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Can You Choose the Wrong Husband or Wife? In this video, Jimmy Akin explores this question and explains how God wants us to use our gift of free will.
Transcript:
Um, I&#8217;ve discerned into marriage and proposed to my girlfriend. Problem is, I&#8217;m experiencing cold feet and severe stress with a chance I picked the wrong person. Told myself, just trust God. If He wanted me to be with someone else, He’d move my heart in another direction. But since many have tried to tell me God doesn&#8217;t have a particular individual planned out for anyone, i.e., a soulmate, not sure God will ever intervene. Should I be expecting help from God?
Okay, well, um, I would say that what people have told you—that God doesn&#8217;t have a single individual who&#8217;s like destined for you and you either get that person or you miss forever—I would say those people are right. This idea of a soulmate is not something that&#8217;s found in the Bible. And we see, um, people like the patriarch Abraham—he was originally married to Sarah, but after she passed on, he got married to a woman named Keturah. And as far as we know, they had a successful marriage. Moses had more than one wife too, one after the other. And so, um, it&#8217;s not like there&#8217;s this one and only person out there for you. You&#8217;ve got options.
And so I would say if, uh, you&#8217;re having cold feet, well, that&#8217;s understandable. I remember when I got married, it—you know, there was a certain moment when we were actually saying the vows, and we got up to the &#8220;I take you to be my spouse&#8221; part, and I&#8217;m starting to say that, and all of a sudden, I&#8217;m getting really weak in the knees. Um, and actually, I&#8217;m told if you watch videos of people, um, getting married, sometimes you&#8217;ll see one of the two parties just faint on the spot as they&#8217;re saying the vows, because you&#8217;ve got that adrenaline going with the fight-or-flight reflex. And what that does—when you have the fight-or-flight reflex—is it, um, will suck blood away from your head in order to enable you to run. And sucking the blood away from your head can cause you to faint.
Um, so that is something that, you know, one can experience. I&#8217;ve experienced that. I&#8217;ve been—I&#8217;ve had butterflies, uh, regarding, &#8220;Do I want to say these vows or not?&#8221; And in fact, um, I&#8217;ve been told that about a third of all marriage licenses that get taken out end up not getting used. So, like, a lot of people do get cold feet.
Um, whether and what to do in your situation—I would say divine revelation is always a gift. It is, and it is not to be presumed. So I think it&#8217;s fine for you to ask God to give you a sign. And it needs to be a notable sign, not just, &#8220;May the sun come up tomorrow.&#8221; It needs to be something really unexpected. And I would name the sign that you want, because otherwise, you leave anything strange that happens open to, &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s the sign, that’s the sign!&#8221; Um, no. Name it. If you&#8217;re going to ask God for a sign, name the sign, and it needs to be something rare.
Um, so you can ask God for a sign to give you guidance one way or another on this question. But do not expect the sign. God may or may not choose to give it. And God&#8217;s not in the business of giving signs that often. So if it happens, great. But don&#8217;t expect it.
What do you do in the absence of God, um, giving you a sign? Well, you fall back on human reason. He gave you your gift of reason to guide you through this life, and He expects you to use it. So use your reason to look at the situation and say, &#8220;Is this person someone that would be good to be married to for the rest of my life, to hopefully raise a family with?&#8221;
Um, if you see major warning signs now, I would say listen to those warning signs, because people are on their best behavior when they&#8217;re trying to get married. When they start slacking off is after the vows have been said, and they don&#8217;t have to worry about, &#8220;Am I going to catch this person or not?&#8221; You&#8217;ve already been caught at that point. So people are on—it&#8217;s like a job interview. People are on their best behavior when they&#8217;re in the job interview. And so if you see danger signs now, then you should appropriately consider those.
On the other hand, you shouldn&#8217;t expect a perfect marriage where it&#8217;s going to be bliss every minute and you&#8217;re never going to—you&#8217;re never going to have frustrations or get mad at each other or things like that, because that&#8217;s not life. Um, even good marriages have difficulties that the partners have to go through. So don&#8217;t let a few difficulties scare you off. That&#8217;s just part of life. That&#8217;s going to happen whether you get married or not. So don&#8217;t be afraid of difficulties. But if you see major warning signs now, take them seriously.
