I have been thinking about this a lot since returning to the church. I'm a single, celibate woman, and while not gay, other of my life circumstances combine with church teaching to make marriage seem extremely improbable.*
At any rate I couldn't agree with Grant more. What he puts his finger on is probably my single biggest criticism of the Church. Being lay, single, celibate, and called to live out your apostolate in the world is the *default state,* the normal thing, and should be regarded that way, with all the support and encouragement for living out that state of life that we give to vocations.
But we've twisted it around, so that having a vocation (to marriage, the priesthood, or vowed religious life) is seen as the default, or what we all 'should' be doing, and living out a lay, single, chaste, etc life is seen as deficient or pitiable. Not cool, Church. Not cool.
I'd like to see the Church doing the following things:
-Being clear that marriage is a vocation that you are specifically called to, not the basic expectation of adulthood.
-Supporting its lay, single members in both finding and living out the apostolate to which each is called. Off the top of my head, one way this could look would be small groups for singles not focused on finding a spouse but instead focused on living out the work God is calling us to by virtue of NOT calling us to married or religious life.
-The conservative parts of the church need to avoid lifting up marriage and motherhood for women as the highest calling, the best and only apostolate. I'm a mother, and it certainly is both a high calling and an apostolate, but it's toxic to make it into The One Thing. This is basically just what Grant said, except I agreed so much I had to say it again.
-The liberal parts of the church need to similarly avoid lifting up romantic love as their One Most Important Thing. It isn't. For a group of people who likes to say that 'love is love,' they sure seem to be talking about only a very specific kind of love. (Yes I know I sound salty; I've been hurt by this one personally.)
In the secular world, I agree with everyone who has talked about the need to have legislated support structures for singles. My oldest friend is my health-care proxy; that much I could manage. Another, local, friend is my emergency contact for absolutely everything I could make him the emergency contact for. I could manage that too. My sister is also the beneficiary on my life insurance. That's allowed. But...there's no way to share health insurance benefits with someone to whom you're not married, just for instance. The sick days problem is real, and also just the social acceptance of deciding to prioritize friendships. I once called out of work because another single friend landed in the hospital, and while I'm essential at work and I knew my job was safe, it was regarded as bizarre. Who takes off of work to take care of a friend? Similarly, when Covid hit many of the rules for lockdowns seemed to ignore the fact that single people even exist. I was terrified that I would be sick at home, not sick enough to go to the hospital but too sick to take care of myself, and that no one would break the rules to come take care of me.
oof I am looking for a good way to close the comment and failing. Just that...yes, this is a thing, yes, it is a problem, and lastly that while I think a multiplicity of factions in our cultural world have created this problem, both right and left, I put a huge onus on the Church to fix it.
*(I live in a small liberal city in a liberal state where a refusal to have sex outside of marriage is an absolute dealbreaker for the overwhelming majority of men. I also have a child, with all the history that implies, and while I am free to marry in the church, my history is an absolute dealbreaker for the remaining tiny fraction of men. I am just a bundle of dealbreakers.)
Being Baptist, I don't have a tradition that even allows for a form of consecrated virginity at all. It's not good, of course, that for Catholics the religious life is often portrayed as a second-best option, but you do at least get the option. Over here we get told a range of things from "woman's chief end is to get married and have children" (wrong) to "some people have the gift of singleness, temporarily or permanently" which always leaves the assumption that, of those, the temporarily single state will be more normal. You're supposed to be content in your single state until it ends. People (like me) who take this literally and are so happy in our single states that we don't want them to end, become an enigma to everyone else --- you're supposed to want to get married. It's the Natural Way Of Things. If you are perpetually single, you're left perpetually hanging in midair, so to speak. When a pastor gets to 1 Corinthians 7 in a sermon he might pay lip service to the idea that perpetual singleness is a good thing, but in practice you're always given the opposite idea.
I'm 23 now, which in my immediate circles is a little old for a girl not to be married yet, and over the last couple of years I've turned my argumentative tendencies toward advocating that No, Actually, This Is Good. It's not very easy, though, when so many of the books and articles and people's lives that make good sources on the subject come from outside the theological tradition of the people I'm talking to --- and not just from outside but from the (in many cases) extremely suspect Catholics (gasp!). Which doesn't make it easier for an already sceptical audience to accept my claims. They can get used to the idea of me being perpetually single because they've known for years that I'm eccentric, but to argue that it's a perfectly good way of life for *other* people? That's more difficult. I did find a lecture by Sam Allberry that made sense to the two people who've actually listened to it so far, so that was a big victory. But as much as I'd like to start the first ever Baptist order of nuns, I think we're still ages away from getting even the concept of consecrated virginity.
