Hey,
I'm a bit late in this conversation, but I actually came across an article that I think will be benefical to this discussion. It's a bit lenghtly, but I got alot from and and pray that it helps...
God Bless
FROM:
http://www.theuniversityconcourse.com/V,7,3-27-2000/vanSchaijik.htm
the University Concourse
Volume V, Issue 7
March 27, 2000
[SIZE=+2]A Catholic critique of a current notion of courtship[/SIZE]
by Kathleen van Schaijik
When I was a freshman I went to a talk on dating, given on campus as part of a "Christian Formation" series. One of the things the speaker said was "Feelings don't really matter. Feelings come and go. What matters is compatibility." I've heard the same idea expressed many other times this way: "Love is not a feeling; it's a decision."
The de-emphasis on "feelings" was a fundamental aspect of a general philosophy of dating promoted on campus (though certainly not shared by all) at the time. Dating was (and still is) regarded by many as "a process of marriage preparation." Singles who truly wanted to "give their love life to God," were taught that they ought not to be dating at all until they were ready to get married, and that then it should be kept to the minimum necessary for finding an appropriate potential spouse and rationally discerning compatibility for marriage. A great deal of stress was put on the need to avoid sexual sin and occasions of sin, as well as on the danger of "going by your emotions." Young men and women were told they should not kiss until they were engaged, and were "challenged" to wait until they were married. ("If you're not going to start the car, why put the key in the ignition?") Older couples were encouraged to "get married as soon as possible" in order to avoid sin. The myster y of love was given very short shrift.
This way of thinking about courtship and dating seems to be on the rise in Christian circles. There are a number of Protestant ministers and teachers today promulgating what they call (very misleadingly, I think) "the biblical approach" to marriage, which they term "courtship" in explicit opposition to the dating scene of the world.
[SIZE=-2](1)[/SIZE] Dating, they say, with its pattern of emotional attachments ending in breakups is "preparation for divorce." In courtship, by contrast, "the decision to marry is entered into rationally," without the interference of the emotions and with the express permission and guidance of the parents. The emotions come later, during the betrothal period. "The betrothal period [is] given to allow the emotions to catch up with the decision. The emotions are supposed to follow reason, not lead it."
[SIZE=-2](2)[/SIZE] (No distinction is made here between critically different types of emotions, such as between arbitrary sensations and deep spiritual responses.)
I have heard prominent Catholics expound similar ideas recently, including the notion of parental permission to begin courting, no kissing until the wedding day, and the idea that feelings should follow the rational decision to court, not vice versa.
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This method of courting has a strong appeal among young Christians, for two main reasons. The first is that it has a very large kernel of truth in it. The dating scene of the world is a disastrous mess. It is almost completely focussed on pleasure and self-gratification. Sexual promiscuity and emotional anguish abound. More and more couples are living together unmarried, more and more marriages are ending in divorce, more hearts are being broken, more lives are being ruined. Serious young Christians are looking desperately for something better and purer--a godly way to get married. And this method promises to provide it.
The second reason for its appeal, I think, is that it so greatly simplifies things for singles. It makes the pre-marriage period manageable. It gives a safe formula for getting through an extremely complex, confusing and peril-fraught time of life. By putting things on a clear, up-front, rational basis, much of the uncertainty and vulnerability that inevitably accompany "affairs of the heart" is eliminated.
The problem with it is that it is drastically lacking the fullness of truth about the mysteries of love and sexuality. And the lack here is not a mere incompleteness--so that if a few additions or adjustments were made, we'd have it in full. Rather, it is the kind of lack that entails a reduction and distortion of reality. And any distortion on the philosophical level is bound to work its way into the practical realm, doing damage in human lives in proportion with the seriousness of the error. (I could give many sorrowful examples here if put to it.)
Love and discernment
Perhaps the prime way it distorts reality is in the way it denigrates the role of love in courtship. In some cases, love is treated as irrelevant or worse, since "emotions" can cloud our judgement.
[SIZE=-2](4)[/SIZE] More often, though, the "feelings" that go with courtship are seen to be good and valid, but still incidental to the "discernment process." I can remember very distinctly thinking this way as a freshman and sophomore at FUS--being taught to think this way. If the choice of a spouse was sound, the feelings would click in eventually.
