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I guess she wouldn't be as saintly if she and her husband had raised their brood and lovingly coached a bunch of kids playing sports and invited them over for hot cocoa.

That's the kind of sanctity I see in married people, extending their love beyond their own family interests, and are a real leaven in society.

I drove past a catholic schoolyard today and saw the kids happily playing and thought they are the future. Ordinary kids who will grow up to raise ordinary families and do ordinary things and not be a drag on society.

Margery of Kemp is credited with writing the first autobiography. She talked her husband into foregoing marital relations and used his money and resources to make pilgrimages, no doubt influenced by tales of sanctity. I got the feeling that she merely wanted to escape from the monotony of her life as it was.

The doctrine of the Catholic faith, as newly emphasized since Vatican II, as I understand it, agrees with you. But the example given does seem to short-shrift such saintliness. Plus, I look at the vocations of the Church. The priest offers the body and blood of Christ. That is an amazing, shocking assertion which is humanly impossible to accept. If marriage is an equal vocation, then, there must be an equally mysterious occurrence. It would seem to me to be when a spouse offers his/her own body to allow the creation of a soul. Even then, the Christian must place the desire for God above the desire for his spouse.

It's not like there isn't a similar temptation for priests. How many priests succeed in making their homilies not about their own personal issues, but about expounding on the scripture? How many substitute personal style for the rubrics; is not their lust for power an equal temptaion to sexual lust? Yet doesn't their joy come from abandonning their own desire and experiencing God working through them?