I am so tired of hearing about the Religious and priests who had their marriages annulled and then entered the Religious life or the priesthood. Now mind you, I'm not talking about when a widow or widower embraces the religious life.
There is something about making the religious life your second choice, after things don't work out. It just isn't the same.
12 comments:
What about Saint Bernard of Clairvoux's family. Mostly they wouldn't be annulled but a lot of them left to pursue a higher calling which is the only time it id permissable. a married person can leave for the religous life and an active can leave for contemplative. It's rare but the Church has allowed it. . .
I just knew someone was going to bring this and up and I should have known it would be you! LOL
It is completely different.
The family members of Bernard of Clairvaux didn't divorce and get annulments! They didn't fail at marriage and then go on to try something else. Their marriages were fine! blessed by God! but He was calling them to something greater. A greater level of sacrifice.
When your husband leaves you or you leave him. You shouldn't get to "try" something else.
And yes, the people I mention are divorced b/c it is impossible to get an annulment w/o a divorce.
You are comparing apples and oranges and I suspect you know it.
Aren't you supposed to be painting chairs today?
The chairs came out fine thank you and I still have time for intellectual thought. . . Don't worry it's not for the average man to accomplish such feats and they'll only hurt themselves trying lol. There are other saints who did it too without so ideal a previous state that you mention. I think you're being a bit high handed here, if it's an annulment and there never was a marriage despite their previous belief that there was why should you have to pretend that you're married for the rest of your life when the Church says that you weren't. And God's calling has nothing to so with wether your previous state was miserable or happy. Sounds like your real problem is that everyone doesn't get to try it.
I'm not talking about the odd person that makes this transition. I'm talking about the recent press coverage that is FULL of stories about divorced men becoming priests, divorced women becoming nuns as if this is
the future
the preferred
the norm
and a far sight better than a youthful man or woman who gives themselves unreservedly to God before they are overcome by middle age or cynicism. Show me a divorced man or woman who is not cynical.
But honestly I think you protest a bit too much.
And no, I don't think anyone should get to "try everything". Put your hand to the plow and don't look back. Easy words to say. Heroic to achieve.
Why on earth would a sane (I didn't say good but just sane) bishop or head of an order want someone who divorced their spouse to become a religous? That just boggles the mind.
When we were missionaries in Africa and the nuns complained, my mother would note that a lot of married women with a couple kids would love to have an hour a day to spend in peace and quiet praying. That usually shut them up.
So I too would be "suspicious" of older "vocations" after divorce being an escape from life.
On the other hand, Mother Rose Hawthorne had an unhappy marriage, and that is what inspired her to help the poor with Cancer. And one could argue the same about Catherine Doherty and her first husband (although she was a lay apostle who later had a happy marriage, one suspects her wish to help the poor was partly because of her own suffering).
So yes, the religious life could be an "escape", but it could also be the result of a person having gone thru suffering themselves, and out of that suffering chosing to help others.
just read the article where the woman had 7 kids and the got divorced and had her marriage annulled to join a convent so if its annulled as if the marriage took place those por kids are illegitament then huh?
just read the article where the woman had 7 kids and the got divorced and had her marriage annulled to join a convent so if its annulled as if the marriage took place those por kids are illegitament then huh?
just read the article where the woman had 7 kids and the got divorced and had her marriage annulled to join a convent so if its annulled as if the marriage took place those por kids are illegitament then huh?
Anonymous,
You must not understand that the Church makes no distinction about the "legitimacy" of children - that is a civil term, not an ecclesial one.
Further, what does that have anything to do with the matter at hand?
I think it makes your comment "illegitimate".
In answer to Petrus, I seem to remember that the Church DID make the distinction between legitimate/illegitimate. A man whose parents were not married, or who were divorced , who wanted to be a priest, for example, had to apply for a dispensation as it was forbidded for him to enter the priesthood. Some convents, even today, need the marriage certificate of the candidate before she is allowed to enter.
Of course, these restrictions on who can enter the priesthood today, must be vastly different. If they allow sodomites, I suppose they allow anyone. Just a guess.
I wonder what the rule in the case of the 'frozen embryo' children - or children from serrogate mothers - or children of lesbian 'parents'??? One rule would be good ---the child is not to blame.
Isn't there an expression having to do with the fact that no one sees the heart as God sees it? Are we honestly forgetting that? If press coverage is presenting an unusual and exceptional practice as the "norm" or the "preferable" way to do things, that's one thing. But I don't believe it is just to lambast an entire group of people and their vocational experiences because they have inspired a wave of bad press.
On the question of legitimacy and priesthood, I wonder whether it was "the Church" or certain members of the heirarchy or certain institutions that imposed limitations on children from irregular unions. I don't have the answer, but one should be careful when using the phrase "the Church said..."
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