Mama Mia! is a fun, silly, vibrant movie, but it's ending is a little disturbing. The young protagonist Sophie. whose forthcoming wedding is the central event around which the entire plot turns, decides at the end not to get married so that she and her fiance Sky can instead have adventures while they are still young.
The implication is that marriage and kids, and adventure, are mutually exclusive categories.
Excuse us? We have managed to meld marriage and adventure–and children–quite successfully. Our older two children had circumnavigated the globe by the time they were five. We’ve traveled four continents and lived on three of them. Our children have friends spread across Asia, Africa, Europe and North and South America. .
Our “remember when?” sessions sound exotic to people outside our family: Remember Thea’s sixth birthday in Sparta, Greece, when we bought a cupcake and put a candle on it in the courtyard of the bakery? Remember New Year’s Eve 2000 in Egypt riding through the desert by the pyramids on horseback in pitch blackness? We must’ve been crazy! Remember when Madi got the monks at the Franciscan Monastery in Cairo to let her use their old theater to put on children's plays? Remember when Sophie joined the game of street soccer in Istanbul, the only girl playing, and the boys couldn’t tell her to go away because she didn’t understand Turkish? Our adventures would never have been as fun, or as profound, without children.
There is a scene where Sophie’s fiance Sky says, “It’s my last night of freedom… which is how some might see it, but for me it’s the last night before the greatest adventure of my life.” But when Sophie says she doesn't want to get married, he's all for it. So much for marriage as his greatest adventure.
Like the film character Sophie, more and more people are not getting married. In 2019, there were 16.3 new marriages for every 1,000 women age 15 and over in the United States, down from 17.6 in 2009. Many who do get married are waiting longer, marrying only after getting ahead in life and reaching some preset level of financial and personal achievement However, statistics show that for every year the average age of marriage is delayed, the number of individuals who will never marry also rises.
This notion that marriage should be put off until one achieves something--adventure, financial stability, professional advancement--is not uncommon among many young people. There's even a name for it--the Capstone model.
In the capstone model, marriage is entered into only after getting ahead in life and after reaching some predetermined level of financial and personal achievement. They are rarely celebate, however. Sex before marriage is expected in this model.
And yet, they are lonely. The US census shows that those who have never married report higher rates of loneliness than those who are divorced, widowed, or separated, while married couples report the lowest rates of loneliness. While some opine that activities and strong social networks can alleviate these feelings, other studies find that social actions such as volunteering, attending religious services, or attending clubs, classes, or other organized activities, and frequent contact with family and friends, have very little effect on loneliness compared to being in a marriage.
The figures are even starker when one looks across generations: As the Covid-19 pandemic has waned, sociologists and psychologists speak of an "epidemic" of loneliness.
In his book, The Future of Christian Marriage, Mark Regnerus has shown that for every year in a nation when marriage is delayed, the number of individuals who will never marry also rises.
So why get married in the Church? Why get married at all? In this week's Gospel, Jesus suggests an answer.
Jesus tells the scribe that to get to the Kingdom you must love God with all your might, and love your neighbor as yourself. He pairs these. You can't love God fully without loving your neighbor as yourself.
Marriage is a key to the Kingdom because it gives you someone to love as you love yourself.
Dorothy Day wrote that we all struggle with "the long loneliness," and that the only answer for that loneliness is God. Marriage is our opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus to one another. We are given an opportunity be the agents through which God alleviates our spouse's loneliness. And, if we are fortunate, perhaps they will serve God by alleviating some of our loneliness as well.
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