neither of us cares to get married. He does not want to be tied down to marriage and I do not want to give up my job because I have no taste for house work or bearing children.

I suppose I should admit that we fall into sin now and then, but we always go to confession afterward.

Certainly we have a right to each other’s companionship even though we do not plan on ever getting married.

 Solution

I am afraid I must be blunt in contradicting you. Under the circumstances you describe you have no moral right to keep company.

Two things make it sinful.

The first is the fact that you have actually excluded the prospect of marriage from that which is lawful only as a possible preparation for marriage.

The second thing only multiplies the guilt you incur under the first head; it is the fact that your company-keeping has become an occasion of habitual sin.

It is practically certain, moreover, that your confessions are bad, because a confession cannot be good unless there be sincere and practical sorrow for sins confessed.

Such sorrow is impossible unless there be a determination to give up unnecessary occasions of sin.

It is obvious that when you confess the sins committed with your boy friend you have no intention of giving up the unnecessary occasion of those sins, which is keeping steady company with the deliberate intention of never marrying.

It is one of the moral monstrosities of our day that there are people who keep company for years, take to themselves the pleasures that are lawful only in marriage, and yet exclude marriage and its responsibilities from their thoughts and intentions.

That it is a monstrosity is evident in the fact that your own conscience has become so dull to so fundamental a moral principle.

I beg you to pray hard for light and courage to see and do what is right; to talk things over with your boy friend, and then, for the sake of your immortal soul, to decide to give up company-keeping or to plan on marriage soon.

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Blind Dates, Waiting for a Proposal – Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R.

03 Thursday Jun 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955

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On Blind Dates

 Problem:

What is your opinion of blind dates? My parents refuse to let me go out with anybody unless I know something about him beforehand. Some of my girl friends can go out with anybody, whether they know the person or not. And often they call me up and tell me they have a date for me, but I’m never allowed to go out on such parties. How is a girl ever going to meet someone she might have a chance to marry, if she can never get acquainted with new people?

 Solution:

Experience proves that there is a great deal of danger in blind dates, and that there is much wisdom in the policy pursued by your parents.

In these times it is difficult enough for a girl to avoid dangerous and sometimes morally fatal entanglements even when she does not take chances on dating with unknown and possibly designing characters.

You should be aware of some of the dangers that have always been found to be connected with accepting blind dates.

The utter freedom that is permitted to your girl friends by their parents makes it very possible that the source of their contacts with strangers may be suspect. They probably meet such men hanging around taverns, or public dance halls, or cocktail bars.

This does not infallibly mean that the men they meet are bad, but the chances are high enough to render it foolhardy for a girl to rush out to spend an evening with one of them.

Oftentimes such men are already married, are in town for a few days, and are looking for girl companions with whom they can have what they call “a good time”.

And it is not uncommon for such to lie about their marital status when looking for girls to take out in a strange city. Often, too, they are divorced men, or men who have made their own home life unhappy, who frequent the taverns in quest of consolation or excitement through chance contacts with girls who don’t care much what they do.

There are some blind dates that are not especially dangerous, and I am sure that your parents would recognize such. If a reputable friend, from a good family, has out-of-town relatives to entertain, about whose background she knows something, it would not be too imprudent to accept a date with one of them and to make one of a party for the evening.

The one thing that is important is that a girl have some positive knowledge that she is not going out with a married man, a divorced man, or an unprincipled man. She cannot know that if she accepts stone-blind dates with strangers.

On Exclusive Dates

 Problem:

I am 17 years old, just graduated from high school., and in my first year at college. I don’t want to get married until I am at least 20, if then.

I would like to go out with different boys now and then, but I don’t want to be tied down to steady company-keeping. This seems to be all but impossible today.

If I am seen at a party with a certain young man, no one else will ask me for a date unless it becomes publicly known that I have broken up with that particular boy.

In other words, if you go out once or twice with a certain boy, everybody else seems to think you are already bound to that person for good. Do I have to either give up dating boys entirely, or else stick to one during my whole college career?

