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I recently listened to a podcast on CatholicExchange.com where Mary Beth Bonacci talked about the state (plight?) of Catholic single people searching for their vocation and in particular trying to find their future spouse.
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During the discussion the question arose of whether there exists a vocation to the single life. Mary Beth quite boldly declares that there is no such vocation, in short because God calls us to give ourselves totally in the vocations of religious life/priesthood and in marriage.
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I have given some thought to this as a single Catholic man who believes God is calling him to marriage, and I agree with Mary Beth that there is no vocation to the single life. If this conjecture is true, it presents some difficult realities.
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First and foremost in my mind is that it answers a question I have posed to many people: “Can someone ‘miss’ their vocation?”. If it is not clear what I mean, I am asking whether a faithful Catholic can fail to correctly discern God’s vocation for their life and thereby miss out on it? One sad example would be someone called to marriage who failed to listen to God somehow and ended up single their entire life.
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The answer most people have given me to this question is “No, God would not let a faithful Catholic seeking Him miss out on their vocation”, but isn’t it just possible that God, in His startlingly free gift to us of free will, does indeed allow us the possibility to miss out on even this super-important choice in our life?
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With that said, I know of people who are elderly and single and have never been married–faithful people, and I wonder how God could have allowed them to not fulfill His calling in their life. Any ideas?
• Wednesday, February 01st, 2006
Category: Love and War
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5 Responses
Wednesday, 1. February 2006
Sharon and I had discussed this very issue among ourselves and friends, including singles. Our understanding is the same as yours - single life is not a vocation. Vocation requires a public vow made before God. That being said, not only does marriage and the religious life classify as a vocation, but so would consecrated virginity.
In response to your question - could a faithful Catholic miss their vocation - it depends on what you mean by faithful. One could walk the walk and talk the talk for many years and yet never develop an intimate relationship with Christ - something which is vital in properly dicerning a vocation.
Thursday, 2. February 2006
Ooh, good question! I agree with the above comment. I feel like the “single life”, as in someone who remains single until a better option presents itself, is not a true vocation willed by God. However, I’m so glad that the Church allows for consecrated virginity! I wonder if some persons who end up single truly have a call to consecrated virginity and are led to it by default. The Providential hand of the Lord is such that I feel we end up where we’re supposed to, sometimes even by default and even if that was not our specific intention. With regard to a person missing their vocation, I don’t feel that’s possible. Because God is eternal and outside of time, His will is always in the present. He is working with our free will in each moment, inviting us from each present moment. I don’t feel like we have one chance for a vocation and, if we miss it, oh well. His mercies are new each morning.
Thursday, 2. February 2006
Yep and nope! Oy, I couldn’t remember my password, or my name for that matter or I would have posted before.
The concept that single life (Without being vowed) is not a vocation is definitely present in the Church. Consecrated single life is different- in which you are in the world, but make vows in a community… but yeah I totally agree and I have asked the very same questions before. I think the answer is yes and no re: can you miss it? Maybe I’ll email you this passage from Balthasar, b/c this “comment” is already getting long!
Thursday, 2. February 2006
Thanks for your perspectives on this matter. I felt earth’s quote from Balthasar was good:
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[earth] So in “Christian State of Life” by Hans urs von Balthasar (highly recommended reading), he frankly puts quite a bit of pressure on men to find their vocation and jump in. He takes it as kind of a given that if a man is called to marriage, he will seek out the other.
He writes: “What can be taken for granted in the case of men, however, is less obvious in the case of women, although, from natural causes, unmarried women are more numerous than unmarried men. For the man chooses his wife; the woman is chosen for marriage. Many a woman who would gladly have married was not given the opportunity of doing so. Here, too, however, the intervention of chance cannot be the basis for predicating a separate state for women who remain unmarried. If they are inwardly receptive to marriage, they may be said, rather, to belong potentially to the married state, and God will judge their readiness for self-giving as if it were the deed itself…” (Christian State of Life)
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[Devin] Wow, this is rough because girls do have it tougher, having to wait for the man to initiate a relationship with them. At least we men get to go after what we desire and have a greater measure of control. Given this truth, it seems like as a woman you really need to put yourself in places and groups where you meet faithful men, that way you open up as many doors as possible for God to bring you together with the man He desires for you. And then pray for the Lord to lead that man to the group and give him the courage to talk with you!
Tuesday, 7. February 2006
I was disturbed by the discussion on the “single vocation” and contacted a good friend for help.
I offer his comments:
“The thing that strikes me in this whole discussion is the complete overuse of and unclarity about the word “vocation”.
Vocation can mean having a positive call to something specific, I reckon, and it could be to being a Sunday School teacher or the board of the local Birthright organization–something that common– or anything God wants me to do today or tomorrow. We use it all the time about our careers and such.
It seems in this discussion “vocation” is quasi-clerical in all of its uses, even with respect to marriage (are we married folks supposed to be factories for little priests and nuns?). It has the same problem as that word “minister” that Catholics use way too much and way too imprecisely.
Given that no Christian has a neutral position in the world–all of our actions, decisions, habits, and desires are loaded to the hilt with significance–it seems that enlarging the use of vocation to cover more than clerical or religious life is not all that helpful. It is a compliment, I guess, to all those married folks who, I guess, need reassuring that they have not made a mistake by not choosing celibacy, but I think the compliment a bit awkward, and I would not feel at all badly by doing without it.
What if I never marry? What if I do not feel called to Monastic life at all? Why introduce the word “vocation”? What happened to the use of “state in life”? — Married, Religious, ordained, never-married, too young to be married, widowed, etc. See the difference? State in life is what you are, full stop.
I think those miss the point that say there is no vocation to single life. Does there need to be? Sure, it does not fit on the clerical-married axis that seems to typify the word “vocation”, but surely that doesn’t mean that it is disordered? And the people agonizing over whether people miss their vocation seem to me to be a bit mechanical about it all. We blow things all the time, but it doesn’t mean that God abandons us or refuses to bless us. Does God allow us to blow it–yes, all the time. This “vocation” thing seems to be absorbing the whole of Christian life and faith, and surely that is backwards.”
Larry