“She stood at the altar in a white gown and veil, but she was there for no earthly man. Lori Rose Cannizzaro was dedicating her virginity to Jesus. Saturday’s rare Catholic ceremony, one her own pastor didn’t know existed, turned the 42-year-old into a ‘consecrated virgin.’ Fewer than 200 women in the United States and 2,000 worldwide have declared their perpetual virginity this way, according to U.S. Association of Consecrated Virgins… The ceremony was a revival of one of the church’s oldest rituals. The rite is available only to virgins, who agree to abstain from sex so they can dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ in what the association describes as a mystical marriage and a profound spiritual blessing. Each woman wears a band on her left ring finger as a symbol, much like a wedding band. Cannizzaro, who is not a nun, will continue to live on her own and work as a cook at Christ the King Seminary in a Buffalo suburb… Cannizzaro, who spent the past two years taking seminary classes in preparation, said she knew more than a decade ago she would be better off single. ‘Dating wasn’t working. I wasn’t connecting,’ she said. ‘Not that I never wanted to be married or never wanted children.’” — MSNBC (US)

You hate to piss on somebody’s parade. It’s not nice to be mean about something that evidently has great meaning to someone. But still, it’s difficult not to view this special ceremony as a consolation prize. Here is a picture of Ms. Cannizaro. She’s a decent-looking woman. Presuming that she’s not a wallflower or psychopath, she would have had her suitors a few years back. But now? She’s a 42-year-old virgin. At this point in the game, eligible bachelors probably view her as an old maid. She seems to confirm this herself when she says, “Dating wasn’t working. I wasn’t connecting.” So instead of pissing and moaning about it, she’s trying to turn a negative into a positive. If I’m going to be a virgin, she must think, then I might as well put my virginity to some use.

Evidently the church won’t even consider a candidate for this consecration ceremony unless she’s at least thirty years old. Hell, if you can make it through your teens and twenties without having sex, it doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice to consecrate yourself to Christ at the age of thirty or forty. From the vantage point of the church, this is the hymeneal equivalent of preaching to the converted: it only makes consecrated virgins out of the people most likely to remain virgins anyway. Gosh, Jesus, you sure inspire some serious commitment out of these folks.

If you’ve ever had sex — and odds are that, if you’re reading this, you have — you can’t help but feel sorry for someone who hasn’t had it and never will. It’s not that sex is always great or profound or meaningful. Sex can be a lot of different things, including ugly, tedious, and awful. But all the same, sex offers a range of intense and interesting experience. Why would you want to cut yourself off from that? The sexual beings of the world are like travelers or explorers, and to them you virgins are like people who never want to leave the small town you grew up in. If that’s what you want, that’s cool, we hope you’re happy, but it’s hard not to feel a little sad for you.

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