When Louis Martin and Zélie Guérin, devout Catholics both, got married in 1858, they didn’t have sex. Nope. Not for 10 long months, until Zélie (God bless her) dragged her new husband to an old priest who straightened him out on the church’s view on holy sex and the sanctity of procreation. Good thing. Zélie bore nine children, five of whom joined religious orders. The youngest, Thérèse, became known as the “Little Flower,” and you likely know the rest…
Well, her parents were beatified yesterday (the last step before canonization) in the basilica of Lisieux, in France. Father Jim Martin, an editor at America magazine and a prolific author whose book, “My Life With the Saints” is a must read, has the whole story of this holy couple, via The Wall Street Journal article, “His Wife’s a Saint, So Is Her Husband”…
The Lisieux ceremony follows the Vatican’s approval, in July, of the required miracle — the healing of a man with a malformation of the lung. But the beatification raises questions about the models of life being presented to Catholics. What can a man and woman who planned to live celibately say to married couples today?
Read Previous Post