 Solution:

We have heard complaints about this unfortunate social condition repeatedly. It is not a healthy thing at all. It is even responsible for some unhappy marriages because the young people involved had little chance to become acquainted with anybody but the first partner they happened to take out.

The responsibility for this situation may be traced to the fact that there is so much exclusive dating and regular company-keeping among the very young, even in the early years of high school.

Some school authorities and even parents seem to think nothing of permitting freshmen and sophomore high school students to have their “steady dates.”

Since that is so common, it is natural that many young people should feel that by the time a person reaches college, he or she must have a “steady”, or must want to make a “steady” of the first partner that comes along.

If you really are serious about not wanting to get married for several years, and about making the most of your chance at education, the best thing by all odds would be to do very little dating.

If you go out often, even with different persons, you may find yourself in love before you know it, no matter what different plans you have laid.

Giving up dates, which should not be too difficult for a 17 year old freshman, would obviate all your worries about people taking it for granted that you are all but engaged when you go out with a boy.

Should Engaged Girls Accept Dates?

 Problem:

I am engaged to be married to a good Catholic girl and she has accepted my ring. However I am signed up for three years in the Navy and will be away from home most of the time. Now my fiancee has asked my permission to accept dates with other men for special parties, dances, etc., while I am gone. I don’t like the idea at all, but would like to know what you think of it, and whether I should grant the permission.

 Solution:

There is something in your girl’s favor in the fact that she asks you for the permission at all.The world is full of scatterbrained, disloyal, unprincipled girls who would not even think of asking their fiance about such a matter at all.

They just go ahead accepting dates, in the absence of their fiance, with anybody who comes along.

You may thank God you are not engaged to one of these.There is something against your girl’s character, however, in the fact that she should want such a permission.

Good Catholic girls, of whom there are many in the world, simply would not think of doing any dating with others once they have been definitely engaged. They realize that dating is for those who are free to marry; that it is always a danger, even in the best of circumstances; that it can lead to many complications for a girl who has already promised her hand and heart to a certain man.

To the girl of high character, therefore, it is no problem and not too great sacrifice to accept no dates while her fiance is absent. Only the most extraordinary circumstances, such as would readily be understood by her partner, should make for an exception to this rule.

Of course, the expectation of a boy that his fiancee will not accept dates must be accompanied by the promise that he will do no dating either. If the boy intends to date while he is away from home, or if he finds the opportunities to do so irresistible, he should be consistent and not merely give the girl permission to date other boys, but actually call the whole engagement off.

Strictly speaking, we can say that engagement means that two people say to each other: “We are all through dating-except with each other.”

Waiting for a Proposal

 Problem:

I am 27 years old and have been going with the same man for four years. He has never done any serious talking about our getting married, and yet he resents it very much if I even think of going out with anybody but himself.

He leaves me with the impression that some day he will talk about marriage but at the same time that that day will not be for a long time.

I do not see any serious obstacles to his settling down, but am at a loss to know whether I should wait for him to get good and ready to speak about marriage or give him up. Can you advise me?

 Solution:

This is far too common a problem in the world today, even among Catholics. Let me tell you frankly a hidden factor that is often present in the problem, though it would be very wrong to assume that this factor is present in yours.

Very often experience proves that dilly-dallying with the idea of marriage on the part of a man is due to the fact that he has managed to induce a girl-friend into a more or less continuous habit of sin, with the effect that he is sinfully living as if he were married and yet retaining his independence and freedom from lasting responsibility.

As time goes on, he becomes more and more enamored with his state, entirely content to indulge in forbidden privileges and to put off any serious idea of marriage.

This, of course, represents the acme of selfishness and evil, but all sin is selfishness, and selfishness grows incredibly with frequently repeated sins.

Apart from this angle, which always demands as a first and elementary condition of solving the problem the complete renunciation of sin on the part of the girl, there may be obstacles to marriage in the mind of the man that must be overcome.

