Well, love is...

The qualities that I look for in a loving, committed, relationship are patience and loyalty. Both of these qualities are important to having a great love; patience because sometimes love can turn passionate. By having patience, each person is able to keep a cool head and work past the issue and move on. Loyalty is also important because  you can love someone but if there is a conflict, sometimes the one person will leave and give the love to someone else. With loyalty, you can trust that the person will be there no matter what. I see love in music in several different ways. One way is through almost every Taylor Swift song, because she writes a lot of songs about her love life. These songs range from 1st love to being in a relationship to the break up and after. Another way is through songs by people like Justin Bieber or Usher. They sometimes talk about physical  love with a spouse or girlfriend or romantic love. Music is a way that people express their different views and feelings in a way that doesn't mean direct confrontation. The view on soul mates is a little weird.  I do believe that the person you marry should be the one you spend the rest of your life with. But, the 1st person you marry may not be the one you are meant to be with. For example, if a couple gets married, but then one of them dies and the living one remarries and is happier, that means she has found her soul mate. Not that she didn't love the other spouse, but this is the one she is meant to be with. There is no universal "Mr. Perfect,"it is different for everyone.

What Marriage Looks Like Now.

I think that we have a domestic church in our lives whether we want to or not. The concept of a domestic church is where one develops a sense of love and a sense of community. Personally, my domestic church has been very loving and nurturing. It includes my parents, my sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and many more. As we have gotten older, our domestic church's have developed and expanded to include different people, depending on their relationship to us. I think that having a united family, and domestic church, creates a good base for a child to grow up in, but it is not the only way. I have known people who have come from divorced homes who still have a great family base or domestic church. I think it really depends on the people and the situation that is occurring. All that really matters is that there is love present.

Marriage Before and After Vatican 2

Vatican 2 changed a lot for the Catholic Church. Times have changed, however, and now their are some differences between what marriage was in Vatican 2 and what it is now. Here are four example: number one is that Vatican 2 calls marriage "a vocation." While this is true for some people, but for many people marriage is something that happens, not something that we have been destined for our entire lives. Difference number two is that the church says that marriage, or conjugal, love is never fleeting. As we learned in class, we live in a 'hook-up' culture so sometimes marriage does not always last, hence the high divorce rate. A lot of times people fall out of love just as easily as they fall into love.  Difference number three, though not specifically stated, is the view on Same-Sex Marriage. 50 years ago, same-sex marriage was not even a suggestion, so it was not discussed. Vatican 2 does say, several times, that marriage is between a man and a woman. It can be inferred that the makers of Vatican 2 would not support same-sex marriage. The forth and final difference is that Vatican 2 says that marriage is a necessary part of the church, like any other vocation, but not all forms of marriage are allowed. This is a nicer way of saying that they only support heterosexual marriages. Vatican 2 helped move the Church forward, but there is room for more change. 

Response on Dating

        I can understand where they are coming from when they say that more dating can lead to divorce. Younger people often don't want a super serious relationship, so the "hook-up" culture seems more appealing. This, however, causes  more issues than anything else. By hooking up, people don't make the needed connections and that leads to a bad relationship or no relationship at all. This can cause issues later in life, but it doesn't mean that people who hook-up when they are young will have a hard time making a commitment when they are older. People mature as they get older, and more often then not, get over the whole "hooking-up" thing. They then become involved in serious committed relationships
         Hooking-up can be defined as many different things. It can mean kissing, touching or a combination of the both. It really depends on the situation that the two people are in. It is commonly thought that when people say 'I hooked up with him' it is thought that the two people had sex. While it is not always true, it is what most people think. This perception is very heavily influenced by popular culture. Many TV shows portray "hooking-up" as sex, so that is naturally what we think of when we hear 'She hooked up with him!' No matter what culture says, "hooking-up" is dependent upon what the situation is.