Use your own intellect. And since your emotions are wrapped up in this, you&#8217;re not necessarily the best judge one way or the other, because your emotions, on the one hand, are pulling you to want to marry this person. But your fears are also pulling you to want to not marry this person. I would—I would talk to people who know you and know your prospective spouse, like maybe your parents or friends or things like that, and say, &#8220;What do you think?&#8221; Swear them to privacy, because you don&#8217;t want to undermine what, uh, you know, what your spouse is thinking. Um, and don&#8217;t go probing into, &#8220;Oh, maybe my fiancé has been having similar conversations.&#8221; Leave those things to the privacy of your fiancé, and keep your own privacy.
But, you know, think about talking to people who know both of you and say, &#8220;I just wanted to get your perspective on this. What do you think?&#8221; without trying to prejudice it one way or another, and get their ideas as well. Because they have—they&#8217;re coming from a position that&#8217;s less emotionally invested, and therefore, um, they may have some additional insights or perspective that you would otherwise miss.
How&#8217;s that for marriage advice, Matt?
Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, great stuff. Um, I appreciate that. I mean, going back to the—the idea of a soulmate, I just have a hard time believing God doesn&#8217;t care who I marry, because He cares what—oh—which occupation you pick. So why wouldn&#8217;t He help you out, or why wouldn&#8217;t He have a preference with a arguably more important decision in marriage?
Who—who says God cares what occupation you pick? You could be a doctor, you could be an engineer, you could be a lawyer, you could flip burgers—you could do any number of things to glorify God by doing work in the world. Now, He may have given you certain talents and opportunities that make it logical for you to pursue a particular career, but that&#8217;s not the only one. You could do lots of things. People change careers throughout their lives.
I kind of compare it to buying bread in the store. You know, there&#8217;s—at least here in America—there&#8217;s a bunch of different kinds of bread, and they all work. And so you&#8217;ve got a choice. It&#8217;s not like God really wants you to pick the Wonder Bread rather than the Oroweat bread, you know? God doesn&#8217;t really care about that. Um, God wants you to have adequate food. But what food you buy is up to you. And so, um, what career you pick to glorify God is up to you. He&#8217;s got a bunch of options for you.
Similarly, who you marry and who you glorify God by being married to—that&#8217;s up to you. He&#8217;s got a bunch of options that are just fine. And so, just like there&#8217;s not one person you&#8217;ve got to marry, or one career you&#8217;ve got to identify, or one job you&#8217;ve got to get, or one loaf of bread above all other loaves of bread that you&#8217;ve got to buy—it just doesn&#8217;t work that way. God gives us options, and we glorify Him by using our free will among those options.
With that, the, uh, Jimmy Marriage Advice Line will shut down right there. So, thank you so much for your call. Uh, we&#8217;re going to go to our break, and when we come back, we&#8217;ll continue more with &#8220;Ask Me Anything with Jimmy Akin.&#8221;
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“Did I Choose the Wrong Wife?”

<div>My sister’s son—my nephew—had surgery three years ago and identifies as a “transgender woman.” He’s now thirty-two. They’ll be attending another relative’s wedding soon. Should I go to that wedding, since my nephew will be present as “a woman”? Also, I don’t want my grandchildren exposed to this yet. They’re ages eleven, nine, and seven. Thankfully, they are not invited to the wedding, but what about summer? We each have cottages on the same lake. </div><div>In attending this wedding and interacting with your sister and your nephew at the event, you’re not promoting your nephew’s transgender identity. If he were attempting “marriage,” or was having a “coming out” party as “Audrey,” participating in such an event would be morally problematic, because you’d be at least condoning his actions by your participation. 
But that’s not the case. 
Instead, your nephew is going to be one of many guests at another relative’s authentic wedding. 
Boycotting the wedding because of your nephew’s presence would not be a good witness to the couple getting married, or to your nephew and sister. Nor would attending the wedding and shunning both your nephew and your sister. 