I'm trying to be the person who places friendships at the heart of their life, but when so many of your friends are of the opposite sex and you move in the circles described above, that brings its own set of challenges. I have got to say though, my friendships have certainly been among the best relationships I've had. I don't feel the lack of romance as if my life is missing something. Who needs that when your friends can be counted on to help you with a dead car, or wash your dishes when they come over and see your house is a mess and not judge you for it, or check up on you when you pass out in public (has happened an embarrassing number of times)? Sure, you have to be vulnerable with more than one person, as opposed to the cultural expectation that when you're married you and your spouse do all the taking care of each other (an expectation I also think is wrong). But that spreads out the burden of each individual across more people and lessens what each individual has to carry. I certainly don't think that's a bad thing.
I think the most significant thing I've seen is that unmarried individuals don't have some special superpower to never be sick or dependent, but outside of religious life there aren't recognized structures for people to give and receive care in friendship on a sustained basis. At my old job, I could take sick leave to care for my sick husband - but not for a sick friend, or to watch my friend's kids while she was sick. It's nearly impossible to add friends to health insurance, and in many areas you might face housing restrictions on living with too many unrelated/unmarried friends. In Maryland, it's illegal for my son's godmother to babysit him in her home a few hours each week if we swap childcare, because the swap is considered "compensation" and she's not related to me by blood, marriage, or legal adoption - the state considers it "unlicensed daycare."
I think one thing our current vocabulary lacks is a way to talk about something as a unique or particular experience without the lack of it being lesser. I imagine my friends in religious life might say that the experience of maturing in formation is unique in their lives, in the same way I would say marriage is unique in mine, even though they aren't differentiated in their desired end of holiness. I don't think my lack of religious life makes my maturity lesser, but I'd agree that I don't share that particular way of maturing.
The pandemic has caused me to reflect on this topic a great deal. I have sorrowed to see single friends in crippling isolation because networks outside of families are so much weaker. I think it's a problem to think, as many people do, that celibacy is a strange way of life, a sad predicament, or an exception. This isn't a problem that the Church created (my context is Catholic), but is something we can and do perpetuate. And, let's be real, celibacy is harder in an individualistic society like ours. Nevertheless, celibacy is a normal way of life, possible for ordinary people, in which great joy, grace, and fulfillment occur. What it requires is a strong network of close friendships and connections to extended family and community. What it allows is in some ways a greater degree of self-gift. I work as a lay person in Campus Ministry alongside a priest, and am often struck by the way in which my colleague is able to be present more often and more unreservedly to students because he doesn't have to be thinking about picking up the kids, cooking dinner, and having the emotional energy to be there for his family.
Sometimes I feel guilty speaking in these terms, as a person happily married with children--what do I know about the joys of celibacy? But I think my feeling of guilt is in itself an expression of our collective misconception. Celibate people are not pitiable, and their lives are not empty. I think (although I would defer to people who are actually walking the path of celibacy on this) that what we need to do for celibate people is to make the conceptual and practical space in our own minds and lives and in our society for them to exist and be supported.
This topic is near and dear to my heart! I agree with those who have pointed out the lack of benefits and support available to single people. For instance, I just attended a funeral last week, but I was unable to use my designated bereavement days off work because it was not for an immediate family member. Why wouldn't someone be grieving an aunt, grandparent, or friend just as much as they would a parent, brother, or sister? Expanding our idea of "family" in this way would benefit everyone, not just those of us who are single! In Catholic circles, we talk about focusing on your "primary vocation." It's important, but can also be used to justify not looking beyond your immediate family - not to mention the stress, anxiety, and exclusion caused by certain ways of talking about vocation. The kingdom of God is so much bigger than the nuclear family! We want to put everyone into neat little boxes and categories, but I think we do better when we mingle and overflow into each other's lives.
