Catholics like to preen about how wonderful they are because they have the sacraments and sacramental grace, don'cha know. This is particularly the case when it comes to marriage. A Georgetown University study shows that Catholics have a lower divorce rate than the general population. The credit for this fact is given to the sacramental grace of marriage:
“If they are both Catholics and practice the sacraments and pray together, they will grow through every event in their lives,” Meert told the Register. “They also have received an incredible grace through the sacrament of matrimony, a grace that helps them through the difficulties life brings.”
Now, this is an interesting statement to make, given that the sacramental grace of baptism doesn't seem to provide the same kind of transformative power as the Colorado spokesman has given to marriage. As the chart below, drawn from Pew Research and FBI statistics, illustrates, the grace of baptism is much less likely to have been bestowed upon Asians, yet Asians have a much lower crime rate than the Christian-dominant communities of whites, blacks and Latinos.
If we follow the theory that grace explains statistics, then baptism seems to instill an interest in committing rape and assault among whites, it instills a predilection for murder in blacks, and assists Latinos in the commission of robbery. Now, one explanation is that whites, blacks and Latinos would be even worse if it were not for their baptisms. No, seriously, I have heard this kind of explanation given in other contexts. But it can get even sillier.
Though Bishop Sheridan says Catholic marriage rates must improve, he suggested that a growing number of Catholic dioceses have made progress with solid marriage-preparation standards and doctrinal teachings that forbid contraception and explain natural family planning (NFP) to engaged couples.
“From everything I have read and heard, NFP really does add to the intimacy of the husband and wife,” Bishop Sheridan explained.
The irony here is that in 2008, even the USCCB admitted that only four percent of Catholic couples used NFP. If Aletia is to be believed, this number had risen to one-fifth of Catholics (20%) by 2013. Meanwhile, the same 2013 Aletia article admitted Catholics (23%) are the most likely of all Christians to have used Plan-B, an abortifacient birth control drug.
And, of course, the Catholic Church holds that celibacy, a discipline, makes its practitioner objectively holier than marriage, a sacrament. This is an amazing doctrine, given that sacraments are believed to deify the recipient while celibacy doesn't.
So, what to do with these conflicting messages? When the statistics make a sacrament look good, the happy result obviously is caused by grace. When statistics make a sacrament look bad, the grace connection is studiously ignored. When a Catholic practice, like NFP or celibacy, can be praised by noticing a happy correlation, it is. When the underlying facts call that praise into question, the unfortunate correlation is smothered with pillows.
It's almost as if they are making this stuff up as they go along.
12 comments:
The Catholic Church does not hold that celibacy makes its practitioner objectively holier than marriage. She teaches that virginity surpasses marriage because it is a constant sacrifice of ones mating instinct and natural desire for companionship, and because it is an earthly image of what our state will be in heaven, where we will not be married.
That doesn't mean that celibacy itself makes one automatically holier. None of the Church documents you cite in the article "Virgins are Better than Married People" say that. Holiness is achieved through prayer and the Sacraments, yes, even for the celibate. If a priest or nun were to neglect prayer and the Sacraments, their celibacy alone would not make them holy. Yes, virginity is a higher calling, but it doesn't confer superior *holiness* in and of itself.
Saints Louis and Zélie Martin were not celibate yet they are now canonized saints. Married couples can clearly become holy through prayer and the Sacraments. It takes more than a vow of chastity/celibacy to make one holy.
The celibate can reach a level of heaven (the choir that sings the Song of the Lamb) that even the holiest of non-celibates can NEVER reach.
We can both point to multiple saints who either practiced a Josephite marriage, or left the marriages, even left their children, in order to join a convent.
Now, find a saint who left the perpetual vows of a convent or monastery in order to start a family. Go ahead, name one saint who did that. I'll wait right here.
If marriage were even ON PAR with celibacy, we should have a few canonized saints who did that, yet we don't have a single one. Not one.
There are likely myriads of people who left a convent or monastery, started a family, and are now in heaven. They just won't end up officially canonized because of how the canonization process works. Religious orders often promote their own founders or other members, so we end up with more canonized clergy and religious than lay people. But just because the numbers get skewed that way doesn't mean that there are less lay people in heaven than religious.
That's why we have All Saints Day; because the Church acknowledges that her list of canonized saints is incomplete. The true population of heaven is much larger.
