“San Francisco is one big singles bar” someone told me a few years ago. Young adults migrate to the cities for tech jobs and other thrilling employment; they find lots to keep them excited in cities; the years go by and they remain single.
I moved to San Francisco after college in 1983 and found it very exciting, even for a daily-Mass-going, daily-rosary-praying, pro-life activist college graduate. My little brother and I arrived with one small suitcase each; both of us found girlfriends, but neither of us married them. When he did marry, my brother moved to a sensibly small town, and when I married it was to the Church as a Roman Catholic priest in a sensibly suburban diocese. And yet I missed the city, and eventually the city missed me: the archbishop gave me an assignment in the city.
When I returned to the Big Singles Bar on the Bay eight years ago, the Archbishop gave me a task: establish a Catholic Young Adults group. I did so, and Star of the Sea has one of the city’s most successful Catholic singles apostolates. When our young adults marry (24 of them have done so over the last 18 months), they drop out of the Young Adults Group and most leave the city. I greatly miss them, but I am happy that they have found love. Mission accomplished.
But many young adults do not find love. They spend years, perhaps the rest of their lives, searching for love and suffering disappointment. Certainly those who marry will also suffer disappointment, but at least they have found love in sacramental matrimony. Matrimony, by the way, means “mother-hood” or “baby making” from the Latin mater. Although marriage is not perfect, it will save the spouses if they remain open to what matrimony was designed to do; that is, to bear children and educate them for heaven.
Matrimony is a good thing in itself, even if no marriage is perfect. The Sacrament of Matrimony works well enough, however, like a car that doesn’t run perfectly but gets you where you need to go, or like a job that annoys at times but pays the bills and contributes some good to society. Marriage is like any friendship that has points of irritation but is better, in the end, than no friendship.
Full story at frilloblog.com.
Keep in touch with them. They are going to need you.
I’ll take #52 to go.
An excellent choice !
Glad that many young Catholics are having success at finding a good marriage partner. But going to bars?? Not a good thing. When I was young, good Catholic girls and women would never go near a bar– a place of degradation and immoral behaviors. Bars were for men– not the best men, either. Good Catholic married men did not stop at a bar with their pals, on their way home from work– and (worst case scenario) arrive home to their wife and children, tipsy, pockets emptied of family money– with (OMG!) lipstick on their collars…tragic! Long ago, San Francisco was full of immorality! When the immoral hippie era started, and bars became popular for both college-age boys and girls– I recall a worried Irish-Catholic mother of six, at our church, telling one of her daughters, “don’t go to a bar with your friends. You will never meet a good Catholic young man, proper for romance, love and marriage– in some crummy bar, with lots of drinking, sleazy men, and wayward behavior.”
I totally agreed with her! You will most likely find your future spouse at church, or in another nice place– not in a bar. San Francisco is “Sin City By the Bay,” as a young priest (now deceased) in my home parish used to call it, many long decades ago.
Have to respectfully disagree. I don’t live in SF or anywhere near it, and think southern and rural California would be better off as a separate state. So the local specifics may be different, but the place pictured looks more like a ‘pub’ than a mid-20th-century ‘bar’. I notice they serve food. There’s a difference – brewpubs and other pubs in the British Isles tradition are informal, family-friendly community hangouts that typically serve OK to good food, and more beer than hard liquor (if they serve hard liquor at all). Can they be abused? Sure – what can’t be? But most church halls aren’t open every day and every evening, and don’t have a menu. So, if you’re going to spend time there in conversation, with a meal and a good beer, a church really isn’t an option, whereas a pub is.
Singles bars in my day were meat markets-just a place looking for one night stands.
In the midwest post WWII my parents used to go to bars on their dates because it was cheap (mom didn’t drink.)
American college kids who go to bars are famous for immoral behaviors. Sometimes, there is violence — and murders– at bars. patronized by college kids. You do not want your kids going to bars. Young people should look for a good potential, wholesome Catholic spouse in a nice church-related activity, or other wholesome activities. And both young people should be devoted, practicing Catholics with good character, good morals. No drinking, carousing, womanizing, hook-ups, dope, nor other illegal or immoral activities. Marriage and Family are very serious– especially for Catholics. In the U.K. and Europe, they have their pubs, many are family-friendly, as you described. But there are also some serious problems with alcoholism, and immoral behaviors. It sounds like the pubs patronized by these young people at Star of the Sea, are decent places, more like a “bar and grill,” with a full dinner nenu, that is family-friendly. Not a sleazy place of immorality, or possible violent crime, with guns. Hopefully, young women are safe there, in a decent church group.
The pubs of the U.K., Ireland, and Europe, are not like American bars. These pubs serve only beer/ale drinks– not hard liquor and cocktails. You can order a soft drink if you like, there is no pressure to drink. Getting drunk, and getting into trouble, womanizing, sex “hook-ups,” etc., is not the goal of the pub-goers. They go to pubs primarily to socialize with friends. However– one has to always be careful, with alcohol.
My point was that many pubs in the US, particularly brewpubs that serve food, are more like the British traditional pub than like the places you describe as bars. This isn’t scientific or based on survey data, just my own observations and experience. Our local cheese club meets at a well-known microbrewery / brewpub, and the atmosphere is family- and dog-friendly, not the least bit sleazy. Good advice for anyone – if a place is off-putting, don’t patronize it. But do support your hard-working local brewers, reviving a craft that was almost crushed during Prohibition. (no I’m not a brewer myself, I just appreciate their work)
I am confused. I think the world has gone nuts.
My church doesn’t offer anything for young adults. But ther’re plenty of things for the Boomers.
Start something. Our young adult group meets to do fun things and also convo at coffee houses.
Looking at the picture, I think to
myself: “It’s great to be young.”
Thinking further, I also think:
“it’s great to be OLD.”
(if you survive youth)
Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country, is doing an overhaul of its criminal justice system. One thing that will soon become law, is jail time for those committing premarital sex– or, sex outside marriage. Indonesia is smart to uphold Marriage, and punish immorality! Maybe jail time is a little too stiff, for punishnent of sex outside of Marriage Vows? Hopefully, this Asian country will keep the evils and filth of our fallen Western Civilization as far away as possible. Christian countries such as ours, need to get smart, about punishing evils and protecting Christian Marriage and Family beliefs and values.