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Maureen Dowd on an Ideal Husband

Trust Maureen Dowd to tread where many might not go.

Writing her weekly op-ed column in the NY Times, she reflects on who ought to be regarded, or at least seen as, an ideal husband in the light of at least two celebrity divorces / break-ups highlighted this past week. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, coming from her, Dowd turns to an elderly, celibate, Roman Catholic priest for advice.

"Father Pat Connor, a 79-year-old Catholic priest born in Australia and based in Bordentown, N.J., has spent his celibate life — including nine years as a missionary in India — mulling connubial bliss. His decades of marriage counseling led him to distill some “mostly common sense” advice about how to dodge mates who would maul your happiness.

“Hollywood says you can be deeply in love with someone and then your marriage will work,” the twinkly eyed, white-haired priest says. “But you can be deeply in love with someone to whom you cannot be successfully married.”

For 40 years, he has been giving a lecture — “Whom Not to Marry” — to high school seniors, mostly girls because they’re more interested.

“It’s important to do it before they fall seriously in love, because then it will be too late,” he explains. “Infatuation trumps judgment.”

Dowd has a summary of the priest's talk here.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Who is the potential husband looking for then?
the priest describes a cold blooded self serving feminist.

Very few long lasted marriages
could submit to such scrutiny.
Anonymous said…
That is really insulting to single males. There is no one left? That says that every single male is defective.

I wonder when the NYTimes will publish a story about all the sagging, infertile women in their late-30s that played and treated men badly until their beauty waned.

Hey, Maureen, where are all the sexy, intelligent, well-adapted, fertile single women out there?