Pre-marriage time during which a couple in love intercourse to get to know each other and prepare. Courtship is a natural way to develop emotionally and socially the relationship that leads to a lifelong marriage commitment. It is a duty of prudence in the Christian conception of marriage. That is why the Church always discouraged an improvised marriage, of convenience or “by proxy”, if there had not previously been sufficient human and spiritual preparation. For the young Christian, courtship is not a mere affective, natural and gratifying satisfaction, but a time of reflection and interpersonal rapprochement. (See Marriage. Preparation)
Pedro Chico González, Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy, Editorial Bruño, Lima, Peru 2006
Source: Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy
Friendship between a man and a woman is called courtship when it tends towards discernment about true love and preparation for marriage. This friendship commits the whole of existence, and matures into a mutual knowledge as complementary beings, according to God’s plans for a faithful and fruitful married life. It is an itinerary that affects the whole person, according to God’s project of life, to know and belong to each other in an oblative and definitive way in marriage. Dating seeks to realize true love by doing good to the loved one, without closing in on oneself.
During the courtship period, not only does friendship mature, but a true premarital formation is carried out or should be carried out, with the proper catechesis that covers the various human levels (personal, community, work, economic), spiritual, doctrinal (state of life, sacrament, canonical norms), apostolic (relationship with society and the Church).
This formation includes, as is logical, the immediate preparation for the liturgical sacramental rite (to live it consciously and according to the canonical norms), as well as the knowledge of everything that marital life entails (unity, fidelity, fecundity…), in its reality. sociologically and especially in its sacramental reality, as a sign of Christ present.
Courtship is a time of grace and a spiritual path, in the light of the Word of God, open to all family, social and ecclesial duties. It can be called a “catechumenal journey” in the light of baptism, as a “solid spiritual and catechetical formation, which knows how to show a true vocation and mission in marriage” (FC 66). The interpersonal relationship tends to the total and permanent donation in the state of married life, when the commitment of this stable delivery has already been assumed.
True love, as true friendship, involves receiving each other according to God’s plans, respecting the mystery of the other in all its integral reality. The other is loved from the love of Christ. “Engaged couples are called to live chastity in coexistence. In this trial they must see a discovery of mutual respect, an apprenticeship in fidelity and the hope of receiving each other from God” (CCC 2350). This love is school and source of apostolate, and guarantees to the family that is going to be created, the capacity to be evangelized and evangelizing, in relation to the ecclesial community.
References Friendship, charity (love), chastity, catechesis, family, marriage, woman (man and woman), sexuality.
Reading of GS 47-50 documents; HR 65-66; CEC 2350.
Bibliography AA.VV., New premarital pastoral (Madrid, PS, 1987); L. BARANDIARAN, Courtship, route to God (Madrid, Soc. Ed. Atenas, 1968); JM CABODEVILLA, Man and woman. Study on marriage and human love ((Madrid, Catholic Edition, 1960); FF DANTEC, Christian Courtship (Bilbao, Messenger, 1968); C. MORDREL, R. BENJAMIN, Courtship and marriage (Madrid, Marova, 1968) , M. VIGIL, Premarital Pastoral Plan (Santander, Sal Terrae, 1988).
(ESQUERDA BIFET, Juan, Dictionary of Evangelization, BAC, Madrid, 1998)
Source: Dictionary of Evangelization
Courtship is understood as the period of time in which a young man and a young woman begin a love relationship, which gradually leads them to mature between them the will to belong to each other in a total, exclusive and definitive way in marriage.
From the Christian point of view, this knowledge and gradual will to belong to each other is a sign of grace: the love that is born and grows between the couple is an instrument with which the Holy Spirit transforms their union into that spousal unity in the image of love. of Christ and of the Church to which the sacrament of marriage will give full effect. This condition of life is characterized by a particular spirituality, the spirituality of courtship, understood as an itinerary of faith towards the sacrament and towards the Christian life of the couple.
In recent times courtship has undergone profound transformations compared to the past, even the term is disappearing. It is not just an evolution of language, but a change of customs.
