Adultery, Take Two!

I've been thinking more about my friend and her quest to sleep with our engaged coworker. At first I thought my discomfort was coming from the fact that I wasn't encouraging her to follow a better path, but that's not quite it (in case you haven't guessed, introspection is not my strong suit). However, my discomfort does involve my religion...just in a different way.

Before I said that I was afraid that my lack of outright objection was being read as approval, or at least acceptance of her plan. I feel like the kid on the playground who's watching another kid get bullied, but just stands there instead of going over and saying, "Knock it off!"

But what if I do tell her to knock it off? When she says, "Why?" what do I have left to say?

Because I think it's wrong?

And she'll just say, "Your religion thinks it's wrong. And I'm not Catholic."

Being religious puts you in a position of having people think that your only beliefs are your religious beliefs. They think that you don't have any moral codes and ideas of good and evil other than what your church teaches you.

In this case I think that most people, whether Catholic, Jewish, Pagan, Atheist, or something else, would think it's pretty uncool to be horning in (ahem) on someone else's fiance.

But it's pretty hard to have an ethics-centered-but-religion-free discussion when the person you're conversing with assumes your every thought is based on your faith. Or maybe I'm still too much that kid who's afraid to stand up to the bully.

I still want to persuade her not to go through with it. I keep framing it in ways she'll accept ("Karma's gonna be a bitch on this one!") and pointing out the practical problems ("So what if he sleeps with you, falls for you, breaks off his engagement, and you're not interested. How awkward would that be? And you work together! Good luck with that!"). It's really a bad idea for everyone concerned.

The nice thing about being Catholic is that although it is tough to talk ethics in public, you can still pray about it in private. I just want everyone to come out of this okay.

Adultery, anyone?

Today I ran into the type of situation I struggle with often. A friend of mine was telling me, excitedly and happily, about something she was about to do. Something that I find pretty immoral.

In this case she was plotting about how to seduce a guy we work with. The guy’s engaged. And as she was plotting and scheming about how to get him I kept thinking, I don’t even want to be hearing this.

Now, I do realize that part of my squeamishness was due to the fact that, as someone who’s been engaged, I can sympathize more with the engaged girl than with my friend in this situation. If a girl tried to seduce Mike, I’d kick their ass. But someone pointed out that my friend wasn’t doing anything wrong, really, because she wasn’t the one who was engaged. If anything happened, the guy would be more at fault since he’s the one that would be breaking the engagement. And someone else pointed out that if it was a strong relationship that was meant to be, it would survive my friend’s flirting. But still! It’s the principle, dammit. Off the market means off the market.

The other part that made me squeamish was knowing that it was going against my religion. I mean, come on, while it’s not quite adultery it’s certainly close enough. And while I know that my friend and I don’t share my religion and I can’t really hold her accountable to my belief system, I was afraid that my silent listening was giving her the impression that I agreed with her plan of action. I was afraid that every time I said, “That’s interesting,” or, “He really is cute,” it came across not as noncommittal but as encouraging.

That’s my main problem. I certainly don’t want to encourage her, but at the same time I feel like I can’t really lecture her either. I can’t tell her, “Oh come on, you know that’s wrong,” because she doesn’t believe it’s wrong. Maybe I should be more like those fire-and-brimstone Christians and tell her that she’ll experience the eternal inferno not only for her premarital sex, but also for luring someone into adultery. But I’ve never gotten good results that way. Normally in situations like this I can be noncommittal enough that after a while spent trying to convince me of the validity of their plan, the person gets sheepish and says something like, “You think this is a bad idea, huh?” I’ve always had better results teaching people by example by trying to follow my own morals, rather than hitting them over the head with my belief system.

For some reason, this time is different.

So after awhile I tried to frame things in a way she’d understand. I asked if she’d really be able to trust in a relationship with a guy who had cheated on his fiancé with her. I wondered aloud what sort of karmic repercussions someone could experience in a situation like this. I left my own religion and my own beliefs out of it.

Should I have tried to lead her away from sin? Should I have convinced her to turn the situation around? Am I a bad Catholic for not exposing her to my religion? I’m not sure. But I do know that I tried to guide her through this situation the best way that I knew how.

Prison Ministry

I was sitting here trying to remember what the homily was about this week so I could give my impressions of the readings, but man, I just can't remember. I remember it used weddings and marriage as an analogy for his point, but what the point was...I...don't know. Crap. I felt even worse when I realized that the homily I listened to was just yesterday morning. Usually they stick with me longer.

But one thing that did stick with me is that after church next week they'll be talking about a program they're developing for a prison minsitry! Eeee!

Ahem. Perhaps I shouldn't make that noise if I'm really interested in going into prisons.

I used to want to work in the prison system, but now I'm not so sure that I could. After working in the educational system I've found that's difficult enough. Working in the prisons, well, I'm not so sure I'm up to it. But there's a huge difference in being employed by a system 40 hours a week and volunteering in a system one or two hours.

Apparently they aren't recruiting people yet, since it's a fledgling program, but they are having an informational session next Sunday about what they've got so far. And I know that while Mike will absolutely not accompany me into any jails, he will accompany me to this info session because they have donuts.

I'm pretty excited.

Society and Marriage

When Mike and I got married we had to meet with the priest a few times before-hand, and one of the things he told us was that we were about to embark on something that society didn't support. At first I thought that was silly. After all, there was tremendous pressure to get coupled up and weddings are glamorized in all facets of the media. But now I think that what he meant wasn't that society wouldn't support our getting married - it was that society wouldn't support our staying married.

It seems that nowadays everyone loves a quick fix. If something isn't easy and doesn't bring you pleasure every second, it's not worth it. There's the same attitude with relationships. If a relationship isn't bliss and sunshine every moment, maybe it's time to move on to someone else.

The way I see it, that's silly. For one thing, no serious, long-term relationship is like that. Nothing worthwhile is constantly easy...there are always bad days with anything. When I consider how much grief I've gotten from my family and my job and how much reward I've gotten as well, the grief-to-reward ratio of my marriage seems positively amazing. My relationship with Mike is the best thing I've ever worked for.

There's a second reason, though, that I find more disturbing. It feels like in today's society people feel less of an obligation to one another. I think that, as human beings, we have a basic responsibility to one another. A responsibility to look out for one another, to treat each other with a ceratin amount of respect. However, if you've had a relationship with someone, those ties are stronger. It seems like the hype about self-entitlement has eclipsed the ideas of compassion and loyalty.

Yeah. It's not the best environment to support a lasting marriage.

I'm pretty grateful that we have a church that will support us since society apparently won't.

Missed Church

This weekend I didn't go to church. On Sunday we didn't realize they had different Mass times because it was New Year's Eve, so we missed it. And on Monday Mike was sick and I was reluctant to leave him alone.

In the past I used to get a little twinge of guilt every Sunday when I realized that I was missing church, but I brushed it off pretty quickly. Now I can't quite brush it off...I feel oddly grungy, as if I'm wearing yesterday's underwear.

Maybe since I still have off of work this week I'll go to a weekday morning Mass.