Singleness As Vocation

[Evangetholic]

I do not think I have a vocation to the priesthood or religious life (life in community in particular seems a dreadfully dangerous prospect). I have recently decided that marriage would be a disaster for all concerned parties as well--though if someone had asked me two days ago what I though my vocation was I would have said marriage and fatherhood without any qualms.

 

I have gathered the general sense from some posts here and from reading various things on the Church's theology of "vocations" that singleness as such is not considered a vocation. Is this correct?

 

(I'm interested in both opinions and any clear Magisterial statements.)

 

Moderators may feel free to move this to vocation station, but I have specific reasons for not posting it there.

[EmilyAnn]

Two days is an awful short to time to make a decision like that. One should also be careful that they are not making such a decision because of a recent break-up, bad experience, etc. Being in a negative state is rarely a good place to be making any kind of life choices.

[Evangetholic]

I'm not in a negative state, but thank you. :)

[homeschoolmom]

Moderators may feel free to move this to vocation station, but I have specific reasons for not posting it there.

Just as a point of information, dUSt prefers that the Vocation Station remain a place to discuss religious vocations only. Marriage and other vocation discussions go here or in the Raising Small Humans phorums.

[HisChildForever]

Why would marriage be a disaster?

[Evangetholic]

Well thank you all for the overwhelming support and interest. It's too much. Really I don't deserve it.

 

:hehe2:

[arfink]

Well Evangetholic, I can tell you right now, people are probably reluctant to touch this topic, at least around here. Mostly because there are a number of very outspoken people who think that being single is not a proper vocational state except for people who somehow can't possibly make marriage or religious life work. I think that's an awful narrow view of vocation myself.

[EmilyAnn]

Well thank you all for the overwhelming support and interest. It's too much. Really I don't deserve it.

 

:hehe2:

:huh:

Of course you do.

 

This is Phatmass. We help each other. 

[Evangetholic]

Why would marriage be a disaster?

 

The disordered nature of my affective desires means that marriage is an undesirable end. It's a state incompatible with my own happiness that could only result in unhappiness and feelings of inadequacy for the other party--not an especially upsetting realization to reach, but I'm not certain as to where to go from here (vis-a-vis living a life of use to God that protects my sanity and holiness without multiplying anyone else's burdens). I've made enough posts before this one for people to able to piece together the exact situation, but my understandings of modesty, politeness, and privacy have sufficiently changed that I'll not be more explicit about "why" than this statement.

[Evangetholic]

Well Evangetholic, I can tell you right now, people are probably reluctant to touch this topic, at least around here. Mostly because there are a number of very outspoken people who think that being single is not a proper vocational state except for people who somehow can't possibly make marriage or religious life work. I think that's an awful narrow view of vocation myself.

 

I'm not at all certain that singleness is a vocation either, that's part of the purpose of the thread.
 

[PadrePioOfPietrelcino]

The generous single life CAN be ones Vocation, I think the best option is to find a Priest or someone else approved by the Bishop for spiritual direction and vocation discernment. In the mean time here are several different diocese's website which all confirm the Single Life CAN be a vocation.

A key question/ concern I would have based on what you shared is WHY would community living/ marriage be disasters or not work? It seems to me that the call to single life is still one of sacrifice and love. If the desire is to be able to do whatever you want without others attached to your decision, I would think you have some personal areas to grow in rather than exclude the other vocations from discernment.

http://archstl.org/archstl/post/vocation-dedicated-single-life-lead

http://www.nelsondiocese.org/our-catholic-faith/vocation/call-to-the-single-life.html

http://www.gbdioc.org/vocations/single-life.html

http://www.diocese-of-sioux-falls.org/vocations/Content.aspx?id=184&office=Vocations

[CatholicCid]

I always think this is an interesting question and one I waiver back and forth with myself.

 

If one is approaching singleness as a vocation because they do not think they can live out a married or religious vocation, I think that would be a wrong approach, regardless if singleness is technically a vocation or not. A vocation, in a general sense, is that way of life in which the Lord is calling you to achieve holiness through. It is not to be a last resort because the other options seem to difficult. As Benedict XVI said, we are not called to comfort, but to greatness. And, at times, that means going outside of ourselves, outside of our comfort zones. A vocation isn't meant to be easy; It's a challenge. It's a chance to grow in holiness and growth normally requires difficulties. 

 

As to the state of singleness, is it a state of life vocation? I'm not sure. My one thought against it has always been that it lacks a dedicated relationship. We are, after all, relational beings. In marriage, you are to bring your spouse to salvation and, in doing so, you will work out your own salvation. In priesthood and religious life, you are called to bring those you serve to salvation (Contemplative vocations serve through a ministry of prayer). In each of these ways of life, you are not only being relation to another, you are making some form of promise to be relational, a commitment to God of service to another. Single-life seems to lack such a commitment. 

 

That being said, if the single life is being pursued so as to perform service in some specific way, then I think that would be a form of commitment. For example, the doctor who stays single so that he can dedicate his life to his patients. 

 

So, my two cents, is singleness a vocation? If it is being pursued simply because one does not want to be either married or in a religious state, then no. if it is being pursued as a proper way to work out your salvation in relationship to the whole Church, then yes. 