I also think of traditions and rituals that conflate getting married with becoming an adult. A wedding, and all the festivities around it, are seen as a rite of passage; and if you haven't reached it yet, you haven't "arrived." Bridal showers make sense in a society where most people live with their parents until marriage, at which point they move out on their own for the first time. That's just not the case anymore! Could house/apartment warming parties become more of a standard practice instead?
I can imagine that sometimes it might take more imagination to love and support your single friends. It's tangibly easier, in some ways, to show up with a gift for a wedding, to make a meal for someone who has just had a baby, or to be the one to make the drive to your friend's house if she has several kids and can't easily get away. We have practical rituals for those things already in place; we know the "script," so to speak. It might take more effort and creativity to show up for someone who doesn't follow these steps in their life, but your single friends will appreciate it.
Single people often feel like second-class citizens, with second-class relationships, because we are often treated and spoken about in that way. I agree with those Grant Hartley tweets 100% - marriage, sex, and children are often described as if they are the height of personal fulfillment, sacrificial love, and the best way to be holy. But it's not what our faith teaches, and it's simply not true! I know so many amazing Catholic women who have agonized over their singleness; and I wonder how much of that pain could have been reduced if we talked about marriage, sex, and children in a more healthy way. I don't want to denigrate these parts of life in any way, because they are so, so important! But I do think we need the pendulum to swing back toward a more nuanced, grounded view.
On a personal note, I would say that my friendships are absolutely at the heart of my life, and my life is so much richer for them!
My general reaction to "graduating at the altar" would be to recognize how accurate a label that was for a long time for women, whose possibilities were limited, so that becoming an adult was attained by becoming a wife. The old slogan describing premodern women's choices, "a husband or a wall," got even narrower in cultures where women couldn't choose the convent. For churches, I see why defending marriage might seem to judge singleness inferior, but that's a sorry side effect.
To answer more directly the query for this week: my model of one who puts friendship at the heart of her life is a beloved artist, a single woman whose adult life has been given mostly to painting, parish work, deep ties with a few families and singles...and pilgrimage! She and a lifelong friend, a priest, have done long pilgrimages including one clear to Jerusalem. Even as they set aside the stuff of ordinary life, these journeys contained much of it--planning, meeting weather and other adversities, moving the body, talking, reacting, and praying a lot--enclosed within this relationship between two friends. To call it a "spiritual friendship" is partly right but sounds too ethereal for something full of earthly joys of walking, joking, and paying attention.(I'm grateful to have been on much shorter pilgrimages with her and to learn from her how important it is to have something to do together that is not only the spoken word!) When her friend received recent terminal diagnosis, she became caretaker and companion.
I so agree with your lead statement, while marriage is sacred, it is not perfect and you don't automatically mature as if you have received some super power. And not everyone is called to marriage. St. Paul even says in 1 Corinthians 7 that it is just as good to be single as it is to be married if you are living a Christian life. Marriage is good and Single is good if that is what you have been called to. My friends have carried me through some very difficult times in my life. And I have and am still carrying them. Not the shallow casual friendships, but the deep abiding ones. These friends have strengthened my faith, as well as brought joy and comfort to my life. And I am very happily married. The author of that tweet is correct, we don't express the value of such relationships in our rhetoric or in our policy as much as we should.
Sadly for many of us marriage is just not an option. At 54 and still single I know my life has purpose and value. But it is a hard row to hoe in a society that puts sexual partnerships above any and all other kinds of relationships. Even in the secular world that holds true. And it is even more of a pressure within the religious/Christian one. Especially for women!! And it is that last part I tend to resent a bit. That somehow my womanhood is less complete without marriage. Sure I wished to get to experience the role of wife and mother but it just didn't work out. That doesn't make me less than myself, anymore than becoming an engineer made me "Less" of a complete person than becoming a teacher would have. It is a different life than I planned but still a full and valuable one.
I think our culture, or frankly most parishes, has not honored those of us who are unmarried. Look at any parish bulletin - the closest you get is the "Young Adult Group" - which seems have a cut-off of around 30 yrs old for being a member. There is no other organization that seems to welcome us until you're ready for the "Silver Seniors" group. I rather wish we emphasized more of a family structure - - by not breaking people into groups by their age or marital status, but trying to encourage all to mingle together to form friendships. I don't know why a married couple - of any age - might not find me interesting to talk with and have many commonalities! It is harder for single folk to be social in their church as we don't have the natural bonds of children the same age or in classes together, or a spouse that can relate to another's spouse. While I love my parish, I admit that in spite of being an active member, a lector, and now part-time on staff, I have only been asked one time to a married couple's home for dinner. Yet so many wave to me or chat after Mass.
