Even in childhood and youth as a cradle Catholic, I was taught that "the single life" is a distinct vocation within the Church. But until now, I've never encountered a useful explication of that claim. That is one reason why I've never wanted the vocation for myself. It often seems that the Church doesn't really know what to do with people who are called neither to marriage nor to consecrated life—beyond reminding them to avoid sex with others or ourselves, which we knew already. But now that it seems I've got that vocation, I've been casting about for a way to valorize it theologically, if only so that I can find more meaning in it and thus live more happily with it. I know many people in a similar position; indeed, if present trends continue, we will reach the stage where the majority of adult Catholics at any given time are single willy-nilly. There just has to be something positive and helpful, if not roundly inspiring, to say to the many who have recognized themselves as having that vocation. That includes those of us who temporarily missed it, thus attempting marriage or consecrated life in the past, as well as those who will have always been "just" single.
I've finally found an article that seems to be on the right track. Please click the link and check it out. I don't know whether it's creative in itself or more a popularization of some theological proposal. Perhaps somebody out there could enlighten me.
Through the lax reading skills of friend of mine (he was reading a poster about discerning a vocation to the "consecrated life) my circle of college friends took to referring to the single vocation as the "concentrated life". There's something to that, I think. Being now on the married side of the divide, I must say that it becomes impossible to go at an activity (whether just fooling around or persuing a serious calling) nearly as seriously when one has a spouse and children about.
ReplyDeleteHey Darwin, I love your blog. I'm sure it would be a flagship Catholic blog if you didn't love your wife and kids as you should!
ReplyDeleteWell, I probably would get in trouble for my blogging, except that I got my wife hooked on it too...
ReplyDeleteThat and since she's currently pregnant she tends to go to bed three to four hours before I do.
I've enjoyed reading your stuff on Pontifications lately. Looks like I'll have to add this to my list of work-distrations as well...
In most churches, once you're out of your teens and aren't married, either by circumstance or choice, you're treated like you don't exist. (The notion of vocations has diminished among many RCs, thanks to Vatican II's virtual wrecking-ball on the church and also the RCs becoming middle-class so young Joe and Teresa have more options than the trades, the police, the seminary, the monastery or the convent.)
ReplyDeleteWell, actually some churches have 'singles' things for older people but they're wretched.
And just like those who say money doesn't matter often are quite well off, it's bloody patronising to be told 'be happy to be alone, it's God's will' by people who've got a husband or wife to come home to.
As one person online irreverently put it, if it's a gift you can effing keep it.
That said, there are some people, including perfectly healthy ones, who for whatever reason shouldn't get married. You've got a point.
(And, of course, 'no company is better than bad company': being married for the sake of saying 'Look at me, I made it! I'm married!' is a huge mistake. I've known people who did that. There are lots of people in bad marriages who would gladly choose to be single for ever instead.)
A late friend, an older lady who had been married, once told me how Protestantism doesn't know what to do with single people who don't fit into the mould of what grown-up church folk are expected to be: married, etc. And she concluded by saying that there is a place historically in the Catholic faith for them. (Catholic: universal in more ways than one.) And she was right: everybody from holy fools like St Benedict Joseph Labré and the wandering pilgrims of tsarist Russia to oblates and tertiaries, religious who wouldn't fit into community life in a monastery, friary or convent (like St Catherine of Siena, a Dominican who lived with her parents).
fogey and who me?:
ReplyDeleteIt's a given that provision for singles in the Church is dreadful. What I'm wondering is whether the sort of theologizing done in Pirola's article is not only objectively sound but also enough to motivate better provision if spread. How can the message be spread?
I'm not completely convinced that there is such a thing as a vocation to the single life. If you're open to marriage, then your vocation is to marriage. If a married person were open to another vocation, we would see this as a problem. If a priest were open to marriage, we would also admit that this is a problem. When a single person is open to marriage or considering a vocation to the religious life, we see this as natural. If a consecrated virgin (a separate category from singles) were open to marriage, this would also be a problem.
ReplyDeleteEven though many of us are still single, I would hesitate to say that this is a vocation. Those called to the religious life still enter into a marriage: priests have the Church as their bride, consecrated virgins and religious sisters have Christ as their bridegroom, etc. For singles, there is no vow, no oath and no marriage, mystical or otherwise.
In this article,Teresa Pirola, continues her discussion on single people and vocations. In it she talks about the opportunities and freedom single adults experience as ‘new vocationers’.
ReplyDeleteamy:
ReplyDeleteYour comment makes a lot of sense, but I question whether being "open" to marriage means one has a vocation to marriage (assuming one has no vocation to consecrated life). 'Vocation' means 'calling'; in a theological context, a calling from God. Just as it seems to me possible to be thus called to marriage without being open to it, so it seems possible to be open to marriage without being called to it. The latter is what I'd say about myself, and I'm sure the same is true of some people who, unlike me, are in no position to marry.
Given as much, I'm not sure that you have a rebuttal to Pirola's arguments in Part I of her article, to which I included a link in the post we're commenting on. Not that I'm sure you want to rebut it. ;-)
I question whether being "open" to marriage means one has a vocation to marriage
ReplyDeleteBeing open to marriage or religious life is part of the discernment process. Once a vocation has been discerned, the person then follows that path. If my vocation were to the religious life, but instead I got married, I would not be living out my vocation. It doesn't put me beyond God's grace, but it means that I'm not on the easiest path for me to get to heaven.
In the article, she makes a lot of good points about the contributions that singles can make, but she's already assuming that being single is a vocation.
Mary Beth Bonacci argues against there being a vocation in this article: http://reallove.net/articles/270.htm
I think most of the time people assume that since there are so many people who remain single today that being single must be a vocation. I'm not fully convinced that there is a true vocation to the single life, but neither am I willing to completely deny that there is one. I just haven't seen any arguments persuasive enough on either side to convince me.
amy:
ReplyDeleteWe appear to be using different vocabularies and sets of assumptions.
In my vocabulary, being "open" to something means not being opposed to it for oneself. In yours, being "open" to something appears to mean making it an object of a discernment process. We're both right in our own terms; but as I used to teach my philosophy students, it would help to be mutually clear about terms to begin with and use them in the same senses. ;-)
I've read the Bonacci article and detect in it an assumption I would not share. She seems to assume that whatever state of life counts as a particular "vocation" entails making a public, solemn promise entailing a complete "gift of self." If that assumption is correct, then of course being single without being in consecrated life is not a vocation. But I don't think that assumption follows from what JP2 wrote, nor do I think it correct. I believe God wills many people to forgo marriage without entering consecrated life; that is just part of the sacrificial side of whatever he is "calling" them to do positively.
Perhaps the way to satisfy everybody here is to make a distinction. All Christians, as such, have "the baptismal vocation" to be conformed to Christ and bear him to others by making a gift of self. The single vocation is just the call to attain that end without the specific means of formal profession of marriage or celibacy. The latter are readily recognizable as forms of the baptismal vocation, but do not exhaust it.