{"id":63733,"date":"2017-01-12T07:00:30","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T14:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=63733"},"modified":"2017-01-13T11:52:18","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T18:52:18","slug":"dating-chastity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2017\/01\/12\/dating-chastity\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholic Dating: The issue of chastity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Last week I wrote two posts on the subject of dating outside of the Catholic Faith. In an effort to keep those posts focussed, I had decided to address the specific scenario of a couple composed of two Christians, a Catholic and a Protestant.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0as I was writing, there was one issue related to dating outside of the Catholic Faith that\u00a0I particularly wanted to raise, but since it didn’t naturally fall within the parameters which I had set for those articles, I decided to omit it. In today’s brief post, therefore, I would like to return to this issue.<\/p>\n

In the previous post, I presented three main areas for potential conflict between a Catholic and a Protestant:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0The Wedding<\/strong><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0Religious Practice<\/strong><\/p>\n

3. Children and family life<\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition to these three areas, when a Catholic dates a non-Christian<\/span> (as opposed to a non-Catholic), there is another area of potential conflict which is particularly worth considering:<\/p>\n

4. Chastity<\/strong>
\nIs\u00a0your potential spouse committed to chastity? Will this person\u00a0do everything possible to help you remain chaste?<\/p>\n

It is worth pointing out that potential contention over\u00a0the\u00a0subject of chastity is certainly not limited to the situation where a Catholic is dating a non-Christian. It is possible that conflict may arise when dating a Protestant or, as I highlighted in my previous post<\/a>, even a fellow Catholic. There is no guarantee that someone who identifies as “Catholic” actually will believe or practise the entirety of the Catholic Faith.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With that said, I have a story which I would like to share with you. Over the course of my adult life, I have seen this same story play out time and again with depressing regularity. A Christian friend tells\u00a0me she has started dating a non-Christian guy. She enthuses about how wonderful he is and she assures me he’s okay with her resolution to abstain from all sexual activity until marriage. However, a few weeks or months down the line, there are serious issues.\u00a0It turns out that maybe he’s not quite as onboard as he first said. Maybe what she considered off-limits, he thought was still fair game? Sometimes this relationship ends in a breakup, but other times she relents and lowers her standards.<\/p>\n

I don’t recount this story to be mean, or to suggest that non-Christians are either dishonest or lack\u00a0self-control. I tell this story because\u00a0this is pattern I have seen too many times not to take the opportunity to mention\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

Chastity is a hard virtue to cultivate! Speaking for myself, if I’m pursuing chastity, I don’t want to be dating\u00a0someone who is just “okay” with\u00a0it. I need someone who is enthusiastic about it and wants this virtue for me perhaps even more than I want it for myself. I would like\u00a0someone who will not purposefully test my boundaries, who is going to be strong when I’m weak, so that when she is weak I can be strong.<\/p>\n

\"Romance\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I wrote two posts on the subject of dating outside of the Catholic Faith. In an effort to keep those posts focussed, I had decided to address the specific scenario of a couple composed of two Christians, a Catholic and a Protestant. However,\u00a0as I was writing, there was one issue related to dating outside of the Catholic Faith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1026,2324,410,2969,95,541,4222],"class_list":["post-63733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","tag-abstinence","tag-catholic-dating","tag-chastity","tag-featured","tag-marriage","tag-sex","tag-sexual-activity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Romance-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63733"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63902,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63733\/revisions\/63902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}