On Christian Courtship
Professors Amy and Leon Kass, introducing their book of readings on courtship and marriage, Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar, complain of the lack of “a cultural script whose denouement is marriage.”
This dearth gives another dimension to the failure pointed out by Madeline Gillen in the March 21, 2013 issue of the Irish Rover, when she says: “Noticeably lacking in a Notre Dame undergraduate education—the education of the mind and the heart—is any introduction or exposure to the beauty of the Church’s teachings on sexuality…,” and by Michael Bradley in the August 29, 2012 issue, when he complains of Notre Dame administrators failing to bear witness that “The Church wants every man and woman to experience the joys of living a chaste integrated love.” It is certainly true that the Church’s teachings on sexuality should be more effectively presented here, but effective, even insistent, presentation of the teachings will not be enough. Without the cultural script—without an understanding of chaste courtship as a foundation for Christian marriage—the teachings will be floating in a vacuum.