He may think he has not enough money, or that he has not a good enough job, or that he owes it to his parents not to leave them for a long time to come.

A girl has a right, after going with a man for even less than four years, to draw such objections out into the open and to insist on their being discussed freely.

She is in a good position if she finds her friend jealous of her companionship, and should use any expression of this as an occasion for discussing the future.

If he refuses to be definite about plans for the future, the odds are that he won’t ever want to get married. In that case it would be good to drop him.

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On Marrying a Relative, Reading Books About Sex, etc. – Questions Young People Ask, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R

20 Tuesday Apr 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955

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catholic marrying a protestant, catholic singles reading about sex, catholics marrying cousins

Painting by Lucius Rossi (Italian, 1846–1913)

Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage by Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R.

On Marrying a Relative

Problem:

Several years ago I fell in love with my second cousin. We had planned to be married by my parish priest (with a dispensation), but my mother was so violently opposed to the idea that I could not even talk to her about it.

Finally I called off the engagement. Several months ago I met a young man in the armed forces, and we started going together until he was sent overseas. I am very fond of him and we correspond regularly.

Meanwhile I see my cousin now and then and I know he is still in love with me. I feel guilty about having hurt him. Do you think I am still in love with him, or did I do the right thing in breaking off our engagement?

Solution:

It is always good to escape from a situation in which you have to apply for a dispensation from the general laws governing marriage. There are serious reasons behind the law that prohibits relatives (second cousins or closer) to marry.

A wedding between cousins is not quite a normal wedding, and though the Church does grant a dispensation for such in exceptional cases and for grave reasons, she does so with reluctance, preferring to see her children marry without seeking exceptions to the natural and ecclesiastical law.

Things have turned out so well for you that you have reason to be grateful that obstacles prevented your marriage to a cousin. Your feeling for the latter is now more one of sympathy and pity than of real love.

You should not accept any dates with him, because that would only make things difficult both for him and you. You are bound to see him when there is a gathering of relatives, but on such occasions you should avoid as much as possible, tete-a-tetes and sad reminiscences.

You need have no fear that his life will be ruined as a result of your broken engagement. Just as you have been fortunate enough to find anew boy friend, so he, in time, will find someone whom he can love and will want to marry. Neither of you will then have to go through life with the thought that you broke through the barriers that nature has set up to prevent close relatives from marrying each other.

On Reading Books about Sex

Problem:

Is it lawful or advisable for engaged couples to read one or the other of the many books that are published about sex and the details of married life before they are married? My boy friend and I have heard our non-Catholic friends talking about such books, and have even been offered one by a friend.

He thinks we should read it because so much is said nowadays about the harm done by ignorance in the married. I have held off because I had my doubts about such books, and wanted first to ask you to discuss the matter in your column.

Solution:

This much can be said as certain: It would be exceedingly dangerous, so much so as to be wrong, for an engaged couple to read any books on sex that might be offered to them by a friend.

On no type of writing must more caution and discrimination be exercised than on books dealing with matters of sex. There are too many bad books of this kind, books that teach immoral practices, books that stress the importance of the physical aspects of sex far out of proportion to their real place and purpose in human lives, to make it lawful for even engaged couples to pick up and read any book about sex.

Another thing that is certain: There should be no thought of any sort of special study, or reading or discussion of sex science until very shortly before actual marriage. This is assuming that a young man and woman have the ordinary, general knowledge of the purpose of sex and of sex morality that is a part of any decent education.

If, as happens once in a while, that much is lacking, a general briefing on the subject should be sought from a priest.

But to read detailed, or so-called “scientific” books before marriage would be foolhardy and wrong.

It is not wrong, but rather reasonable and even necessary, for an engaged couple to seek clear knowledge of the privileges and duties, the rights and wrongs, of married life, shortly before their marriage.

