Abuja, Nigeria, Jul 30, 2018 / 11:23 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A thriving and holy marriage depends on choosing a suitable spouse, having realistic expectations for the difficulties of marriage, and understanding the role of God’s grace in Christian life, according to a Nigerian bishop.
“You do not choose when and where you are born, you may or may not choose what school you attend, but you alone can choose who your spouse will be. And because this is a critical life decision, it can mar one’s life when a wrong choice is made,” said Bishop Anselm Umoren, auxiliary bishop in Abuja, at a July ceremony launching a book on marriage written by Henrietta Okechukwa, a counselor in Abuja.
At the ceremony, the bishop noted that “many young people, having observed the tragic situation of marriage and family life today, are giving up hope of ever starting a family. I have heard and seen young people today who say, ‘If this is what marriage is, I prefer to remain single’. This seems to be the chorus on the lips of many young people in our society,” according to the Catholic News Service of Nigeria.
Those young people who do marry, he said, “go into marriage relationships with skewed values. Many young people want to marry a wealthy partner and are desperately seeking a life of comfort without seeking the values that make for a happy and holy life. They therefore end up mortgaging their lives and exchanging their happiness for the temporary pleasures of life.”
“On Valentine’s Day in 2014, Pope Francis addressed 10,000 young couples preparing for marriage at a special Valentine’s celebration in St Peter’s Square in Rome. In his address, the pope spoke to the engaged couples about love and about lasting fidelity in marriage and encouraged them not to be afraid to make the life-long commitment that marriage entails. But the pope also expressed his sadness that many marriages today do not last long. This mentality, he says, has affected many young people who now see marriage as a temporary arrangement according to their own preferences,” Umoren said.
“This is why today many young couples seem to be overtaken by excessive planning and preparation for wedding, with exotic wedding gowns, elaborate photo shoots, and huge financial spending, without giving much attention to the spiritual and mental preparation for marriage.”
“They spend a lot of time and resources preparing for wedding instead of preparing for marriage. The wedding ceremony takes only a couple of hours, but the life after wedding lasts ‘till death do us part’. We need to help today’s young people to focus on this priority,” he added, while praising Okechukwa’s book.
The book, “Understanding your spouse before and after saying ‘I do,’” has not been released in the United States.
The bishop urged dating couples to reflect carefully on their values, and those of their partner, encouraging them not to marry if they do not share a common commitment to the permanence of marriage, to faith and to the Gospel.
“We are inundated almost on a daily basis with harrowing tales of husband and wife who are unable to live together under the same roof and sometimes resort to violence even to the point of killing a partner,” he said of his own pastoral experience in the Diocese of Abuja.
“It is better to put an end to an incompatible relationship today than to find yourself in an unhappy and sorrowful marriage tomorrow.”
[…]
This is the politics of garb at its worst! Mother Mary wore a veil. Most nuns and sisters wear a veil. The veil is the symbol of female modesty universally around the world and has been for countless generations. By refusing to allow young Muslim maids to wear their version of the veil, we are tacitly saying that they are unworthy to assume the God given virtue of modesty. It’s a poor and discriminatory decision.
I have no problem at all with the school’s banning “Islamic headscarves.”
“Most nuns and sisters wear a veil.” Yes, because they are nuns and sisters; that doesn’t apply to every woman.
“Mother Mary wore a veil.” There seems to be some discussion about what Jewish women of New Testament times, including Our Lady, wore. But in any event, it was unlikely to be an Islamic headscarf.
“By refusing to allow young Muslim maids to wear their version of the veil, we are tacitly saying that they are unworthy to assume the God given virtue of modesty.” No, we are not tacitly saying that. I could as accurately say “By allowing Muslim girls to wear their version of the veil, we are tacitly agreeing that Moslems have the say-so on what contstitutes modesty, and that anybody who doesn’t weir an Islamic veil is ipso facto immodest.”
I note this from another website: “In a country where 95 percent of the population is Muslim, banning the Islamic headscarf even in a Catholic school is considered unacceptable and against the principle of secularism in education in Senegal.” https://africabriefing.org/2019/09/outrage-as-senegal-catholic-school-expels-scarf-wearing-students/ Oh, reeeeeeally? Telling people who are attending a religious school that they aren’t allowed to wear the headgear of a different religion while at school is somehow “against the principle of secularism?”
To echo Anne, infra, I was at early Mass this morning, the Latin Mass in our Parish, which I find spiritually transformative. Two pews in front was a couple clearly from the Mideast, and the wife was wearing a typical middle eastern headscarf. The tradition may have migrated other places with Islamic conquest but the scarf and its common use is a very old regional tradition, long pre-dating Islam, reflecting modesty. Of all the things that might be considered objectionable about Islam, that is not one of them and I hope Catholics anywhere do not succumb to reactionary bigotry.
Thomas, I was watching a film series about St. Teresa of the Andes & all the women portraying her family in the early 20th Century wore solid black coverings in church-almost from head to toe. It looked very similar to what women wear today in Iran.
I’m assuming that tradition came to South America via Spain & perhaps to Spain originally from the Moorish conquest.
Perhaps considering the sectarian violence Christians have suffered in Africa recently there may be reasons we’re not aware of for this action taken by the school?
Just to mention, my Mennonite friends wear headcoverings all the time, as do the Amish & other Christian girls & women. It’s not so much about modesty, though their dress also reflects that virtue, but they understand the headcovering as more about what women wear in prayer. And since their whole lives are lived in prayer, so the covering is always worn too.