It's About Time

Last month I attended my church's Saturday afternoon Mass as usual.  The regulars sat in their favorite pews and our priest gave an average sermon.  Things were so routine, my mind started to wander.  During the Prayer of the Faithful, the lector read off the typical list of intentions.  Then to my surprise, he mentioned single people.  My ears pricked up as he asked God to give singles strength and endurance.  My heart became a little lighter when we all said, “Lord, hear our prayer.”

For a long time, I have been wondering why nobody publicly prays for singles during Mass.  It's a small but helpful gesture because it lets the unattached know the congregation isn't ignoring their plight.  I mentioned this when my church hosted a talk with the regional bishop back in July of 2017.  Finally after ten months, somebody within the parish addressed my concern.

Unfortunately, the petition was not repeated in the subsequent weeks but I'm glad to have heard it at all.  There are times when the hopelessness that plagues me is so crippling, I need God's strength and endurance.  During Mass we pray for so many different groups of people: priests, married couples, children, parents, victims of natural disasters, prisoners, the elderly, the poor, immigrants, widows, politicians, soldiers.  Why not put singles into the mix?

On a few occasions, I have tried reaching out to my parish priests about being single but they never gave me the help I needed.  After meeting with the regional bishop about my struggles, he decided not to continue the conversation.  It makes me wonder how the Church expects to reach potential worshipers who are far away from God if they don't even know what to do with the Catholics who are already sitting in the pews.

Doing The Devil's Work

 Sometimes the little moments remind me what's missing in my life.  While spending time entertaining my nieces at a family gathering, one relative said it was too bad I wasn't married because she thought I would make a good dad.  A few years ago, I was having dinner over a friend's house and his wife started looking at me with adoring eyes.  I asked what the matter was and she replied, “You’re so charming.  I can't believe you don't have a girlfriend.”  During a trip to the grocery store, I spotted the image of a cute baby eating spaghetti on the packaging of paper towels and lamented the family I didn't have yet.  While dropping my uncle off at the airport recently, a young couple standing nearby shared a passionate embrace.  I said to myself, “I want THAT!”  Unfortunately, the Church is too busy promoting priestly vocations to help singles like me find what we're desperately looking for.

You know life is pathetic when paper towel packaging makes you sad.

The pastor at my former parish made encouraging vocations a top priority and during one sermon he said, “There is no greater feeling in world than being a priest.”  The statement bothered me because his very subjective experience was being applied to everyone.  Frankly, I can think of several things that probably feel greater than being a priest and most of them stem from the sacrament of holy matrimony.  Big moments like falling in love, making love, and bringing new life into the world come to mind but also smaller moments like when a spouse lovingly looks at you or when your child says how glad they are to have you as a parent.  (The married friend I had dinner with confirms this.)  Humans are social animals and physical contact has been shown to lower blood pressure, increase trust and optimism, boost the immune system, and reduce pain and anxiety.  A life spent in isolation usually brings the opposite.

Psychologist Harry Harlow showed how great the need for physical contact was by giving baby monkeys a choice of two surrogate mothers: one was made of wire mesh and provided food while the other offered no nourishment but was made out of soft cloth.  The monkeys spent most of their time attached to the cloth surrogate and only approached the wire one when they needed to eat.  Sometimes I think about this infamous experiment when my longing for physical contact becomes unbearable.

As our best years pass us by, anger and doubt can set in and soon we start to wonder how a merciful God can be so indifferent to our suffering.  When men of the cloth promote priestly vocations at the expense of singles seeking marriage, they are doing the devil's work.  For churches to thrive, they need devout families who will raise future generations of faithful Catholics.  The Evil One must be delighted every time singles who would make great parents never get married.

Do priests think romance or sex is gross?  Maybe on some subconscious level they want Catholic singles like me to fail so they can push vocations on us.  They might say our inability to find a spouse is a sign from God that we weren't meant to be married but this line of thinking is like handing someone a scorpion when they ask for bread.  We often hear a vocation comes from God and you can't give yourself one.  If that's the case, then selling a priestly vocation to someone who was meant to be married is wrong. 

A young gentleman at my former parish was in training to be a priest so he dressed in robes and became our pastor's right hand man.  To the surprise of many, he decided to not pursue this vocation and got married instead.  Our pastor expressed a sense of loss but he should have been happy because this young man found the path he was meant to take in life.  Vocations should not be seen as a numbers game where loses and gains are tallied.  Before our pastor moved on to another assignment he had hoped to get one more vocation from his congregation.  No help was ever given to struggling singles, however.

Some of the most devoted priests have said they felt the call at an early age.  If that's the case then no one should be cajoled into a vocation.  I've known for a very long time that God created me to fall in love with a woman but my spiritual shepherds continue to ignore the more inconvenient members of their flock.

Their Answer For Everything?

Look familiar?

While searching for Cardinal Sean O'Malley's blog, I found an article on consecrated virgins.  I never heard of such a thing before so I decided to research the subject.  A consecrated virgin is a woman who publicly vows to live in perpetual virginity as an exclusive spouse of Christ.  The practice dates back to the early days of the Church, fell out of favor for some time but was reestablished after Vatican II.  Women who have freely engaged in sexual union are not eligible for this form of concerted life.  It's estimated there are about 300 consecrated virgins living in the United States with around 6,000 to 7,000 worldwide.

The more I read about consecrated virginity, the more it bothered me.  As a single Catholic male, it's difficult enough to find a woman who saves herself for marriage.  Now the Church itself was shrinking the pool of devout, eligible females.  After comparing the images of women receiving this rite with those of priests, sisters and deacons being ordained, I found myself asking, “Is that their answer for everything?”

Behind many of these consecrated virgins was a priest influencing their decision.  In an essay entitled I Am Happily Married to God, Carmen Briceno writes, “Father Juan had opened a house where myself and other women who were considering consecrated life could have the space to pray and discern whether this vocation was for us.  It was an old convent, so it had a chapel where we could pray and was right across the street from the local parish church.”  Another article on the subject featured a consecrated virgin who had pined for a boyfriend but was encouraged by her priest to start writing love letters to Jesus instead.

It's common to encounter priests who believe the joy and fellowship they experience as men of the cloth is universal but for Catholic singles who are called to marriage, nothing could be further from the truth.  The elephant in the room of course is S-E-X.  You may hear the occasional sermon condemning premarital sex, but do they ever mention the benefits of healthy sexual relations WITHIN the bonds of holy matrimony?  Life-long celibacy is always held up as the ideal which is why some of the consecrated virgins interviewed say things like, “There's more to life than sex.” or “...the life of a celibate person is not lacking in intimacy” or  “Human love comes with its own pitfalls...chiefly that it doesn't last.”

I think it's sad these women feel this way and it has me wondering how different their lives would be had they been exposed to different role models.  Carmen Briceno mentioned having to break off relationships with past boyfriends because they did not respect her decision to save sex until marriage.  What if a respectful suitor had crossed her path?  Instead of love letters to Jesus, how about helping these women find spouses.

Concentrated virginity seems to exist in a strange middle ground that skirts the commitment of a religious order but does not allow for an ordinary life.  I wonder if these women are emotionally mature enough for the complexities of having a husband.  Carmen Briceno writes, “But in many ways, I have the same struggles as a wife would.”  No you don't.  Judging by my married friends, consecrated virginity is nothing like holy matrimony.  You can put on a white dress, wear a ring and have a ceremony, but it doesn't mean you know anything about being married.

In the Bible, Jesus turns to the crowd and says, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.  For the time will come when you will say, 'Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!'”  With consecrated virginity, is the Church helping to promote the very culture that Jesus warned us about?