- Feb 5, 2002
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Our media are intermittently stirred up over the decline of marriage in American society. Many factors play into that phenomenon: confusion over the very definition of “marriage” and its substitution by ersatz stand-ins; economic insecurity that deters young people, especially young men, from entering adult life; a split between “adult” and “professional” life, in which there are gender differences; differing and often unrealistic expectations of marriage; the decline of religious commitment, expressed in religious marriage with a co-religionist, etc.
All these factors feed into the eclipse of marriage. But perhaps there’s one other that we just don’t take much into account because, like the air we breathe, it affects us, but we don’t notice it. It’s how we view the “normal” human person. Is the “normal” person naturally situated in a communion of persons such as marriage, or is he a rugged individualist for whom marriage is perhaps an “add-on” but not a “fulfillment?”
Genesis 2:18 teaches “it is not good for the man (ha’adam, הָֽאָדָ֖ם) to be alone.” Two things are noteworthy about this passage. The first is the speaker: God. It is not “the man” who recognizes his solitude, much less its deficiencies. It is God who authoritatively pronounces that aloneness is “not good” (one of the few times in Genesis something is not “good”).
Continued below.
www.thecatholicthing.org
All these factors feed into the eclipse of marriage. But perhaps there’s one other that we just don’t take much into account because, like the air we breathe, it affects us, but we don’t notice it. It’s how we view the “normal” human person. Is the “normal” person naturally situated in a communion of persons such as marriage, or is he a rugged individualist for whom marriage is perhaps an “add-on” but not a “fulfillment?”
Genesis 2:18 teaches “it is not good for the man (ha’adam, הָֽאָדָ֖ם) to be alone.” Two things are noteworthy about this passage. The first is the speaker: God. It is not “the man” who recognizes his solitude, much less its deficiencies. It is God who authoritatively pronounces that aloneness is “not good” (one of the few times in Genesis something is not “good”).
Continued below.
Is It Good for Man to Be Alone Now? - The Catholic Thing
John M. Grondelski: Is the “normal” person naturally situated in a communion of persons such as marriage, or is he a rugged individualist?
www.thecatholicthing.org