My great aunt spent much of her adult life living with a friend of hers. (She grew up observing her mother's and sister's abusive relationships and understandably decided she'd rather stay single than enter into a marriage like that.) We grew up calling the friend "aunt," and she would come with my great aunt on visits to family in my area, and sent us gifts sometimes. She supported the friend through the death of the friend's young son, who was born with a heart defect. Unfortunately, the friend had a nervous breakdown a few years ago and couldn't safely continue living with my aunt. But they continue to keep in touch, and the friend seems stable enough at this point that they've resumed going to church together.
"To be human means to be called to interpersonal communion. *The text of Genesis 2:18-25 shows that marriage is the first and, in a sense, the fundamental dimension of this call.* But it is not the only one. The whole of human history unfolds within the context of this call. In this history, on the basis of the principle of mutually being "for" the other, in interpersonal "communion", there develops in humanity itself, in accordance with God's will, the integration of what is "masculine" and what is "feminine". The biblical texts, from Genesis onwards, constantly enable us to discover the ground in which the truth about man is rooted, the solid and inviolable ground amid the many changes of human existence."
** added. From Mulieris Dignitatem
The dignity of women might take a hit if we exegete marriage into being a subset of friendship, rather than receiving friendship as an outgrowth of marriage.
I have to disagree. There is something unique about marriage. The physical intimacy that requires gift of self and the possible procreation of a child. The emotional intimacy that is created from physical intimacy. I love my friends, but the love for my husband is so much more. I would love to see a discussion on how to balance this truth with our need to see the humanity of LGBTQ+ individuals. As a Catholic woman, I understand and appreciate what the church teaches about marriage. I also understand the effects the teaching can have on LGBTQ+ individuals. How can we find the both/and? How can we see that the goodness of a teaching is seen through its fruit, while teachings on “same sex attraction” leads to so much suffering?
I have been thinking about this a lot since returning to the church. I'm a single, celibate woman, and while not gay, other of my life circumstances combine with church teaching to make marriage seem extremely improbable.*
At any rate I couldn't agree with Grant more. What he puts his finger on is probably my single biggest criticism of the Church. Being lay, single, celibate, and called to live out your apostolate in the world is the *default state,* the normal thing, and should be regarded that way, with all the support and encouragement for living out that state of life that we give to vocations.
But we've twisted it around, so that having a vocation (to marriage, the priesthood, or vowed religious life) is seen as the default, or what we all 'should' be doing, and living out a lay, single, chaste, etc life is seen as deficient or pitiable. Not cool, Church. Not cool.
I'd like to see the Church doing the following things:
-Being clear that marriage is a vocation that you are specifically called to, not the basic expectation of adulthood.
-Supporting its lay, single members in both finding and living out the apostolate to which each is called. Off the top of my head, one way this could look would be small groups for singles not focused on finding a spouse but instead focused on living out the work God is calling us to by virtue of NOT calling us to married or religious life.
-The conservative parts of the church need to avoid lifting up marriage and motherhood for women as the highest calling, the best and only apostolate. I'm a mother, and it certainly is both a high calling and an apostolate, but it's toxic to make it into The One Thing. This is basically just what Grant said, except I agreed so much I had to say it again.
-The liberal parts of the church need to similarly avoid lifting up romantic love as their One Most Important Thing. It isn't. For a group of people who likes to say that 'love is love,' they sure seem to be talking about only a very specific kind of love. (Yes I know I sound salty; I've been hurt by this one personally.)