Your sister and nephew shouldn’t be shunned, as you correctly have concluded. Our true and ultimate enemies are fallen angels, not mere human beings (see Eph. 6:12). Your nephew is a human person made in God’s image and likeness (Gen. 1:26–27), and so deserves to be loved, as Jesus witnessed in dying on the cross for everyone. Your nephew and your sister are candidates for conversion—and we are all in need of God’s mercy for one reason or another. 
In that light, I’d continue the course you’ve taken. Continue to love your sister and nephew, which you understand necessarily entails <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/the-churchs-position-on-transgenderism-0">not supporting them</a> re: his transgender identity. That gives you a lot of room to talk, and hug, and otherwise convey your love, as he and his mother (your sister) need people like you in their lives. 
Regarding exposing your younger grandchildren to your nephew, that is a prudential matter, and one for which you can provide input to their parents. 
With the permission and cooperation of your grandchildren’s parents, you could help explain to your grandchildren that your nephew is confused, struggling with his identity, and needs to be authentically loved. 
In that regard, if your grandchildren do have interactions with your nephew, I’d monitor the situation with their parents, speaking with your grandchildren afterwards about such interactions, so that your nephew doesn’t try to coerce them into a misguided sympathy about his transgender identity, or at least doesn’t succeed in doing so. I don’t want to presume bad will by your nephew in this regard, but it’s also important not to be naïve. 
In summary, for your direct part, I would encourage you and your spouse to maintain good communication with your sister and your nephew, because, again, they need faithful Catholics like you in their lives, as they might not experience the gospel truth in word and deed from anyone else. 
</div>

How to Love Trans Relatives

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up.”
How is Advent different from Lent? On the surface, we might point to things like violet vestments and no flowers, interrupted by a single Sunday of rose; a dropping of the Gloria in Excelsis in Advent as well as the Alleluia in Lent. Both are seasons of waiting. In Lent we prepare for the feast of the Resurrection, the central fact and foundation of our faith, so the penitence and fasting and discipline are focused on preparing our hearts to understand and experience the mighty acts of redemption that we walk through ritually in the Sacred Triduum. In Advent, obviously, we’re preparing for the great feast of the Nativity. And the readings, especially in these early weeks, present a similarly sobering assortment of reminders that we do not know the span of our life, or of history.
With Lent and Easter, I think, this penitential emphasis makes sense to us because we know that the climax isn’t just the Resurrection, but also the cross. Easter is a reminder of God’s victory on our behalf, and the penitence of Lent helps us confront the horror of Good Friday and all the ways that we need that divine victory over sin and death. That is the basic sense of Easter. Despite the best attempts of the market, Easter has never been commercialized quite as successfully as Christmas, because it is hard to make a generic secular message out of the theme of Christ trampling down death with death and bringing life to those in the grave.
With Christmas, though, there’s a baby, and a birth, which seems so much more normal and innocuous. And so over the years it has morphed into that generic celebration of life and family and consumerism that we all know and love. But none of this makes a whole lot of sense with the message of Advent and Christmas as the Church actually presents it. Somehow, if we’re to take the texts seriously, Christmas is about joy, yes, and comfort—but also judgment, the Day of the Lord, the end of the world. It is about the dissolution, as St. Peter writes, of the world in fire and loud noise.
Being a child of the ’80s, and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/celibacy-and-the-priesthood">a parent of small children</a>, I’m fond of the classic Mr. Rogers song: “I think it&#8217;s very, very, very hard to wait / Especially when you&#8217;re waiting / For something very nice.” On a practical level, that obviously applies to Christmas. Usually around this time in Advent we start getting presents in the mail from extended family. They’re wrapped. They’re visible. But they must not yet be opened. That’s hard. And so usually we just hide them, because small children are not actually very good at waiting. And I think as well of the countless people who just cannot wait to put up their Christmas decorations—whether it’s at the stroke of midnight after Halloween, or Thanksgiving, or December 1—or any number of other dates. Certainly, in these times of international anxiety and deep social division, I understand the longing for Christmas cheer. But what are we actually celebrating?