The new expressions (“I have a boy/girl”, “I go out with a boy/girl”, “I go with one”) seem to ignore the relationship with society and the orientation towards the future, to underline, on the contrary, the dimension of interpersonality freely chosen and intensely lived in the present. The Church has always been sensitive to the problem of preparing young people for marriage. Its action, which has gone through successive stages and has taken various forms over time, received a decisive boost in Vatican II, where the conjugal state is considered a vocation and courtship as the first moment of this state of life. (LG 11; 35; 41; GS 48; 49: 52). The encyclical Familiaris consortio, by John Paul II (1981), points out in the fourth part that preparation for marriage (remote, close, immediate) encompasses the entire life that precedes marriage and must be developed in a community context. The entire ecclesial community is invited to approach and act with the young people who are preparing to say “yes” to God’s call, which arises spontaneously from nature and asks to be enlightened by the Word revealed in Christ.
This vision of love in the light of the Word and the life of Christ allows us to enter into a deeper and more complete understanding of love. In this way, the couple find in the Word of God a key to reading what is happening in them and they find clear indications about the path they have to travel.
The Word of God engenders first of all confidence in love. If God is love and man is made in his image, the more intensely men and women live the experience of love, the more they fulfill their vocation.
The Word of God also makes us recognize true love, understood not as a closedness of the person in his loving emotion, but as an openness to the offering relationship of a couple. But even more, it reveals true love, freeing the couple from the illusion of self-sufficiency that excludes any other relationship. Every human relationship, including the conjugal one, can be true, that is, bearer of life, if it is lived in relationship with God and in communion of life with the brothers. All this includes the acquisition of the virtues that regulate the various aspects of life. Here the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance) are of paramount importance, insofar as they serve and dispose for love.
The time of courtship thus becomes an active time in which one’s own life is totally revised and modified to make it all a living instrument of love.
It would be useless to feel, enjoy, desire the emotion of love, if later it is not oriented towards the loved one. Love carries in itself a great force of renewal, since it asks to “achieve complete unity with the loved one” (which supposes a work of eliminating everything that prevents achieving that unity), and “to do good to the loved one” ( which encourages one to eliminate from oneself everything that can disappoint or embitter the other and to build in oneself what the other expects of us). But like any other natural human force, this impulse to change also needs to move away from the unstable ground of spontaneity and has to be assumed in the commitment and responsibility of the couple to open up to the social and ecclesial dimension, The itinerary of the couple it is then revealed as a path that affects all aspects of the person and forces him to become aware of what he is not yet; and it also induces her to transform herself according to the demands of love and of the life project that God has placed in the experience of love.
In this time of commitment and grace it is possible to find events that make it difficult or hinder the path of the couple: among these events we must mention the meaning of sexuality in courtship and in particular the problem of the physical gesture of the sexual encounter. The answer to this problem is suggested by becoming aware of the realities contained in the very gesture of genital sexuality. Analyzing this gesture, it is verified that it carries in itself -in his way- a triple capacity: it generates pleasure, it unites and it procreates.
It is then understood how the gesture of physical intimacy acquires its human meaning and its full truth, and also, therefore, its moral goodness, when it is carried out in a context of life stabilized in love, that is, when love has converted into a “state of life” goes that only then is it possible to realize all the meanings contained in the gesture of genital sexuality.
G. Cappelli
Bibl.: G. Muraro, Courtship, in NDTM, 1239-1250; M. Vidal – J Kohne, Premarital sexuality, Follow me, Salamanca 1974; M. Vidal, Morality and premarital sexuality, PS. Madrid 1987; AA, VV.. New premarital ministry PS. Madrid 1981. J M. Vigil, Premarital Pastoral Plan, Sal Terrae, Santander 1988.
PACOMIO, Luciano, Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary, Divine Word, Navarra, 1995
Source: Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary
MORAL THEOLOGY
SUMMARY
I. The term and the current situation:
1. An evolving fact;
2. At the origins of change;
3. The different attitude towards change;
4. Help intervention.
II. Courtship in the people of God:
1. A person-centered action;
2. In light of the word of God:
a) Trust in love,
b) Efficiency of love,
c) Transcendence of love,
d) From the heart of stone to the heart of flesh;
3. The life itinerary:
a) In communion of life with God and with the brothers,
b) Formation of the cardinal virtues,
c) Knowledge of oneself in relation.
III. courtship problems:
1. The meaning of sexuality in courtship
2. The community dimension of love;
3. Lack of faith.
I. The term and the current situation
Courtship is a time of life in which a young man and a young woman initiate a love relationship that presents the characteristics of totality, exclusivity and projection. An event that deeply affects the person, making him feel and be in a new way with respect to himself, the other party and others (family, society, ecclesial community). It corresponds to morality to identify the values existing in this experience and…