In our vocations crisis, we mostly focus on the priesthood and religious life, but a new dimension of this crisis falls fast upon us. Without strong Catholic marriages, the primary source of religious vocations would disappear. Beyond that, the Sacrament of Matrimony presents the ordinary path of sanctification for most Catholics. Young people, Catholics included, simply are not marrying.
Many cultural forces have turned men away from marriage: the distracting and isolating tendencies of technology, the addiction that follows from it, delaying the responsibilities of adulthood, economic pressures and hookup culture. The decline of marriage self-perpetuates, as it is no longer expected for young men to step up quickly, make a choice, settle down and begin to provide. What is needed for a young Catholic man to prepare fruitfully to enter marriage?
First of all, like any vocation, it requires proper discernment. For vocational discernment, the question should be what God wants. In a culture obsessed with personal freedom and fulfillment, it’s important to be open to God’s call, even to the unexpected. Growing up with divorced parents, I never thought much about marriage and was convinced for years that I had a call to the priesthood. Simply taking a step back and being open to what seemed unlikely led me clearly in another direction. Marriage shouldn’t be taken for granted or ruled out completely without proper discernment.
To prepare for anything important, we need models and mentorship. A young man discerning marriage should find faithful married men to provide guidance. Marriage isn’t easy, but has many rewards. It’d be helpful for a young man to understand the demands of supporting a family and how to integrate the demands of family, work,and prayer. For me, it was my college professors who invited me and my future wife into their homes for meals and conversation.
For a man to become marriage material, it’s important to form good habits, with daily prayer at the top of the list. It’s impossible to become a holy husband without regular prayer. Many marriages continue to break up, even among Catholics. As Ven. Patrick Peyton said, “The family that prays together stays together.” My wife and I began making a holy hour together each day in college. Now, we’re the first ones up in our home to begin the day with prayer, assisted by coffee. Later, we pray morning prayer as a family and the rosary after dinner.
The vocation of men entails providing, protecting and leading. To do this effectively for a family, men need to learn discipline and sacrifice. To be a man for others requires putting off attachments to comfort and pleasure. This is why I began working for Exodus, known for its 90 days of prayer, asceticism and fraternity that help men strengthen their faith through greater sacrifice: abstaining from social media, unnecessary technology use, video games, and TV, while embracing fasting, cold showers, a daily holy hour and regular exercise. Men are made to respond to challenges but often do not find a path for growth within the Church, and it’s time to change that.
Challenges to purity certainly present one of the greatest obstacles in preparing for marriage. Pornography undermines love, turning sexuality from a treasured gift to a pursuit of domination and self-gratification. Marriage has become a means of personal satisfaction and fulfillment rather than the embrace of a mission. The very origin of the sacrament comes from God’s command to be fruitful and multiply. The sexual complementarity of man and woman finds its fulfillment in the chaste gift of marital love. I married at the age of 21, and, as a young father, staying up late to bounce babies and change diapers, I learned the real nature of love as a self-sacrificial gift. The sacrament has slowly transformed me, showing me the nature of divine love through the embodied reality of the family with its many needs and joys.
Finally, a young man must be able to provide and be present as a father. This requires maturity in committing to regular work and becoming emotionally present to others. Discipline and sacrifice are needed here, too, in refraining from unnecessary spending, saving money and establishing a career. As a father of six, I have always had to roll up my sleeves to pick up extra work, while keeping the household running as smoothly as possible. I became a Benedictine oblate to guide my own integration of prayer and work within the domestic church of the family.
With all the sacrifice involved, many men understandably hold back. No one is happy, however, without committing to something greater than oneself. Marriage offers a real path to happiness and holiness as a joyful sacrifice in imitation of Jesus’s own gift of himself for his bride, the Church.
(Dr. Staudt’s column is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver.)
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I don’t know if such a book or university course exists, but if it does, I applaud any effort in this regard. I am speaking of any guidance traditional and orthodox Catholics could be given in how to go about selecting a suitable Catholic spouse. It would seem to me that most spouses in the past 60 years or so have been chosen from the pool of pre-marital bed partners and based purely on the ephemera of intense emotions. What guidance have Catholic parents and Catholic schools given to the young regarding the selection of someone as a helpmate to achieve sanctity, live accoding to God’s precents and to raise children with the same end? Very little, if any. Young people are likely much better equipped with knowledge of the rules of pro football than they are with an rules to govern the selection of a husband or wife. God knows that our currently homosexually-obsessed Vatican provides little help in this regard.