Just last night, reading George Weigel's biography of John Paul II, I was struck by this line: "Love, for Karol Wojtyla, was the truth at the very core of the human condition..." (p.101) Similarly, he saw it as the core of authentic courtship. In the experience of falling in love, Wojtyla shows, the meaning of the universe is mysteriously revealed, and with it the lover's personal vocation: to give myself in love to this other, and to receive the gift of his love for me.
[SIZE=-2](5)[/SIZE]
This theme is also stressed repeatedly in the writings of the great Catholic philosopher, Dietrich von Hildebrand.
[SIZE=-2](6)[/SIZE] True love between a man and a woman, so far from being a matter of bodily urges or appetites, or of sub-rational, superficial "feelings" needing to be dominated by reason, is a profoundly, a pre-eminently spiritual reality--one that shakes us to the very depths of our being. It is, further, decisively an affective reality, centered in the heart, not the intellect or the will (though it is of course intimately related to both.) Jacob did not labor fourteen years for Rachel's hand because he had "discerned a compatibility" with her, but "because he loved her." (Gen. 29:19-20)
To insist on the centrality of love in courtship, however, is not at all to suggest that discernment has no place. It is vitally necessary; for instance, in helping us to distinguish between authentic love and counterfeits like infatuation or mere sexual attraction, or to decide whether or not this particular love ought to end in marriage, or whether it might be right to marry even in the absence of an intense "inloveness."
[SIZE=-2](7)[/SIZE] But, crucial at it is, rational discernment is not the essence of the matter, and if we talk as if it is, we will end by cheating young men and women out of the height of human happiness, and with it the moral power they will need to live out their married lives well.
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The objective and subjective dimensions
A second distortion in the above-described courtship method, related to the first, is in its too impersonal or lop-sidedly "objective" treatment of the vocation to marriage. This can be seen in the very idea of making lists of potential spouses, and in the notion of needing parental permission to begin courting.
In Catholic understanding, marriage is a vocation--not just to a general state, but to a particular person. And like a vocation to the religious life, it is based on an intimate, interior call of God. In other words, it is something profoundly subjective
[SIZE=-2](9)[/SIZE]--beyond the reach of purely objective judgements and categories.
[SIZE=-2](10)[/SIZE] Therefore, it is not fitting for a man who wants to marry to make lists of the qualities he's looking for in a wife, or lists of the various women who attract his interest. This exposes and reinforces an impersonal and de-personalizing view of marriage--as if it didn't really matter whom one marries, as long as she has the right qualities for the role she is to play. It encourages a man to be on the lookout for a "type" rather than for a person--an approach that has devastating consequences, particularly for women.
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Neither is it fitting for a couple to put the decision to court or to marry a particular person in the hands of their parents, or any other superior. No matter how much he may have the best interests of his daughter in mind, a parent cannot see into her heart, and is therefore simply unqualified to make that most intimate and ultimate of decisions for her. But, again, to say that the parents should not hold veto power over their adult child's choice to court or marry is not at all to suggest that they do not have an essential role to play in helping their off-spring to court and marry well. A parent's perspective is priceless and irreplaceable.
My own parents never did anything to try to "control" my dating in college. The unspoken understanding was that they had done for me what they could by raising me well, and now it was up to me to live as I thought right.
When I was a sophomore I had a boyfriend--someone I thought of as a great Christian leader and a potential spouse. I was not in love with him, but I expected that would come in due course. One day I asked my Dad, "Would you be happy if I married him?" He hesitated before answering, and in that single instant of fatherly hesitation (which surprised me) all the subtle doubts I had been harboring in my own heart crystallized into certainty: this relationship would never work; he was a great person, but he was all wrong for me. My father's knowledge of me and his broader experience of life allowed him to see it before I did. And my implicit trust in his judgement and his loving concern for my happiness made me see it much sooner than I would have on my own--which spared me (and the boyfriend) a lot of needless heartache.
My parents never had the least hesitation about Jules. But neither would they have picked him for me out of a crowd of potential husbands. Until they saw how we loved one another, they could not have imagined how right he is for me. It was a revelation for them too.
Parents wield an enormous influence over their children. They have a right and a duty to advise their grown sons and daughters, and to bless or withhold their blessing from their "courtship choices," as their loving parental wisdom dictates.
[SIZE=-2](12)[/SIZE] But they cannot make those choices for them, and they can do damage if they try.