In the secular world, I agree with everyone who has talked about the need to have legislated support structures for singles. My oldest friend is my health-care proxy; that much I could manage. Another, local, friend is my emergency contact for absolutely everything I could make him the emergency contact for. I could manage that too. My sister is also the beneficiary on my life insurance. That's allowed. But...there's no way to share health insurance benefits with someone to whom you're not married, just for instance. The sick days problem is real, and also just the social acceptance of deciding to prioritize friendships. I once called out of work because another single friend landed in the hospital, and while I'm essential at work and I knew my job was safe, it was regarded as bizarre. Who takes off of work to take care of a friend? Similarly, when Covid hit many of the rules for lockdowns seemed to ignore the fact that single people even exist. I was terrified that I would be sick at home, not sick enough to go to the hospital but too sick to take care of myself, and that no one would break the rules to come take care of me.
oof I am looking for a good way to close the comment and failing. Just that...yes, this is a thing, yes, it is a problem, and lastly that while I think a multiplicity of factions in our cultural world have created this problem, both right and left, I put a huge onus on the Church to fix it.
*(I live in a small liberal city in a liberal state where a refusal to have sex outside of marriage is an absolute dealbreaker for the overwhelming majority of men. I also have a child, with all the history that implies, and while I am free to marry in the church, my history is an absolute dealbreaker for the remaining tiny fraction of men. I am just a bundle of dealbreakers.)
Being Baptist, I don't have a tradition that even allows for a form of consecrated virginity at all. It's not good, of course, that for Catholics the religious life is often portrayed as a second-best option, but you do at least get the option. Over here we get told a range of things from "woman's chief end is to get married and have children" (wrong) to "some people have the gift of singleness, temporarily or permanently" which always leaves the assumption that, of those, the temporarily single state will be more normal. You're supposed to be content in your single state until it ends. People (like me) who take this literally and are so happy in our single states that we don't want them to end, become an enigma to everyone else --- you're supposed to want to get married. It's the Natural Way Of Things. If you are perpetually single, you're left perpetually hanging in midair, so to speak. When a pastor gets to 1 Corinthians 7 in a sermon he might pay lip service to the idea that perpetual singleness is a good thing, but in practice you're always given the opposite idea.
I'm 23 now, which in my immediate circles is a little old for a girl not to be married yet, and over the last couple of years I've turned my argumentative tendencies toward advocating that No, Actually, This Is Good. It's not very easy, though, when so many of the books and articles and people's lives that make good sources on the subject come from outside the theological tradition of the people I'm talking to --- and not just from outside but from the (in many cases) extremely suspect Catholics (gasp!). Which doesn't make it easier for an already sceptical audience to accept my claims. They can get used to the idea of me being perpetually single because they've known for years that I'm eccentric, but to argue that it's a perfectly good way of life for *other* people? That's more difficult. I did find a lecture by Sam Allberry that made sense to the two people who've actually listened to it so far, so that was a big victory. But as much as I'd like to start the first ever Baptist order of nuns, I think we're still ages away from getting even the concept of consecrated virginity.
I'm trying to be the person who places friendships at the heart of their life, but when so many of your friends are of the opposite sex and you move in the circles described above, that brings its own set of challenges. I have got to say though, my friendships have certainly been among the best relationships I've had. I don't feel the lack of romance as if my life is missing something. Who needs that when your friends can be counted on to help you with a dead car, or wash your dishes when they come over and see your house is a mess and not judge you for it, or check up on you when you pass out in public (has happened an embarrassing number of times)? Sure, you have to be vulnerable with more than one person, as opposed to the cultural expectation that when you're married you and your spouse do all the taking care of each other (an expectation I also think is wrong). But that spreads out the burden of each individual across more people and lessens what each individual has to carry. I certainly don't think that's a bad thing.
I think the most significant thing I've seen is that unmarried individuals don't have some special superpower to never be sick or dependent, but outside of religious life there aren't recognized structures for people to give and receive care in friendship on a sustained basis. At my old job, I could take sick leave to care for my sick husband - but not for a sick friend, or to watch my friend's kids while she was sick. It's nearly impossible to add friends to health insurance, and in many areas you might face housing restrictions on living with too many unrelated/unmarried friends. In Maryland, it's illegal for my son's godmother to babysit him in her home a few hours each week if we swap childcare, because the swap is considered "compensation" and she's not related to me by blood, marriage, or legal adoption - the state considers it "unlicensed daycare."
I think one thing our current vocabulary lacks is a way to talk about something as a unique or particular experience without the lack of it being lesser. I imagine my friends in religious life might say that the experience of maturing in formation is unique in their lives, in the same way I would say marriage is unique in mine, even though they aren't differentiated in their desired end of holiness. I don't think my lack of religious life makes my maturity lesser, but I'd agree that I don't share that particular way of maturing.