The priest who prepares them for marriage has an obligation to impart such instruction. If he fails to offer it, a couple should ask for it, or go to another priest to receive it. He may direct them to sound and good reading matter that will supplement the instruction he gives and help to prepare them for happy married life.Michael and Jeanett's engagement pics 268

“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 http://amzn.to/2tcBqSC (afflink)

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A very valuable book for the guys plucked out of the past and reprinted. It was written in 1894 by Fr. Bernard O’Reilly and the words on the pages will stir the hearts of the men to rise to virtue and chivalry…. Beautifully and eloquently written!

A very beautiful book, worthy of our attention. In it, you will find many pearls of wisdom for a woman striving to be the heart of the home, an inspiration to all who cross her path. You will be inspired to reconsider the importance of your role of wife and mother! Written by Rev. Bernard O’Reilly in 1894, the treasures found within its pages ring true and remain timeless…

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How to Judge a Boyfriend’s Conversion/Choice of Loves – Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R.

12 Monday Apr 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955, Youth

≈ 1 Comment

Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage by Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R.

How to Judge a Boyfriend’s Conversion

Problem:

How is it possible to be sure that a boyfriend, in becoming a convert to the Catholic Church, is truly sincere in his conversion and not merely “going through the motions” for the sake of marriage?

I went out with this boy for a while, liked him quite a lot, but finally told him I would have to stop seeing him because I was determined never to marry anyone but a Catholic. Almost at once he said: “Then I’ll become a Catholic.”

I have seen similar cases in which the converted person turned out to be anything but a decent Catholic after marriage. I don’t want that to happen in my case. My boyfriend is taking instructions, but how can I be sure he is sincere?

Solution:

This is a very practical and important problem because there have indeed been many cases in which a boy went through all the requirements for becoming a Catholic, but turned out later to have done so only for the sake of “getting the girl.”

On the other hand it must be remembered that sincere converts make the best Catholics of all, and a Catholic girl should be very happy over the prospect of marrying such a man.

There are certain signs of sincerity in one who is taking instructions to become a Catholic that the girl should look for. She should, if at all possible, accompany him to the instructions he receives from the priest, both to give him confidence and to watch their effect on him.

If he is sincere in his study of the faith, he will show it in three ways:

1) By asking questions both of the priest who instructs him and of his girlfriend. A man who goes through a whole course of instructions without ever asking a question or raising a doubt, is probably not really interested in the faith at all.

2) By commenting to his girlfriend on the new things he is learning and on their wonderful appeal to his mind. If a man takes instructions to become a Catholic and never has a word to say about their effect on him, he cannot be very sincere.

3) By showing a new interest in prayer and church services within a short time after beginning to take instructions. True conversions are always marked by sincere prayers and a quickening desire to enter into the life of the Church. A man who would go through an entire course of instructions and never of his own accord go to Mass or any other Catholic church service until after his reception into the church, would offer evidence of indifference to the whole thing.

One final thing that a girl should do: she should bring up moral problems that being a Catholic raises in one’s life and see how her boyfriend would solve them. If he balks, for instance, at the Catholic principle concerning birth-control, and holds out against it, he is not sincerely converted.

Choice of Loves

Problem:

I am in love. The man I love is wonderful. I have never met anybody like him. Other men with whom I have gone out have almost invariably made indecent advances; this man never has. He respects my religion and would do nothing to lessen my regard for it. He even says he would like to become a Catholic.

There is only one drawback to my happiness. He was married before in the Protestant Church in which he was baptized. I promised to marry him because surely God will not condemn us when we need each other so badly.

Solution:

It is good that you have written to me so that I can answer shortly before Christmas. You say you have already made your decision. This means that Christmas is not for you. You have renounced it and rejected it, and none of its beauty or joy can have any meaning for your soul.

You say that “God will not condemn you because you need each other so badly.”

Despite your feelings, God has already condemned you. He who left heaven and gave up warm houses, soft clothing, even honor and respectability, and ultimately His life, to save you for heaven, has already pronounced sentence on a decision like yours.

