“Marriage Is a Career”
June 8, 2022
IMPORTANT advice for those considering marriage, or already married, from Cana Is Forever (The Nugent Press, 1949) by Fr. Charles Hugo Doyle:
There is something formally prohibitive about a sign on a door reading “No Admittance Except on Business,” and it usually gets results. There would be fewer disappointing marriages if none entered the sacred relationship but those bent on serious business. Believe me, marriage is serious business. It is no lark, no adventure in the vacuous emotion of youth; it is a decision that will affect for life, and perhaps for eternity, not only oneself but one’s partner and any children God may send.
Marriage is a career, one so vital and so splendid that it ranks next to the priesthood and religious life in the trinity of top-flight careers in the world. All other careers are incidental to them. The fact that marriage was the first career ever to be embraced by man is most significant. And our common Father, Adam, when his pure gaze fell upon the first incarnation of unalloyed womanhood, Eve, proclaimed the inviolable law that was to bind all his descendants until the end of time: “Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24.)
The etymological meaning of the word “career” is interesting. It comes from the Latin word carrus–“wagon”–and means literally something that carries one along a road. In this sense, marriage is truly a career–one instituted by God Himself to carry a man and his wife and their children along life’s highway to heaven.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “career”: “As a course of professional life or employment which affords opportunity for progress or advancement in the world.” According to this definition marriage certainly qualifies as a career. History bears this out. There was hardly ever a great deed done by man that did not somewhere bear the fingerprint, no matter how faint, of a fond mother or a loving wife. How often have we not heard successful men humbly proclaim that the Herculean feats they have accomplished they owe to a devoted, saintly wife.
Indeed, not only is marriage a career that affords opportunity for spiritual and temporal progress and advancement in this life, but it reaches far into the next. “Marriage,” said Taylor, “is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself. The state of marriage fills up the number of the elect and hath in it the labor of love and the delicacies of friendship, the blessing of society and the union of hands and hearts. It is indeed the very nursery of heaven.”
The nature of man’s career in marriage consists primarily in a permanent union for the procreation and education of children, the provision of a home, support of his wife and his offspring, constant vigilant care for the spiritual and temporal welfare of his household. The nature of a woman’s career in marriage consists in the bearing and education of children, insoluble union, home- making and housekeeping. These are not matters of choice but of obligation.
A married man may give proof of power to rule an empire, master abstruse sciences, write immortal tomes–yet if he fulfills not the primary ends of the marriage career he is a failure.
A married woman may win by her particular capabilities and capacities the plaudits of the world for her contribution to medical and scientific research, or for works of art that grace the greatest museums and art galleries in the world; yet if she fulfills not the primary ends of her marriage career she is indeed a failure. Her first duty is to be a wife and mother and homemaker.
Failure to realize that marriage is a career is one of the tragedies of our day and the chief cause of the countless broken homes. People readily accept law, teaching, medicine, nursing, singing and advertising as careers, but neglect to include matrimony among the top-flight careers. Important as all careers may appear to be, only two were elevated to the dignity of sacraments–the priesthood and marriage. That consideration above all else should merit for the matrimonial state special veneration.
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