Marriage is a sacrament and is holy even for those who cannot conceive.

You seem to assume that sex is de facto bad and must be "excused" by procreation. This is NOT what the Catholic Church teaches. Period.

And actually your "for any other reason seems bad to me" is contrary to scripture.

True love to me is to be brothers and sisters to all your fellow christians. That the only difference between friendship and the marriage state is begetting children. This is the only way I can think of it in a holy way.

I also agree that it is a long procedure to prove someone was a Saint, religous and priests are part of an organization that does the paperwork to Canonize the Saint.

Us married couples would have to rely on our children to do the procedure to be canonized, with four teens I feel this is very hard, because even though us parents in many cases have rightness of intent when we correct and form our children, they do not seem to think so.

But there is good news for married couples, the process of beatification of several couples has started and when they are Saints of our Universal Church, they will lead the way for others.

As you say let's not do the metrics on who has been canonized. Lets struggle to have God centered lives. Remember the best canonization is being with HIM eternally.

Thanks, Maria

I would stack up the rigors of marriage to the rigors of celibate religious life any day. I have known religious and clergy who were previously married (spouses died, etc.), and they all testified to me that married life was harder than celibate life. Not that either is easy (is there any easy path in life?), but the demands for self-sacrifice are unending in marriage. As for Aquinas and his comment about sex being the highest pleasure on earth, well, after ten years of having sex with the same person, couples universally testify that sex becomes a challenge of love, not an easy source of pleasure!

I would say the fact of canonized saints being mostly religious must be due to the ability to collect evidence for the procedure. Religious and priests live pretty public lives, with numerous witnesses to how they live their lives. Married couples raising children, up until this day and age anyway, led lives that the historical records have a hard time tracking.

Anyway, we shouldn't overstate the importance of it all. We should be focused on leading lives of love, not feeling like second-class members of the Church because of who is or isn't canonized.