He called marriages such as the one you have promised to attempt “adulterous”. And He said that there will be no unrepentant adulterer in heaven.

Therefore, take, if you will, the benefits of this attractive invalid marriage. But know what you are taking. You will never, so long as you live with this forbidden partner, be able to go to confession and receive God’s forgiveness for this or any other sin. You will never be permitted to kneel at the altar railing and receive the Son of God into your heart. You will never be able to look at a crucifix and say: “He died for me; therefore I will love Him and He will save me,” because you are rejecting Him by your bad marriage.

And there will be no “good tidings of great joy” for you on any Christmas, because what Christ came to give to those of good will, you will have exchanged for a home in which God cannot dwell.

It is not worth it, child. I know it is hard for a girl to give up a man whom she loves greatly. But so was the stable hard, and the manger and the cross. You don’t need any particular man in all the world. You do need God….the God-Man….and you will need Him forever. Don’t give Him up for any love.

“We as grandparents have a great opportunity to teach our grandchildren traditions, truths, and values that their parents may overlook or not have time for. Because of the various complexities of today’s society and family values, we can provide spiritual training when the grandchildren are with us.” – Bob & Emilie Barnes

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You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.

This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.

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On Reluctant Mothers, Elopement, Stealing Another Man’s Girl – Young People’s Questions, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R.

10 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Questions Young People Ask Before Marriage, Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R., 1955, Youth

≈ 3 Comments

Questions People Ask Before Marriage – Fr. Donald Miller, C.SS.R.da612d48c5d849e0ce7290b16298b152

On Stealing Another Man’s Girl

Problem

“Very briefly, my difficulty is this: I am very much enthralled by a girl who is engaged to another young man. I am currently trying to convince her that she has made a mistake and should break her engagement.

I met her, after having known her in high school several years ago without paying any attention to her, at a recent reunion. I asked her for a date the following Monday. Before Monday came she informed me that she had just accepted an engagement ring from another fellow.

Despite that fact, I started a routine of courtship – roses, telephone calls, visits at her home, etc. I think she is confused and not too sure of herself about marrying this other man. I also think I could do better for her than he could. I badly need advice, and I think she does too. I am 23 years old, and she is 20.”

Solution

Most people would roundly condemn you for “poaching”, i.e., trying to take a girl away from the man to whom she is engaged. Indeed, a first glance at your problem indicates that you are doing a moral injustice to the man who has already courted the girl and won from her a promise of her hand and heart in marriage.

Only two circumstances could mitigate your brashness in some degree. The first would be if you had real, objective, almost certain evidence of the fact that the girl is not happy in her engagement or would really be unhappy in marriage to the man to whom she is promised. There is danger that your own infatuation may make you invent such evidence.

Furthermore, your own favors may have been the only thing responsible for making her begin to doubt the wisdom of accepting a ring from someone else. In either case you haven’t a leg to stand on.

The other circumstances that might lessen the degree of injustice in your conduct is if the girl herself were directly and expressly to open the field to candidates for her hand once more. For a sound and solid reason a girl may break an engagement, or insist that she and a boy friend go back to the status quo that existed before they agreed on future marriage.

Only if the girl in question does this, may you continue to pursue her. As long as she is willing to remain bound by her engagement, you have to smother, under your sense of honor and fair play, your infatuation. At 23, you need not fear that the loss of this girl will make you a bachelor for life.

On Eloping

Problem

My boy-friend, whom I have promised to marry, wants me to elope with him because of the opposition of our families to our getting married in the near future.

I am 17, have just finished high school, and my family tells me I’m too young to get married. My boy-friend’s family tells him that he is not making enough money to get married.

He is 20, and he works in a factory where he is paid $1.25 an hour, which brings him $50 a week and more when he works overtime. I am terribly in love with him, and am almost agreed that the best thing for us to do is to leave our homes without saying anything to anybody and get married at once. What do you think?