The pandemic has caused me to reflect on this topic a great deal. I have sorrowed to see single friends in crippling isolation because networks outside of families are so much weaker. I think it's a problem to think, as many people do, that celibacy is a strange way of life, a sad predicament, or an exception. This isn't a problem that the Church created (my context is Catholic), but is something we can and do perpetuate. And, let's be real, celibacy is harder in an individualistic society like ours. Nevertheless, celibacy is a normal way of life, possible for ordinary people, in which great joy, grace, and fulfillment occur. What it requires is a strong network of close friendships and connections to extended family and community. What it allows is in some ways a greater degree of self-gift. I work as a lay person in Campus Ministry alongside a priest, and am often struck by the way in which my colleague is able to be present more often and more unreservedly to students because he doesn't have to be thinking about picking up the kids, cooking dinner, and having the emotional energy to be there for his family.
Sometimes I feel guilty speaking in these terms, as a person happily married with children--what do I know about the joys of celibacy? But I think my feeling of guilt is in itself an expression of our collective misconception. Celibate people are not pitiable, and their lives are not empty. I think (although I would defer to people who are actually walking the path of celibacy on this) that what we need to do for celibate people is to make the conceptual and practical space in our own minds and lives and in our society for them to exist and be supported.
This topic is near and dear to my heart! I agree with those who have pointed out the lack of benefits and support available to single people. For instance, I just attended a funeral last week, but I was unable to use my designated bereavement days off work because it was not for an immediate family member. Why wouldn't someone be grieving an aunt, grandparent, or friend just as much as they would a parent, brother, or sister? Expanding our idea of "family" in this way would benefit everyone, not just those of us who are single! In Catholic circles, we talk about focusing on your "primary vocation." It's important, but can also be used to justify not looking beyond your immediate family - not to mention the stress, anxiety, and exclusion caused by certain ways of talking about vocation. The kingdom of God is so much bigger than the nuclear family! We want to put everyone into neat little boxes and categories, but I think we do better when we mingle and overflow into each other's lives.
I also think of traditions and rituals that conflate getting married with becoming an adult. A wedding, and all the festivities around it, are seen as a rite of passage; and if you haven't reached it yet, you haven't "arrived." Bridal showers make sense in a society where most people live with their parents until marriage, at which point they move out on their own for the first time. That's just not the case anymore! Could house/apartment warming parties become more of a standard practice instead?
I can imagine that sometimes it might take more imagination to love and support your single friends. It's tangibly easier, in some ways, to show up with a gift for a wedding, to make a meal for someone who has just had a baby, or to be the one to make the drive to your friend's house if she has several kids and can't easily get away. We have practical rituals for those things already in place; we know the "script," so to speak. It might take more effort and creativity to show up for someone who doesn't follow these steps in their life, but your single friends will appreciate it.
Single people often feel like second-class citizens, with second-class relationships, because we are often treated and spoken about in that way. I agree with those Grant Hartley tweets 100% - marriage, sex, and children are often described as if they are the height of personal fulfillment, sacrificial love, and the best way to be holy. But it's not what our faith teaches, and it's simply not true! I know so many amazing Catholic women who have agonized over their singleness; and I wonder how much of that pain could have been reduced if we talked about marriage, sex, and children in a more healthy way. I don't want to denigrate these parts of life in any way, because they are so, so important! But I do think we need the pendulum to swing back toward a more nuanced, grounded view.
On a personal note, I would say that my friendships are absolutely at the heart of my life, and my life is so much richer for them!
My general reaction to "graduating at the altar" would be to recognize how accurate a label that was for a long time for women, whose possibilities were limited, so that becoming an adult was attained by becoming a wife. The old slogan describing premodern women's choices, "a husband or a wall," got even narrower in cultures where women couldn't choose the convent. For churches, I see why defending marriage might seem to judge singleness inferior, but that's a sorry side effect.
To answer more directly the query for this week: my model of one who puts friendship at the heart of her life is a beloved artist, a single woman whose adult life has been given mostly to painting, parish work, deep ties with a few families and singles...and pilgrimage! She and a lifelong friend, a priest, have done long pilgrimages including one clear to Jerusalem. Even as they set aside the stuff of ordinary life, these journeys contained much of it--planning, meeting weather and other adversities, moving the body, talking, reacting, and praying a lot--enclosed within this relationship between two friends. To call it a "spiritual friendship" is partly right but sounds too ethereal for something full of earthly joys of walking, joking, and paying attention.(I'm grateful to have been on much shorter pilgrimages with her and to learn from her how important it is to have something to do together that is not only the spoken word!) When her friend received recent terminal diagnosis, she became caretaker and companion.
