In my last article I discussed the first five of the “Seven C’s of Self-Centered Singleness,” Careers, Choices, Cows, Comfort and Culture. While they all contribute to the current trend of singledom to one degree or another, the last two “Cs” are probably two of the biggest culprits.
The Sixth C: Counterfeits
A basic fact of life is that we learn by example. For the last several decades, the examples of the fundamental building blocks of life provided by society and the media have been twisted ones. A vast number of people today don’t know the truth about love, marriage and the family.
If a child grows up lacking examples of healthy marriages because his parents are divorced, his friends’ parents are divorced, and the couples he sees on television are divorced, how is he going to know what it takes to make a real marriage work? Studies have shown that children of divorce are much more hesitant to marry. It’s perfectly logical; they don’t want to marry because they don’t want to become another divorce statistic, nor do they want to risk subjecting future children to a possible divorce.
Hollywood also presents a counterfeit notion of love, portraying it as a passionate feeling that you get from someone rather than the choice to give yourself to another. The media tends to show only one little part of a couple’s life—the “I’m passionately infatuated with you and everything about you is fantastic” part or the “I’m no longer feeling it, so it’s over” part.
It rarely shows the couple with a good marriage who has been married five, ten or fifty years—a couple who is very much in love but has had to work hard for it, to fight for it, to sacrifice and struggle for it. While real love obviously includes feelings of intense joy and intimacy, any happily married couple will tell you that the experience is the fruit of an ongoing journey, not instant pudding.
Pornography is another crushing counterfeit in today’s internet-saturated society, affecting committed Christians almost as much as the unchurched. While plenty of data exists on the negative effects of pornography on marriages, how is this particularly insidious counterfeit affecting the singles situation?
The effects are many (and worth knowing), but in short, the fantasy world is rewiring people away from relationships. Why put the necessary effort into a relationship when you can feel “good” with less work?
But it’s not just the porn. The constant billboards, magazines and online ads which assault us every day change the way we view people. Let’s face it guys, Miss Right is not going to look like the (airbrushed) blonde bikini model drinking your favorite beer. Jillian Strauss recounts the story of a young man who told her he had to be with someone who “took his breath away.” Not surprisingly, he “is still alone and waiting to be breathless.”
And ladies, we must stop expecting Mr. Knightley to show up on the doorstep—or even better, a dynamite Catholic man who embodies every possible manifestation of romantic manliness and whose sum total of real faults are limited to not folding his socks and leaving the toilet seat up.
The Seventh C: Contraception
Contraception is arguably at the root of the current breakdown of marriage and the family. Making extra-marital sex commonplace, it has led to wounded people, broken marriages, unwelcomed children, increased abortions, a redefinition of marriage, and STDs to boot—all with further disastrous effects. In his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI accurately predicted that contraception would lead to the objectification of women. Once you divorce sex from babies, sex is viewed purely for pleasure—and it is a quick slide down a slippery slope to viewing the other person as a means to your pleasure, as an object for your gratification.
As St. John Paul II pointed out in his pre-papal book Love and Responsibility, the opposite of love is not so much hate, but to use another person as a means to an end, which “does violence to the very essence of the other.” Contraception leads not to more love, but to more use.
“But I’m not using contraception, so how does it affect me?” We have become a contraceptive society not only in our actions but in our attitudes. Contraception is something which blocks fertility and life for the sake of pleasure. In what ways do we exclude the messiness and responsibility of life for the sake of self-centered comfort? In how many ways do we “make ourselves god” by trying to control our lives instead of being receptive and open to God’s working in the people and events we encounter?
Arguably this contraceptive mentality is at the very core of the current trend of singleness, and it plays itself out in the various concrete ways we’ve discussed.
So are we irreparably lost? Absolutely not! As Christians we have hope!
Pope Benedict reminds us that though we don’t know the details of the future, we know that our “life will not end in emptiness… The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.” (Spe Salvi)
Let’s live in that hope through the “Three C’s of Christ-Centered Singleness”
The 3-C Solution: Communion, Conversion and Commitment
We were made for love and communion, and we live that out through making a gift of ourselves to God and those in our lives—and being receptive of their gift of self to us. Living in communion “means existing in a mutual ‘for,’ in a relationship of mutual gift.” (Theology of the Body).
An ongoing attitude of self-gift requires continuous conversion, turning from self-centeredness to love. It means following Christ and allowing ourselves to be transformed by his mercy, since really loving another person is only possible with his help. Whether or not we have committed ourselves to the vocation of marriage or the celibate life, we committed ourselves to Christ through baptism. If we were baptized as babies and others made that commitment for us, then we must consciously make that commitment ourselves.
Truly living out our baptism requires constant surrender to God and His will. As C.S. Lewis aptly put it: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘All right then, have it your way.’”
Commitment is necessary for conversion, and both conversion and commitment are necessary for communion. While not yet committed to marriage or the consecrated life, we can all commit ourselves to living our baptismal vocation by loving those most in need in our everyday life—and by going further and serving those in our churches and communities, whether it be in soup kitchens, crisis pregnancy centers, Sunday school classes, youth groups, or by helping organize study groups or events for singles (to give just a few examples). Above all, we must commit ourselves to Christ and to living for Him.
Why are you still single? And why am I? The answer is different for every person.
But as we seek healing from the effects of the “Seven C’s of Self-Centered Singleness,” and as we strive to pursue our vocation through the “Three C’s of Christ-Centered Singleness,” let’s remember what John Paul II tells us:
“Love is a constant challenge thrown to us by God,” but “God’s strength is always far more powerful than your difficulties.”
Anastasia Northrop dedicates her time to promoting John Paul II’s understanding of the human person and studying issues common to single Catholics as the founder and director of the National Catholic Singles Conference (happening this year in Pittsburgh in May, and in Phoenix in September).
