Marriage, singleness and the Church
Our cultural elites robbed the lower classes of the stabilizing institution of marriage using lies and propaganda.
When I was a teenager - which was only 35 years ago - marriage was widely considered to be the norm in our culture. People generally expected to find a spouse and get married. Cracks had already formed in this foundation, and it would get worse later, but we still held onto the Biblical model of family values in a culture that was already mostly post-Christian. Back in 1990, 67% of adults were married, while only 29% were not. Today, those numbers are 53% and 38%, respectively.
Interestingly, our cultural elites are more likely to get married and stay married, while the lower classes are less likely to follow that path. The cultural elites who preached the virtues of a lifestyle "liberated" from the "patriarchal" institution of marriage nonetheless continued to get married while the lower classes who listened to this claptrap fell into a cycle of generational poverty. They were robbed of the stabilizing institution of marriage by lies and propaganda.
But this is not what God wants for us. The Lord created woman because it was not good for a man to be alone. 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 teaches us that it is better to marry than to burn. Today we have a whole lot of burning because people have abandoned marriage. Interestingly, fornication has actually declined according to statistical data, but has been replaced by something much worse: Rampant use of pornography. The real thing has been replaced with a cheap imitation that actually leads to erectile dysfunction in men.
The abandonment of marriage needs to be reversed, and the Church needs to lead the way. The Church needs to encourage young people to get married, especially encouraging young men to pursue and marry a woman. This benefits society, of course, but also benefits men, who are healthier and wealthier than their single counterparts. The Church has always been counter-cultural, and now is the time to embrace that more than ever.