Solution

Experience is heavily weighted against your having a happy marriage with such a start as you contemplate. Even secular marriage counseling agencies, which keep statistics on such things, will tell you that marriages that begin with elopement have the least chance of success.

Elopement is a bad beginning for married life for many reasons. First of all, it means a sharp and bitter break with your family, and no matter how much you may think you don’t need your family now, you will, as time goes on, feel deeply the separation you have caused. At your age especially, an elopement would be a combination of selfish mistrust of your parents, of meanness in depriving them of a chance to share in your wedding joy, and of an element of disobedience because you are so young.

Even if they were to forgive you later on, they could never feel quite the same toward you as they did before. As a Catholic, you should know that an elopement, with speedy marriage following, is out of the question. (I hate to think that you may be contemplating a civil marriage, with all its disastrous consequences for your soul.)

As a Catholic, you have to go to your pastor in good time, have to be instructed in the duties of marriage, have to permit the banns of marriage to be published, etc. Of course there is provision made for special cases in which there is an important reason for secrecy or haste. But so often this reason has to do with sin that a young girl who marries hastily and in secret gives grounds for the suspicion that “she had to get married.”

From this distance, it would appear that your parents and your boyfriend’s parents are advising you wisely. You can check this with your pastor or confessor, who will be influenced by no personal motives in advising you, and who will help you to get married before too long if that turns out to be the prudent thing to do. But put out of your mind any thought of an elopement.

On Reluctant Mothers

Problem

I am just over 21, and am engaged to be married to a good Catholic young man. We have been going together for eight months. We would like to be married in a month or so, but my mother begs me with tears to put it off for a couple of years, so that she will have me with her that much longer. She tells me that I owe this to her for all that she has done for me. Can you tell me if I do have any obligation to put off our marriage for two years because of my mother’s feelings?

Solution

It could be a grave mistake to put off your marriage for even a year merely because your mother wants your companionship. Common sense and experience lay down very definite principles regarding the length of time young people should wait before marrying, once they have become engaged.

There are some cases in which a wait is necessary for serious reasons, such as the actual material dependence of others on the man or woman, or the lack of even a modest income on which to start a home.

These exceptions do not change the universal principle that long engagements are to be avoided whenever possible. The longer two people who are in love with each other put off their marriage, the greater is the danger of their falling into sin. To be in love and engaged and yet to have to wait two years or so before marrying places a great strain on young people’s ability to resist manifestations of affection that of their nature endanger the virtue of chastity.

Mothers who hate to lose their daughters do not think of these things. But a daughter must think of them and must decide the matter according to the best interests of her soul and the soul of her fiancé.

In a situation such as is presented here, a girl would do well to place the decision in the hands of her confessor. He will be able to judge objectively both the reasons for the mother’s reluctance to give up her daughter for a while, and the degree of spiritual danger that will be involved for the engaged couple.

If he decides that the marriage should not be put off for another year or two, his authority should be quoted to the mother, and should be followed even though the latter bitterly resents it.vintage-wallpaper-backgrounds-5

“Many times God allows it to be hard to pray, simply to school us in applying our wills, to teach us that the value of prayer does not depend on the amount of emotion we can whip up. Many times the saints had trouble getting excited about prayers, but they said them, because prayers were due and their value had nothing to do with how eagerly they went about saying them.” -Mary Reed Newland, http://amzn.to/2snNxN7 (afflink)

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I have prepared this Lenten journal to help you to keep on track. It is to assist you in keeping focused on making Lent a special time for your family. We do not have to do great things to influence those little people. No, we must do the small things in a great way…with love and consistency…

Timeless words from the pen of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen inspire the heart and imagination as readers embark on a Lenten journey toward a better understanding of their spiritual selves. Covering the traditional themes of Lent–sin and salvation, death and Resurrection, sorrow and hope, ashes and lilies–these 50 passages and accompanying mini-prayers offer readers a practical spiritual program as a retreat from the cares and concerns of a secular world view.
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