I so agree with your lead statement, while marriage is sacred, it is not perfect and you don't automatically mature as if you have received some super power. And not everyone is called to marriage. St. Paul even says in 1 Corinthians 7 that it is just as good to be single as it is to be married if you are living a Christian life. Marriage is good and Single is good if that is what you have been called to. My friends have carried me through some very difficult times in my life. And I have and am still carrying them. Not the shallow casual friendships, but the deep abiding ones. These friends have strengthened my faith, as well as brought joy and comfort to my life. And I am very happily married. The author of that tweet is correct, we don't express the value of such relationships in our rhetoric or in our policy as much as we should.
Sadly for many of us marriage is just not an option. At 54 and still single I know my life has purpose and value. But it is a hard row to hoe in a society that puts sexual partnerships above any and all other kinds of relationships. Even in the secular world that holds true. And it is even more of a pressure within the religious/Christian one. Especially for women!! And it is that last part I tend to resent a bit. That somehow my womanhood is less complete without marriage. Sure I wished to get to experience the role of wife and mother but it just didn't work out. That doesn't make me less than myself, anymore than becoming an engineer made me "Less" of a complete person than becoming a teacher would have. It is a different life than I planned but still a full and valuable one.
I think our culture, or frankly most parishes, has not honored those of us who are unmarried. Look at any parish bulletin - the closest you get is the "Young Adult Group" - which seems have a cut-off of around 30 yrs old for being a member. There is no other organization that seems to welcome us until you're ready for the "Silver Seniors" group. I rather wish we emphasized more of a family structure - - by not breaking people into groups by their age or marital status, but trying to encourage all to mingle together to form friendships. I don't know why a married couple - of any age - might not find me interesting to talk with and have many commonalities! It is harder for single folk to be social in their church as we don't have the natural bonds of children the same age or in classes together, or a spouse that can relate to another's spouse. While I love my parish, I admit that in spite of being an active member, a lector, and now part-time on staff, I have only been asked one time to a married couple's home for dinner. Yet so many wave to me or chat after Mass.
My great aunt spent much of her adult life living with a friend of hers. (She grew up observing her mother's and sister's abusive relationships and understandably decided she'd rather stay single than enter into a marriage like that.) We grew up calling the friend "aunt," and she would come with my great aunt on visits to family in my area, and sent us gifts sometimes. She supported the friend through the death of the friend's young son, who was born with a heart defect. Unfortunately, the friend had a nervous breakdown a few years ago and couldn't safely continue living with my aunt. But they continue to keep in touch, and the friend seems stable enough at this point that they've resumed going to church together.
"To be human means to be called to interpersonal communion. *The text of Genesis 2:18-25 shows that marriage is the first and, in a sense, the fundamental dimension of this call.* But it is not the only one. The whole of human history unfolds within the context of this call. In this history, on the basis of the principle of mutually being "for" the other, in interpersonal "communion", there develops in humanity itself, in accordance with God's will, the integration of what is "masculine" and what is "feminine". The biblical texts, from Genesis onwards, constantly enable us to discover the ground in which the truth about man is rooted, the solid and inviolable ground amid the many changes of human existence."
** added. From Mulieris Dignitatem
The dignity of women might take a hit if we exegete marriage into being a subset of friendship, rather than receiving friendship as an outgrowth of marriage.
I have to disagree. There is something unique about marriage. The physical intimacy that requires gift of self and the possible procreation of a child. The emotional intimacy that is created from physical intimacy. I love my friends, but the love for my husband is so much more. I would love to see a discussion on how to balance this truth with our need to see the humanity of LGBTQ+ individuals. As a Catholic woman, I understand and appreciate what the church teaches about marriage. I also understand the effects the teaching can have on LGBTQ+ individuals. How can we find the both/and? How can we see that the goodness of a teaching is seen through its fruit, while teachings on “same sex attraction” leads to so much suffering?
This is so good. Thank you.