Please, someone with a proven marital track record assist Catholic youth and their parents with what is arguably the most important decision youth will have to make in their lives.
Yours truly has no good rule, but did have a wonderful marriage made in heaven. And suggests the good chemistry of joining a campus Newman Club if possible, or even dipping into a trustworthy social website (to be accepted as the electronic substitute for our disappeared geographic neighborhood cultures). I know of several excellent results.
And, about the contextual and post-Christian culture dumped on our young people, here’s a broad perspective from a Catholic sociologist, and another dealing with the lasting influence on marriage of the French Revolution, and then a question:
FIRST, “Late marriages and small families became the rule, and men satisfied their sexual instincts by homosexuality or by relations with slaves and prostitutes. This aversion to marriage and the deliberate restriction of the family by the practice of infanticide and abortion was undoubtedly the main cause of the decline of ancient Greece, as Polybius pointed out in the second century B.C. And the same factors were equally powerful in the society of the Empire. . . .” (Christopher Dawson, “The Patriarchal Family in History” (“The Dynamics of World History,” New York: Mentor Omega Books, 1962, p. 163).
SECOND, “Intimately connected with these laws affecting religion was that which reduced the union of marriage, the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society, to the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons might engage in, and cast loose at pleasure, when their taste was changed, or their appetite gratified. If fiends had set themselves to work to discover a mode most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful or permanent in domestic life, and of obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it was their object to create should be perpetrated from one generation to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan than the degradation of marriage into a state of mere occasional cohabitation, or licensed concubinage” (Sir Walter Scott, “The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte: Emperor of the French,” Vol. 1, Exeter: J. & R. Williams, 1833).
QUESTION: Fiducia Supplicans, quo vadis?
Nothing about this blog makes marriage or having children seem appealing or desirable in the slightest.
If people choose not to get married that is their choice to make and it is absolutely nobody else’s business or concern. If people want to get married and raise a family, that is their choice to make and it is absolutely nobody else’s business or concern.
Olds constantly wringing their hands and screeching about young people needing to get married is getting out of hand. You made your choices, if you’re not happy with where you ended up in life that is on you.
Stop trying to force everybody else to do what you want them to do. It’s nobody’s place to control what anyone else chooses in their life re: marriage and family.
My goodness. Is a response like that to an article written in love and concern for the well-being of its readers really warranted?
Can you be more specific, with excerpted quotes, about the parts of the article you found objectionable?
“Olds constantly wringing their hands and screeching about young people needing to get married is getting out of hand.”
****
Hold old do you think Dr. Staudt is Tyler?
🙂
Unlike Dr. Staudt, I’m genuinely antique. Do as you think best Tyler, but if you want to pause & consider what I’ve observed amongst my peers, life can be pretty lonely & bleak minus a spouse & children. It’s one thing to be single & on your own in your 20’s & 30’s. It’s another thing entirely in your 50’s , 60’s, & beyond. There’s a reason for family & sometimes we don’t figure that out until it’s too late.
God bless!
It is the age old problem of identifying who is the Lord of your life. I YOU and your feeling are your Lord I suggest you rethink that. Also, don’t discount the fact that wisdom usually comes from age and experience. Don’t discount the advice of the”olds”.
I don’t think anyone is forcing you to do anything you aren’t willing to do or which you choose to commit. What the author has to say has much to recommend and, dare I say, smack of greater wisdom than, Stop telling me what to do!”
Reflect on it, savor it, pray on it.
Tyler, that’s not the Catholic understanding of marriage. I presume you’re Catholic.
Hello Tyler.
It is not what the author wants or what I want, it is about what God wants.
God wants us to me find peace, fulfillment, and true happiness. What I have observed in the happiest of marriages is that husband and wife both desire to please God and assent to His will in their domestic church. The miserable and broken ones are where one or more parties are obsessed with their own will and they refuse to consider what God wants.
God wills that you be a father, whether of a few biological children or millions of spiritual children. None of us here wants to control you or anyone. When you were baptized into adoption as a son of the Father, you received this vocation from God as priest prophet and king!!
Our job as disciples is to convince you to say yes to God’s will in your life. You may not like that reality or be ready to assent.
Nonetheless, it is not controlling… it is called love. I pray that receive this message with humility.