Is Christmas “something very nice,” in the words of Mister Rogers? Well, yes and no. It’s the appearance, in the flesh, of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is cause for joy, as the angelic hosts proclaim. But it is also cause for fear and trembling, as the angelic hosts also proclaim. For a baby, like the Lord, comes in the night as a thief. And his arrival is a cause for terror as much as joy.
In a way, I think every parent knows this. I have six children, and at the birth of each one, I burst into tears. I really have no idea why. It’s not as though I was the one doing the real work. It just happened. Yes, they were happy tears. But they were also tears of fear and sadness, and confusion, and just being overwhelmed by the gravity of life and death and everything.
Like any other birth, the birth of the incarnate God is a judgment on us. It’s not a simple gift of cupcakes and flowers. It is the embrace of a hard, demanding love, a love that goes beyond death. And so Advent is not just waiting, as in waiting to open our presents; it’s waiting so that we can be ready to receive the challenge that is the God incarnate, the challenge that is God entering our lives and giving us the grace to do his will.
Returning to our epistle reading in 2 Peter, the idea of the elements melting and being dissolved in fire is a favorite prooftext of a certain Protestant contempt for creation that was once, at least, quite common in the evangelical world—the idea that it doesn’t matter what we do with this world, because it’s all going to burn. But such an emphasis neglects the actual climax of the passage, which echoes that of Revelation: according to Peter, “we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” For Peter, as for John in Revelation, it is exactly because this world is passing away that we must take it seriously.
This world isn’t a trial run. It’s not a beta test. We get to do it only once. It is the real preparation of the world to come, and this preparation has an end point that we do not know. And so this waiting isn’t just a test of patience and resolve; it’s a process of transformation, in which we open ourselves, over the course of the Christian year, over the course of a lifetime of Advents, to the life of the new kingdom that Christ brings. We receive the gift of Christ anew each Christmas because, unlike most human gifts, he is the gift that not only keeps giving, but keeps taking. He doesn’t just want you and me from that magical Christmas when you were seven; he wants you and me this Christmas, next Christmas, every day, every hour. We are human beings, not boxes of fudge, and to give ourselves in love for real involves fidelity over time. The sacraments aren’t financial transactions; they are food that nourishes us to grow.
As John the Baptist calls us over the next couple of weeks to new repentance, to a preparation for the Lord’s coming, God help us to heed his warnings and forsake our sins, to “cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light,” judging ourselves as we will one day be judged, so that when the Lord does come—whether at Christmas, or at the end of the world, or even today at this altar—he will find us, as one old prayer says, a mansion prepared for himself. Amen.

The Christmas Gift that Keeps on Taking

One of the banes of modern liturgies is worship songs that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-problem-with-bad-church-music">fail to reflect</a> the beauty and truth of the Faith. In the worst cases, these songs undermine the Faith through dubious if not downright heretical lyrics. The U.S. bishops even have <a href="https://www.usccb.org/resources/Catholic%20Hymnody%20at%20the%20Service%20of%20the%20Church_0.pdf">a document</a> on the subject, “Catholic Hymnody at the Service of the Church: An Aid for Evaluating Hymn Lyrics.”
<h2>All Are Welcome</h2>
One hymn that serves as an excellent case study in applying the document’s message would be “All Are Welcome” by Marty Haugen, which was at one point <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/260195/diocese-bans-all-are-welcome-other-hymns-from-catholic-masses">banned in some dioceses</a>.
Whenever you say “All Are Welcome” is a bad hymn, you get accused of being . . . well, not welcoming. But this song makes it sound as though we are trying to recruit people into our club to boost membership, not call people to repentance to receive the holy sacrifice of the Eucharist. Here are some of the lyrics:
Let us build a house
Where love can dwell 
And all can safely live 
A place where 
Saints and children tell 
How hearts learn to forgive
Built of hopes and dreams and visions 
Rock of faith and vault of grace 
Here the love of Christ shall end divisions
The hymn keeps repeating the phrase “let us build a house,” which makes it sound as if we sinners create the Church instead of the Church creating us. The USCCB doctrinal committee agrees with this and calls the hymn objectionable on ecclesiological grounds.