My 7th & 8th grade Religion teacher was an ex-nun. She remained very devout after leaving her order. If someone decides that religious life is not for them, they aren't automatically damned. They can still reach heaven by grace through prayer and the Sacraments.
Saints Louis and Zélie Martin considered a Josephite marriage, but their priest talked them out of it. They ended up having many devout children, including one canonized saint so far, and are saints themselves. I'm sure they're not alone up there, even if it's not reflected in the Roman Martyrology.
As for the 144,000 in Revelations 14, even Catholic commentaries state that their "virginity" may not be literal. Such as the Haydock Bible:
"Ver. 3. They sung as it were a new canticle. In these visions, after persecutions, are sometimes introduced rejoicings to encourage the servants of God in their sufferings from the wicked world. — No man could say (or sing) the canticle, but those hundred and forty-four thousand: by which are signified the elect, who were not defiled with women. Some expound this literally of those who always lived virgins; others understand all those who lived or died with a pure and clean heart, exempt from the corruption of vices, and of whom it is said, (ver. 5) that in their mouth was found no lie, and that they were without spot for the throne of God. (Witham)
"Ver. 4. These are they, &c. In the style of the prophets, by fornication is meant idolatry, and virginity signifies cleanness from all sacrilegious worship. These, therefore, are virgins in this sense, who have not fallen into the impurities of creature worship. But others, as St. Augustine, understand it of persons who have lived in continency. The first, however, is the more literal sense. (Calmet)"
The Church holds up saints as models.
We have several saints held up as models who abandoned their spouse and children.
We have no saints held up as models who abandoned their monasteries and vows of celibacies.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The lack of canonized saints who abandoned their monasteries and vows of celibacies does not prove that such people are absent from heaven.
The Church only canonizes people who have a case for canonization opened for them. Cases are most often opened by religious orders. A religious order is going to open a cause for a founder or other significant members of the order. It is not going to open a cause for someone who left the order, even if that person lived an exemplary Christian life afterward. There's a good likelihood that such people will never have a case for canonization, since such cases for lay people are relatively rare.
The end result is that people who leave religious orders will not be canonized. Yet just because they are not raised to the honor of the altars does not mean they are not in heaven. It just means that the Church was never asked to examine their lives for sanctity.
If Catholics would start opening causes for ex-priests and ex-nuns who lived exemplary Christian lives in the world, then the Church would ultimately have saints of that type.
I have already mentioned Saints Louis and Zelie Martin in other comboxes. They both wanted to enter the religious life but were prevented from doing so. After they married, they had a Josephite marriage for a while. I don't know whether a vow was involved, but that was a commitment to virginity for the sake of the kingdom.
Later, Zelie felt called to have children. That call came from God. Their priest eventually confirmed Zelie's calling and convinced them to give up their virginity. One of their children is a canonized saint; the Little Flower would not have existed had her parents clung to their commitment to virginity. All the more reason to believe that Zelie's calling to abandon virginity for motherhood did indeed come from God.
The fact that the Church has canonized Louis and Zelie shows the she can and does hold up people who abandon virginity to procreate children as models for us.
You miss my point.
The canonized saints declared by the Church are models for us. The saints not declared by the Church are not models because we don't know who they are or how they lived their life. The only models we can COUNT ON for being models of holiness to us are the people the Church publicly declares as saints.
We know the Church holds up as canonized saints people who walked away from their marriage vows, their spouse and their own children, in order to join religious orders. The Church has NEVER held up for us, as a public example, people who walked away from their already-committed ordination and/or religious vows in order to get married and have kids. Maybe such saints exist, but we don't have them as official models declared so by the Church.
Now, you can argue that this is because the canonization process costs money, and no one has the cash to front for the people in that situation, in order to get them canonized.
OK.
But how does that help your argument? If you make THAT argument, then the Church only holds up as saints people who are both holy AND financially connected. So now, not only is the Church refraining from giving us examples of holy people who walked away from their religious vows, we're DEFENDING that refusal by saying the Church only recognizes financially connected holy people.
Given the facts, I don't see how this argument ends well for your position.
I'm not defending it, just stating that that's how it is. You've been insisting that the Church doesn't canonize people who abandon consecrated virginity because she thinks that virgins are holier than married people and that abandoning virginity is a horrific sin. I've been saying that the Church does not believe that virginity = instant holiness and that there are alternate explanations for the lack of such saints.
