Vocations Explained: Matrimony, Virginity, the Religious State and the Priesthood

Who ever heard of a person entering mixed marriage because his conscience told him that God gave him a vocation to that state, or because he was convinced that God chose for him that state in order that he might sanctify himself therein and avoid damnation? Read again the story of Tobias, and the seven husbands of Sara, who were strangled to death by the devil because of the unworthiness of their motives. Those who enter mixed marriages evidently "shut out God from themselves and from their mind;" they do not follow a vocation from God; they exclude the will of God. How, then, can they be excepted from the class of persons of whom the Holy Ghost says: "Over them the devil hath power"? The Church speaks very plainly on this subject, and teaches that mixed marriages are forbidden; and Christ said of the Church: "He that heareth you heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me."