Vocation: Consecration V. Marriage?

[nikita92]

There are alot more available women out there, than there is good, decent catholic single men! The ratio is very uneven. Also..my father was married 5 times and my mother 4 times. Between them a total of 9 times married. I hardly know anyone in my age grouping that have married once and to this day have remained with the same one person. Children.... Yes you give your heart and life to and for them. This day in age one needs to be so hyper keen on making sure they are safe... No perverts are lurking around the playground..Learing at them when you are out and about with them...you're babysitter or uncle or some other male member isn't abusing them behind your back.they aren't being picked on, or doing the picking upon..at school! Pulling your hair out in making sure they are not being bombarded by immoral, illicit sexual images on television and Internet... Just to have them grow up be attracted to the same sex,get "married" and present you with a grandchild that was conceived in a petetrie dish! Last but not least (and one that communities ask about) no written in stone responsibility of taking care of you when you are 82! Go ahead and romanticized marriage and having children...whatever that means!

[Sr Mary Catharine OP]

Sr. Mary Catherine,

 

I think Fr. Hardon was referring to the fact that religious life (and actually consecrated life in general) is an extraordinary call.  It is a special grace given to some of the faithful as can be seen in Essential Norms on Religious Life:

 

Underlining mine for emphasis.

 

The problem I have with both Path's of Love and A Religious Vocation is that both assume that religious life is the default vocation and marriage or other vocations are simply for those who have defects of one kind or another that prevent them from remaining in religious life.  I prefer to think that God freely gives His grace to some among the faithful to consecrated life, because I haven't seen official Church teaching that one must be defective for religious life to have a vocation elsewhere. 

Actually, just the opposite. Paths of Love works out of first the universal call to holiness. I've never heard anyone even suggest that marriage and other forms of consecrated life are for those who are "defective"!

The tradition of the Church, actually, has been that a vocation to religious life (consecrated life) is not an extraordinary call. I think, though that a vocation to be a consecrated virgin or a promised member of a secular institute is more extraordinary. Those ways of life take very special graces.