I don't believe that the status quo re canonization is good or desirable. I think changes are in order so that more lay people, including married couples, will be canonized. In fact. I remember reading somewhere long ago that Pope St. John Paul II wanted more married couples to be canonized, which is why he declared the Martins Venerable back in 1994 (their cause had first been advanced in the 1950s, though, from what I've discovered online). I agree we need more married people canonized by the Church and that the system of canonization may have to change to accommodate that.
However, there may be another reason why the Church is reticent to present former religious as role models. Not because abandoning vows of virginity is such a horrible, unforgivable sin as to exclude ex-priests and ex-religious from heaven, which I don't believe for a minute. Maybe it's because, as you said, saints are models for us. Maybe the Church doesn't want to present people who abandoned their vows as role models, lest Catholics imitate them in that. She's already lost countless priests and religious over the past fifty years, maybe she doesn't want to encourage more to leave. It's not that such people don't go to heaven, it's just that the Church doesn't consider them the best role models.
"Maybe the Church doesn't want to present people who abandoned their vows as role models"
But the Church *DOES* present people who abandon their vows as role models. The Church canonized several examples of MARRIED people who abandoned their marital vows in order to join a monastery or become a hermit. So, abandoning your children and/or spouse is a GOOD role model (and, in the Church's defense, it is upheld by Christ Himself in the Gospels).
The Church has canonized ZERO examples of monastics or hermits who abandoned their religious vows to take marital vows. And, again, the Church is just following Scripture. Paul only grudgingly allowed the possibility that marriage could be acceptable (I would prefer everyone was like me, but it is better to marry than to burn).
Marriage is totally and explicitly a second-class state of life in the Church's eyes.
Presenting someone who abandons their family as a role model may be another thing the Church should rethink.
Saints Louis and Zelie Martin are still an example of people who intended to remain virgins only to give that up for a family, who are now saints. You keep insisting that you want someone who took formal religious vows and later abandoned them to be canonized. Yet an initial commitment to a Josephite marriage is also a commitment to virginity. So the example of the parents of the Little Flower still stands.
Earlier today, I asked Magisterium AI whether the Catholic Church teaches that taking a vow of virginity makes you holier than any married person. Here was the response, along with the references it gave for its answers:
"The Catholic Church does not teach that consecrated virginity inherently makes someone holier than a married person. The references provided offer a more nuanced perspective:
"1. The Church sees both marriage and virginity/celibacy as valid and complementary vocations, each with its own dignity and spiritual fruitfulness. Neither is considered intrinsically superior to the other.3, 9
"2. Virginity or celibacy for the Kingdom of God is viewed as a special gift and calling that liberates the heart to love God and others more fully. However, this does not mean married people cannot also grow in holiness.2, 6
"3. The Church Fathers, like St. Augustine, emphasize that virginity is not honored simply for its own sake, but because it is "something dedicated to God" in a unique way.6 The vocation matters more than the physical state.
"4. Consecrated virginity is described as a "mystical marriage" with Christ, deepening one's sharing in His mind and desire to love. But this spiritual fruitfulness is not automatically guaranteed - it depends on how the vocation is lived out.1, 5
"5. Both marriage and virginity/celibacy are seen as paths to holiness, each with its own grace and spiritual benefits. The Church upholds the value of both vocations without ranking one as inherently superior.3, 9, 10
"In summary, the Catholic Church does not teach that consecrated virginity automatically makes someone holier than a married person. Both vocations are honored as valid and complementary ways of living out the Christian life and growing in holiness, depending on how each is embraced with faith and love."
References
1. Ecclesiae Sponsae Imago 24
2. Familiaris Consortio 16
3. CCC 1620
4. The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality: Guidelines for Education Within the Family 101
5. Catholic Encyclopedia Virginity
6. Sacra Virginitas 16
7. CCC 1617
8. Sacra Virginitas 8
9. CCC 2349
10. Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church: Christ – Our Pascha 862
The AI is quite, quite wrong, as I demonstrate in the following essay:
https://skellmeyer.blogspot.com/2023/04/virgins-are-better-than-married-people.html
"Presenting someone who abandons their family as a role model may be another thing the Church should rethink."
Also, this is not possible.
The declaration of canonization is an infallible exercise of the Ordinary Magisterium. It cannot be renounced or contravened. Period.
Those people are now, and forever, held up as role models, never to be reprobated. It is now part of the received divine revelation of Faith.
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