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Catholic
Courtship with
Diane Schwind
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Catholic Mom Columns What is Catholic Courtship?
Maturity Catholic Courtship is the period after spiritual, mental and financial preparation has been completed. You have to have it right with God, have it right with yourself and have it right in the bank before you begin considering courtship and marriage if you want a life-long marriage. Catholic Courtship is the period after you have developed a relationship with God. Once you have crossed the bridge from fear and uncertainty of how you will control your life to trust and assurance that God is in control of your life, you won't have any problem letting Him lead you to your future spouse. Spiritual preparation is also the time in which you learn the beauty and sanctity of holy matrimony. Our wonderful Catholic faith teaches us the holiness of the sacrament of marriage. Like the other six sacraments, marriage is something to be taken very serious. It is not something to do because everyone else does it after they have graduated from college, taken a good job, bought a nice house and have a cool car in the garage. Marriage is to be spiritually prepared for just as the other sacraments are spiritually prepared for at the proper time in your life. Pope John Paul II told us in Familiaris Consortio that the Church is here to help us learn the wonderful purpose of a holy marriage grounded in faith. In the Apostolic Exhortation it states, “In a particular way the Church addresses the young, who are beginning their journey towards marriage and family life, for the purpose of presenting them with new horizons, helping them to discover the beauty and grandeur of the vocation to love and the service of life.” When you have learned to trust in God and the Church He has given us to guide your decisions, you are on the road toward Catholic Courtship. Mental preparation is necessary before courtship begins. You need to have it clearly understood after prayerful consideration just what characters you must have in a spouse and what characters you refuse to have in a spouse. You have to have really thought about your future husband or wife, mother or father of your children. It's very much like setting goals in the other areas of your life. You don't want to just take whomever comes along because you think you're ready to be married and afraid the right person won't ever come along if you wait for someone with all the right characteristics. Really think and pray about what kind of a person you want to spend the rest of your life with. In the chapter on How? we'll discuss a great exercise that you will be able to do and then use to help you mentally prepare for that life-long marriage. Catholic Courtship should not begin until the finances are established. That doesn't mean you have to be a college graduate with a six-digit income before you begin preparing for marriage. But, Proverbs 23:27 says, “Complete your outdoor tasks, and arrange your work in the field; afterward you can establish your house.” There is a correct order and time for all things including romance. The man of God will prepare himself and his finances in order to properly care for his wife and future family before he begins courtship. This too is a mental decision. Once the decision of how the man will fulfill this obligation of husband and father is made and the journey down that path has begun, this could be the time to begin a Catholic Courtship as long as some income is being made to support a home, food and bills. My husband and I married in college. We ate a lot of Ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese, but we survived just fine financially while we grew threw the struggle together. That was a great foundation for us to build on in our marriage as the children began coming along. We learned what was necessary and what was not. Please understand I am not saying you should have a large savings account before you consider beginning to think of marriage, but, a serious plan must be in place for the future of your finances. And if the plan is not quite completed and God has called you to marriage to someone, you can then complete the plan together. Or if God asks it of you, you can continue your courtship and wait to be married until after the plan is accomplished. Either way, the goal is to do God's will and you can be assured of peace in your decisions.
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Catholic
Courtship is a road map to help you find the spouse God
has planned just for you. It is the maturing of your
spirit and mind. It is the intention of finding the
perfect spouse once God has made it clear to you that your
vocation is marriage. It is learning to evaluate
character, values, beliefs, practices and interests. It
is a relationship that begins as a healthy friendship and
then when the time is right, it leads to marriage. It is
the preparation for the Sacrament of Matrimony.
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