Edited March 8, 2013 by CatholicCid

[EmilyAnn]

Now I could be entirely wrong here, I have not read extensively on the subject, but this is just my opinion. To me, singleness is our "natural" state in a way. A vocation is a call to something other, ie. marriage, priesthood, consecrated life, etc. It requires a vow or commitment of some sort, a change in your state. But to me it seems plausible that God wishes for some people to stay in that single state. So...is singleness a vocation? To me, no. But can it be God's will that one remain single? I think so. 

[Basilisa Marie]

The disordered nature of my affective desires means that marriage is an undesirable end. It's a state incompatible with my own happiness that could only result in unhappiness and feelings of inadequacy for the other party--not an especially upsetting realization to reach, but I'm not certain as to where to go from here (vis-a-vis living a life of use to God that protects my sanity and holiness without multiplying anyone else's burdens). I've made enough posts before this one for people to able to piece together the exact situation, but my understandings of modesty, politeness, and privacy have sufficiently changed that I'll not be more explicit about "why" than this statement.

 

This seems rather hasty. 

 

I don't think it's quite fair to write off the entire female population because you feel like all women would feel inadequate in a relationship with you, especially in such a short time as two days.  Did you have some kind of "revelation" about the nature of marriage?  An important part of marriage is helping each other get to heaven - and helping each other carry burdens along the way. 

 

That being said, I agree with CatholicCid's post about the single vocation. 

[Nihil Obstat]

Being single, in and of itself, is not a vocation. This little blurb here represents my own understanding of the subject:

 

 

Communio (summer 2010, "Living and Thinking Reality in its Integrity", David L. Schindler). The first kind of sets the stage, and the second brings home what I'm trying to say.

16: "There is much that needs to be sorted out here. A state of life, properly understood, gives objective form to an "existential" as distinct from "office-bearing" participation in Christ's eucharistic love. Each of the baptized participates in Christ's Eucharist both existentially and "officially", in the sense that ordained priests are always first members of the Church, and that all members of the Church, by virtue of their Baptism, exercise a priestly office, manifest, for example, in the capacity themselves to baptize in certain circumstances. This emphatically need not, and does not, imply attenuation of the clear and profound difference between the laity and the ordained priesthood. What I mean to emphasize here is simply that a state of life, for example, consecrated virginity, is as such not a clerical state. It seems to me that an awareness that this is so opens the way to a deepened appreciation for the state of consecrated virginity as a distinctly lay state, recognized already officially by the Church in Pius XII's Provida Mater, and indeed in Vatican II's renewed teaching regarding the laity and their "wordly" vocation. My statement is also meant to carry the implication that the vowed life of the three evangelical counsels, which expresses the gift of one's whole self- possessions, body and mind- indicate the most objectively fitting existential form for the priest's office-bearing participation in the Eucharist and the sacramental life of the Church. But again, all of this needs more sustained development that can be offered in the present forum. For a reflection on the relation of the life of the evangelical counsels and the vocation of the laity, see Balthasar, Laity and the Life of the Counsels (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003).
17: The suggestion here that there are only two states of life [consecrated virginity or sacramental marriage] raises many questions within the Church today. On the one hand, there is the common perception that the priesthood as such is a state of life, which in the proper sense it is not. On the contrary, it has its sacramental-ontological reality as an office, indeed as an office that, as I have suggested, bears an objective fittingness for a vowed life of the three evangelical counsels. On the other hand, there is also an increasing tendency today to affirm that singleness as such can qualify as a state of life. But neither is this properly so, because a state of life requires saying forever to God in a vowed form. And the character of this vow that constitutes a state of life has its ultimate foundation in the dual character of the human being's original experience, in original solitude and original unity, or filiality and nuptiality, both of which have their center in God. A state of life, properly speaking, is the mature person's recuperation in freedom of one's call to fidelity to God forever, which occurs either through consecrated virginity, and thus remaining "alone" with God; or through marriage, and thus promising fidelity to God forever, through another human being. But it is nevertheless crucial to see here that the single life, if not (yet) actualized by either of these vows, does not thereby remain merely in a kind of neutral place where one remains suspended in a mode of inaction and unfulfillment. On the contrary, as we have indicated, there is a call for the gift of one's whole self implicit already in the act of being created: and this call is immeasurably deepened in the act of being baptized. The point, then, is that this call is actualized in the tacit and mostly unconscious fiat which, in receiving creation, and in turn the new creation in Christ, already begins one's participation in a promise of the gift of one's self to God. The call to be faithful to God forever with the wholeness of one's life is implied, and is already initially realized, in a natural form, at one's conception, and again, in a supernatural form, at one's Baptism. As long as one remains single, then, the relevant point is that one can already begin living the fiat of total availability to God, and, in this sense, realize the fundament of what becomes a state of life when recuperated in the maturity of one's freedom in the form of a vow of consecrated virginity or marriage. What one is meant to do as long as one is single, in other words, is to live one's total availability: to wait with active availability for God's will. Of course, it has to be recognized that humanity, and the cosmos as a whole, exists in a deeply disordered condition by virtue of sin. And therefore it has to be recognized as well that the call objectively to a consecrated state of celibacy or to marriage may never be historically realized- as is the case that everything in the cosmos exists in a broken condition, sometimes a seriously disordered condition that must be accepted, even with much suffering.