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Catholic
Courtship with
Diane Schwind
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Catholic Courtship: In the
Beginning Since dating is a recreational pastime with adverse consequences that we want to avoid, courtship preparation can actually begin at this time. The mid-teen years are certainly not too early to guide our adolescents in creating their own standards for a future spouse. As the teenagers naturally find themselves attracted to someone of the opposite sex, we can encourage them to really get to know that person while purposely keeping any romantic involvement on the back burner. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 states, “This is the will of God, your holiness: that you refrain from immorality, that each of you know how to acquire a wife for himself in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion as do the Gentiles who do not know God; not to take advantage of or exploit a brother in this matter, for the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you before and solemnly affirmed. For God did not call us to impurity but to holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this, disregards not a human being but God, who also gives his Holy Spirit to you.”1 We have to impart to our children first the beauty and sacredness of a holy marriage and then, secondly, how to acquire that marriage. These mid to late teenage years are the years for our maturing young adults to get to know who they are while getting to know others. A document called the Educational Guidance of Human Love issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education on November 1, 1983 puts forth the importance of our children learning to develop healthy friendships with those of both sexes. It says, “Education for friendship can become a factor of extraordinary importance in the making of the personality in its individual and social dimensions. The bonds of friendship of both sexes contribute both to understanding and to reciprocal respect when they are maintained within the limits of normal affective expression.” Peer to peer development is a crucial developmental period we can not suppress without causing social immaturity and therefore, unnecessary stress in the early years away from home. There are enough adjustments to be made when young adults leave home for the first time. Learning how to correspond with others should not have to be one of those adjustments. When our oldest child celebrated her thirteenth birthday, my husband and I made an appointment with our priest. We went into his office and said, “We have a teenager. What do we do?” He gave us the greatest advice. He told us to help them find who they are and what God is calling them to do while they live within our boundaries. We needed to be there as they matured by continually opening the boundaries as they exemplified that they were ready for those boundaries to increase. This made so much sense to me because I remember struggling all through high school trying to figure out who I was; what group to run around with, what clothes to wear, even what classes to take. It was not until I left home and went to college that I had the larger boundaries to discover who and what God wanted for me. This great priest told us to realize the natural development by God within our children and let them grow with our direction and help rather than suppressing them because we did not what them to “grow-up too fast”. So what is the bottom line here? How do we parents help our adolescents prepare for a holy and therefore happy marriage even at this young age? First, we really have to understand that their interest in the opposite sex is in God’s order. They are not doing anything wrong by looking, thinking or respectfully talking about the species that was once from another planet. Next, we begin casually talking about important qualities of a good wife or husband. As I said at the beginning, we have many boys and girls around our home besides our own. This makes it easy to find an example of good qualities. A young man may have great respect for my husband and me as well as our girls. This is a quality to bring to our girl’s attention. Important note here: we bring the quality to their attention, not the young man to their attention. The same process takes place for our son. This is also the best time to discuss religious affiliation and its role in a marriage. If our Catholic children marry Catholics, that is one less thing they will have to deal with when the stresses of marriage begin to arise. This is also what the Church recommends. If God has someone else in mind for the spouse of our child, we should discuss now the ways to work through this situation and still have a holy and happy marriage. The whole process of guiding our children toward a holy and happy marriage just takes involvement with your teenagers in their lives. Deuteronomy 6:7 tells us to, “Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest.” A very important lesson we want to help our teenagers understand is the normal sequence of relationships; enchantment, disenchantment and reality. We can help them see this cycle in all their relationships, be it with friends from church, school or any activity. If they learn to complete this cycle rather than ending a friendship during the disenchantment stage, they will be better equipped to get through the first few months of a full blown courting relationship (which we will cover in another article) and through the first few years of a marriage. Basically, we need to let our children know we do not disapprove of their interest of the opposite sex, but help them learn to keep that interest holy and pure by simply getting to know the person better and looking for and taking note of qualities desired or not wanted in a spouse. In this process they will learn to conduct themselves with those who used to be just the same, but are now so different. Allowing boys and girls to socialize in a safe environment will help them learn how to handle themselves when they are no longer within our boundaries. The girls will learn to act like ladies instead of giggly, flirty girls and the boys learn to treat the girls like ladies instead of something to impress and possibly use. All of this can be accomplished by getting out of our comfort zones. Let your kid’s friends hang out at your house. Take your kid’s to teen parties where the parents are hanging out in the kitchen and their growing offspring are socializing in the living room. Let your kids do teenage things, as groups, first with complete supervision and later as the boundary increases are earned, without your watchful eye. When you are comfortable with your teenager’s behavior around his or her peers and you are comfortable with your teenager’s peers, you might let them go to a movie with a group of friends while you and your spouse enjoy a different movie. This, of course, is only allowed in groups and after prayerful consideration by both parents. We will have to let them go at some point. Trust between teenagers and parents has to be developed and proven long before they leave home for the first time. Observation, analysis, social skills and trust are all necessities our adolescent children need to learn before they even consider any type of romantic relationship. As they learn the purpose God has for their lives, they also learn the purpose for those He places in their lives. Catholic parents have the sacramental graces given in Matrimony to help guide them in what is best for their children. We just have to be very careful not to get in His way in the development of our children as they prepare for their vocations, be it Marriage, Holy Orders or the single life. God is the planter and we only tend the garden. May our guidance, trust and love be the healthy soil, water and fertilizer of their lives now so that they may grow beautiful fruit in their future marriages.
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Three
teenagers ranging from fifteen to seventeen in age reside
in my home as three out of four of my children. Having
two girls with several girl friends and one boy with as
many friends as the girls combined, the opportunity to
develop social skills is almost a daily occurrence. This
led me to my old child development books from college to
make sure my memory had not failed me. As I had
suspected, I found that this time in our teenager’s lives
is the proper time, developmentally, for boys to notice
the girls and, of course, vice versa. This recognition of
the opposite sex is in God’s plan. There is a reason this
is occurring during the mid teen years. One of the
reasons is called hormones. As the changes are occurring
physically to our once small babies, they are also
occurring emotionally. This is when the guidance of
parents to a life-long marriage for their children
begins.
October
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