Ave Maria!
my oh my aren t we full of ourselves today
Sorry, Tyler. It is rarely just anyone’s choice who alone makes that choice. The culture around people has a profound effect, especially on youngsters. Just look
at how kids are constantly bombarded with media propaganda–indeed, influenced by teachers and even parents from infancy, encouraged to think in terms of “ME.” A favorite niece took 4 little ones to a Taylor Swift concert recently. The culture is ROTTEN, to say the least. This generation of young parents has swallowed it, commpletely. Yep, it’s their choice, a choice made in utter naivete. As for “forcing,” where you find that idea is a mystery. Most people follow the least, perhaps easiest way to go. In these days, where both parents
work to support not just their families, but a house, 2 cars, inflating grocery
bills, outrageous gasoline costs etc, how much do you thin they even see to in-fluence influence their kids. Whose choice would you say that is?
the least
One may need a companion article on preparing a woman for Biblical marriage to counter the feminism rampant in society today. Feminism promotes and sustain low expectations hence the feminist find the men that they are seeking. No good man desires a feminist instead they would seek a woman of character in a marriage defined in accordance with Scripture.
We read: “First of all, like any vocation, it requires proper discernment.” YES, and yet, even before discernment and then vocation, there also must come freedom from despair…
HOW are members of the younger generations to be first de-programmed from despair and distraction and all flavors of escapism? In the vacuum of a post-Christian world? And, therefore, where even the very ideas of personal “vocation” and real “discernment” have vaporized?
AND, for its part, how is the perennial Catholic Church to attend to things “concrete,” but without “pastorally” aggravating our existential situation in a fallen and amnesiac world–by slighting the so-called “abstract”? As guardians of the Faith, how to rekindle our inborn (!) “capacity for God” as the Other, and our concretely moral regard for ourselves and then for “others” as ourselves? The so-called Natural Law of which, “the Church is no way the author or the arbiter…” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 95).
Appearing before a judge finally for a felony sentencing, a very young convict was asked: “Didn’t anyone ever teach you right from wrong?” His answer: “no” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West, 1976, p. 79).
“If the foundations be destroyed, What can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3). But who am I to judge?
Thank you, Dr. Staudt! This kind of reflection has been needed for far too long and should have always been part of the discussion and prayers for vocations. There is no real self-sacrifice in celibate life without genuine knowing and right estimation of the actual value of marriage from God that is being sacrificed (i.e., the Sacrament of Matrimony and all that it is and means). When celibate life is chosen because it is touted as the “better” path (mistaken popularly to mean holy mother Church is telling us celibacy is “more holy/more pleasing” to God than marriage) based on a superficial reading of St. Paul’s words in 1 Cor 7:32-35 and completely divorced from his teaching on Marriage as Sacramental Mystery of Christ and the Church in Ephesians 5, as well as divorced from its own context of the whole of what St. Paul is actually saying in 1 Cor 7 (where he even says TWICE that what he writes in this section is from his own opinion/experiential point of view and explicitly NOT from our Lord–an incredibly significant qualification to his words that St. Paul wants us to pay attention to), then celibacy is made a LESSER path. To make a sacrifice to the Lord of what is “less” (i.e., marriage, supposedly) is to diminish the sacrificial choice of celibacy itself! Hence to lessen marriage is to lessen celibacy, not to mention set it on a foundation that can lead to potentially heretical understandings of life (one wonders if some of this does not lie behind the sex abuse scandals). This is why you are correct in your estimating that renewal of our valuing of marriage in the Church is key to addressing the vocational crisis. Portraying marriage as “less holy” is not at all what St. Paul is doing in 1 Cor 7, but sadly this is what Satan has tricked us into doing with his teaching there. In fact, if we pay attention to what St. Paul is actually saying in context in 1 Cor 7 (esp. vss. 26a & 32a), he is advocating for celibate life as a path that brings LESS TRIAL to to the faithful than Christian marriage does…that is what causes it to be less distracting from the Lord’s work than marriage! So much for the idea that St. Paul is telling us celibacy is a “greater” self-sacrifice before the Lord than marriage (again, such is the pop superficial misreading of 1 Cor 7:32-35, NOT St. Paul’s point!!!). The Holy Spirit did not move St. Paul to contradict himself between 1 Cor 7 and Eph 5. And Eph 5 is where St. Paul teaches us FROM THE LORD (not his own opinion) the high estimation of marriage God would have us hold to. And THAT is what makes celibacy a life-path of high sacrificial value before the Lord, because it is a giving up for oneself in order to more fully focus on the Lord’s work what is of inestimable value to Him (and to us). It’s consolation is in what St. Paul does teach us in 1 Cor 7, namely, that celibacy has potentially fewer trials and challenges than marriage in Christian life (just ask those celibate priest brothers who once told me, a married Ukrainian Catholic priest, not to feel bad that I live from the Lord through both Sacraments, saying, “Oh, don’t feel bad. We get to take vacations you could never dream of!”–admittedly their point was not St. Paul’s, yet their somewhat “superior” reply told me a great deal). May the Holy Spirit teach us anew to hold up the vocation of marriage and the “domestic church” as the iconic revelation of Christ and His Church God ordains and desires it to be–of the joy of God’s Kingdom hidden in our midst in ordinary sight; in the midst of the trials of daily family life! Then the call to celibate vocation will have the power of its proper foundation again; then, in concord with married life, it will bear witness in this fallen world to the call of God to our radical renewal/transformation/theosis in the world to come, in the Marriage Feast of the Lamb.
