how many practising Catholics also practise abstinence until marriage and does it matter?

[moulesfrites]

I ask just because I have a friend who is a Catholic RE teacher who is keeping her increasingly obvious pregnancy secret because she knows that people (ie staff, parents, students) will judge her if they know she conceived before her wedding a couple of weeks ago. Is this hypocritical of her?

They won't judge her for getting married. In fact, the Head will be mightily relieved that his catholic RE teacher got married before her baby came - the Head would have had a pretty embarrasing situation on there hands if she had done otherwise.

A glaring example of the hypocrisy that dogs the catholic (and I dare say, all other!) religion(s)

One large reason I practice abstinence from the whole church!!!

I do agree with nametaken though - they won't care, as long as the 'right thing' has now been done and they are married before the baby was born.

I was with my DH for 8 years before we got married - turns out we fell PG either on honeymoon or before it... And, I can't believe how many times I've been told I had a shotgun wedding!!! 8 YEARS!! Shotgun!! Really!

Are you Catholic name taken? Just wondering how Catholics manage to reconcile this?

I'm a practising Catholic and was celibate until my wedding night (I'm in my mid-thirties, so not just a 'generation' thing).

It wasn't always easy but I managed it. :D

Nametaken is right - there are plenty of people who 'had' to get married because of pregnancy or who found themselves falling pregnant shortly before the wedding. Much is forgiven those who do the right thing before the baby is born - anyone can be tempted after all.

Given her position as an RE teacher, I can understand her embarrassment and wish to conceal the pregnancy for a while longer.

Was Mary married before she conceived Jesus? Sorry for a seemingly blasphemous question.... but as a former single parent I used to take solace from the fact that things weren't very straightforward in the New Testament and Mary and Joseph went against the traditions of the day.

Catholic's regard Mary as 'ever virgin' - so nope, no sex before or after marriage according to that teaching.

I'm catholic and was not chaste until I married. I was certainly not alone among my catholic friends.

(Celibacy is not getting married I think)

Celibacy is abstaining from sex - otherwise the requirement for priests to be celibate would mean that were allowed to have sex but not to marry, which would be a strange position for the church! :D

Or could it be that it means not getting married, but because they assume that sex is meant for marriage, it would preclude pre-marital sex anyway, IYSWIM.

No, chastity is not having sex. Celibacy is the state of being unarried.

Priests are celibate, and take a vow of chastity.

unmarried

Celibacy is not just being unmarried. It's also no sex, because the chruch permits sex only in marriage, and only when there is the possibility of conception. Which rules out priests.

BUT everyone knows this is a tough ask for everyone and lots of fervent RCs don't always manage it and didn't always in the past. Dante in the Divine Comedy sees lust as a lesser sin than eg treachery because there's at least some love involved. IMHO, jumping the gun a bit in a loving relationship is entirely different from extreme sexual sins like rape or the use of photographic pornography. I'd go so far as to say it's not much worse than eg missing mass on Sunday, something zillions of RCs do every week. But this is my view, not the magisterium's. Can anyone perhaps recall Our Lord's words about judging others??? They are in a way a tougher ask than chastity or continence.

Abby Lubber, I agree, obviously "jumping the gun" is not as bad as rape! But the point is, if people think it is acceptable, and the church realises that it is unattainable and unrealistic anyway, as you seem to suggest, then why does it to continue to say it is wrong? Is it the church's role to set ridiculously high standards so that everyone is doomed to failure? It is this that seems grossly hypocritical. I'm not judging the woman in question for being pregnant before she was married, but I find hypocracy difficult to understand. The pupils at the school have now started to notice and are saying things like "But even the RE teachers can't do what they tell us to do!"

We have had 2 staff members at my DCs' RC schools who have had babies without being married, not an eyebrow was raised. A birth is seen as joyous thing imo.

Mary was virgin AFTER marriage as well? What about Jesus' siblings then? Where didthey come from?

I have always been taught and do believe that yes Mary was EVER Virgin and had no other children other than Jesus. The fact that Our Lord said to John "Son behold your Mother" from the cross proves that if he had actual siblings as opposed to Kinsfolk=cousins="brothers" this would have never happened....

Seems like it's a difference between Catholics and Protestants.

At the very least, it's debatable.

Debatable? Do you know the RC church?

And I am standing by my point about celibacy BTW...