It also makes it sound as though God died on the cross, and now it’s up to us to grow the Church, so we need to make sure everyone feels “welcome”—which, for some people who love this song, means not sharing any teachings on things <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-truth-about-sex">like sexuality</a> that could remind them of sins they must reject because then they might feel unwelcome.
<h2>Bad Hymns and the Eucharist</h2>
But the hymn gets even worse when we get to how it describes the Eucharist, the source and summit of our faith:
Let us build a house where love is found 
In water, wine and wheat 
A banquet hall on holy ground 
Where peace and justice meet
The USCCB says, “Someone who sings this song frequently would have a hard time imagining that the Eucharist can be and is worshiped or is in any sense a ‘sacrifice.’” Instead, the song, like many bad hymns, treats the Eucharist as a common meal whose purpose is to gather us into one place, from which we will then go out and do works of social justice or something.
In fact, the most common reason a hymn is theologically bad is because it pushes a false view of the Eucharist. The USCCB doctrinal committee gives three principles to keep hymns from pushing eucharistic heresy:
<ol>
<li>
<blockquote>Language that implies that the elements are still bread and wine after consecration should be avoided.</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>Language that implies the bread and wine, still bread and wine, are merely symbols of another reality or person should be avoided.</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>Poetic license should conform to customary usage of Scripture and liturgical Tradition. “Bread,” “Bread of Life,” etc. are scriptural synecdoches for the Eucharist itself, and so are permitted.</blockquote>
</li>
</ol>
A synecdoche is a figure of speech that uses a part to refer to the whole. For example, if a military officer says, “We have fifty boots on the ground for the mission,” he means there are fifty soldiers for the mission with the boots representing the whole soldier. Likewise, a hymn can in some cases use the word “bread” to refer to the entire reality of the Eucharist, which has only the appearance of bread. However, as the USCCB goes on to say,
<blockquote>“wine” is not used in the same way, and to call the consecrated element “wine” gives the impression that it is still wine. This, in turn, has an impact on the way the word “bread” is heard, so that legitimate uses of the word “bread” are heard differently, not as a synecdoche for the Eucharist as a whole, but as a reference to the element which remains bread. Scripture speaks of the “cup,” not of “wine” (see 1 Cor. 10.16-17).</blockquote>
A few hymns that commit this error include “God Is Here!”, which says, “Here as bread and wine are taken, Christ sustains us as of old,” and “Three Days,” which says, “The dead do not arise, yet he walks among us, and with our own eyes, we’ve seen him at this table, we’ve shared his bread and wine.”
<h2>All Are Welcome, All About Us</h2>
The other common trait in most of these songs is that they are all about us. We are singing about how good we are, how God uses us, or what we want God to do for us, instead of just singing the praises of the Almighty God. “All Are Welcome” puts the emphasis on those of us attending church. This is especially prominent in Haugen’s other well-known hymn, “Gather Us In”:
We are the young, our lives are a mystery 
We are the old who yearn for your face 
We have been sung throughout all of history 
Called to be light to the whole human race
I spend the whole week hearing about the young and the old and all the people of this life who think they’re so important. Is it too much to ask that for one hour a week, I just sing about the greatness of the God, whom our society almost never talks about?
Many bad hymns are essentially humanist tracts dressed up in God language. Their message is that God should just help us be nice to one another and not upset anyone, especially with religious talk.
<h2>Ugly Art Hurts the Faith</h2>
In a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkgDoQtRCIA">previous episode</a> on my channel on why <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-death-of-liberal-catholicism">liberals love ugly art</a>, I said it is because ugly art turns us inward to glorify human traits, like subverting expectations, whereas truly beautiful art lifts us up to the divine. The same is true of banal, ugly music: it keeps us focused on ourselves instead of lifting us up to the divine. That’s why the Second Vatican Council said, “The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 116).
Ironically, worship songs that focus on glorifying God and exhibit the objective traits of beautiful music will be appealing to all people . . . and let them know, as human beings hardwired to pursue the true, the good, and the beautiful, that “all are welcome” in this sacred space.