Thank you Dr. Staudt and Fr. Meinzen.
The article gets close to the sentiments Carl permits me to revisit frequently in my posts. One way to conclude that the Sacrament of Marriage is a “lesser” vocation is that it – and engaged couples, are rarely mentioned in the intercessions at the weekly Eucharistic marriage of Heaven and Earth. Nor during National Vocation Week or parish Holy Hours for “Vocations.”
To attack and remove the roots of very few marrying or marriageable men, is a multi-approach challenge. St. John Paul called for Remote and Proximate marriage preparation – with parents and parishes in partnership (Familiaris consortio, 66. 1981). Had our Bishops fulfilled this directive – along with no. 65 (follow couples along their life stages) and no. 70 (ALL pastoral work is to take into consideration the family) maybe Pope Francis would not have needed to convene the 2nd Synod on the Family 35 years later.
I credit Pope Francis for this: Amoris Laetitia (2016) called for a catechumenate for marriage, citing most of Dr. Staudt’s points of concern and more. And, he echoed much of St. John Paul’s directives above, including this: “Therefore, it must be emphasized once more that the pastoral intervention of the Church in support of the family is a matter of urgency. Every effort should be made to strengthen and develop pastoral care for the family, which should be treated as a real matter of priority, in the certainty that future evangelization depends largely on the domestic Church” (FC 65, 1981).
Gaudium et spes (no. 47, 1965) listed marriage and family as its first “problem of special urgency.” Nearly 60 years later, and 8 years after Amoris Laetitia, how urgent is it? How many dioceses and parishes have it as a priority? JP DeGance, Catholic author of Endgame, points out that nearly 85% of churches spend little or zero dollars on marriage and family ministry.
When engaged couples knock on the door, many if not most are wanting a wedding in a church. But do they know and want the ecclesial mission of marriage (CCC 1534)? When the priest or deacon conducts the Pre-nuptial interview, is it brought up? How many current marriage preparation resources include this mission, c.f. the 4 Tasks of marriage and family (FC, no. 17ff)? I don’t think the Bishops would KNOWINGLY ordain a man to Orders who has a similar level of knowledge, understanding or faith that many engaged couples possess as they enter marriage, that lesser vocation. I dare say, when a Catholic couple with children divorce, the detrimental social, spiritual, emotional, psychological and economic effect on parishes is organically far greater than when a priest resigns or is removed.
Francis’ Catechumenal Pathways For Married Life (2022) may be strategic answer, but it could be more difficult to promulgate and implement than was the RCIA. De Gance’s research and data leads him to believe this may be our last chance. I hope he’s wrong, but I keep thinking of that cynical quip I heard years ago as the 7 Last Words of the Church: “We’ve never done it that way before.” Now is a good time to try something different. Soon.
It might be helpful to have tax policies that actually benefit young families with children, instead of billionaires. When I was a young father, supporting children, it was a struggle. Things eventually worked out, but it was not easy, and as a society, we can do better.
I wish Republicans would be a little more in favor of helping young families, and perhaps a little less desperate to enact additional tax cuts for the Uber wealthy.
Congratulations! You’ve been successfully brainwashed by: Democrats, the MSM and the culture. Not try a healthy dose of reality.
So you think that the billionaires should pay less taxes? Their propaganda has worked quite well it seems. Your last sentence makes no sense.
Ive never been hired by a poor person Will. Whatever keeps them in business has kept a roof over my head too.
Certainly we should look at what can benefit families but we don’t need to make it about class envy. That never leads to anything good.
Class envy? No, but I think that the rich should pay their fair share. Did you know that the rich today pay less, percentage wise, than they did in the 1950’s? There were years when Trump paid no taxes and he is not alone. Billionaires know how to rig the system, so they pay little or nothing.
Will, I think much of our tax money is wasted in the first place and I’d prefer everyone pay less taxes.
I’m not concerned about what the wealthy do. I think we should each go about our own business.
I’m not anywhere close to being a billionaire, but honestly, how much do you think is enough? The reality is the highest income tax earners pay thousands more than the The lowest ones, and usually provide the capital that makes businesses that employ lower income earners possible.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/
there are a lot of tax credits these days but it is too expensive, inflation
I have to disagree: “For a man to become marriage material, it’s important to form good habits, with daily prayer at the top of the list.” I am the only Christian, or even theist, among my half dozen or so closest friends from long ago. Most of them manage to have long-lasting marriages (or relationships — two are now entering their thirtieth years of cohabitation) without religion or prayer. Of course I support marriage, but this is another variation on the old idea that atheists can’t be good people.
do they have kids?
Good question. And I hope those couples who are in common law marriages or shacking up have good estate lawyers because things can get complicated when you die without a marriage certificate.
Long-lasting is hardly the sole characteristic of a good marriage. You don’t have to look that far to find long-lasting relationships that are highly disfunctional, abusive, or mutually ordered toward some evil or other.
To have a decent long-lasting relationship, it is sufficient to have the pagan virtues and generally adhere to natural law. Many atheists still follow a morality derived from Christian principles, even where those principles are rejected. Between those two things, certainly atheists can behave well. In spite of their atheism, not because of it.
To maintain oneself as a *good* person, that is, someone with the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, absolutely requires daily prayer. To receive the supernatural graces of Marriage absolutely requires that you be baptized and in a state of grace.
Refreshing Catholic family life article I’m glad to read, Dr. Staudt. And congrats for you and your wife being dedicated to raising your Catholic family with evening Rosary prayer. Heroic virtues abound in its Mysteries.
Writing about the Rosary and faithful discipleship, my Traditional Latin Mass pastor referred me to Rev. D. Chisholm’s century-old The Catechism in Examples, Vol. IV: Grace: The Sacraments (2nd ed, 1909, R&T Washbourne Ltd., Benziger Bros). “Matrimony . . . is the Sacrament which sanctifies the contract of a Christian marriage, and gives a special grace to those who receive it worthily.” (p. 386) Summarily Fr. Chisholm explains the purpose of marriage is for each partner to guide the other to observe God’s laws, guiding them to Heaven [while being open] to children and raising them to be saints in His domestic Church (p. 390).
Great points shared, Fr. Meinzen, Mr. Balsam, et al.
My recommended Catholic marriage and parenting experts’ website: Dr Gregory and Mrs. Lisa Popcak and their amazing books, esp. Parenting with Grace: How to Raise Practically Perfect Catholic Kids (2nd Ed.), etc. Their services have burgeoned! (A must see)!
My recommended resource: following Theology of the Body, is what we read, homeschooling my 4 darling children for 9th grade (also our N. O. church’s year of Confirmation): the very kid-friendly text & workbooks for parents/teachers of Sexual Morality Vatican Expert Colleen Kelly Mast: Love and Life (Ignatius Press). We enjoyed the content and cartoon depictions of “teens discussing prickly topics” and when we concluded, I brought them to choose a purity ring. We discussed how we must develop knowledge of God and His love and Truths; God’s will through discernment; self-knowledge; and seek respectful Christian friendships, and not be swayed by the world’s unholy expectations if we want to be lastingly happy and gain Heaven. We had also prayed the Holy Rosary together.
We’d listen to the radio in our van and discuss pop song lyrics/decide upon activities, etc.-gauging their wholesomeness. An unchurched friend asked why my children didn’t play with pop “cards”(which I had heard bad reports about-) and my daughter replied, “My mother doesn’t think that’s holy”. (-Bingo!) But, after kids’ drama/music class, we had Friday Family Nights with games, movies, excursions, etc. Funniest Christmas Day was when our 5-yr old “Baby” won at our new game of Poker! Now 2 daughters are happily married to loving family men and each couple has a beautiful grandchild<3! Family fave Scripture: PS. 111: “The good man is happy” (THBibleDouay-RheimsVersion, 1899/2018). Peace, love, joy of Christ🎶