A Catholic perspective acknowledges that not everyone will marry and indeed that not everyone needs or wishes to get married and start a family. A person may also choose personal fulfilment through living life as a single person or as a person who has chosen some sort of religious profession in direct service to the Church as is the case with Religious Sisters and Religious Brothers and with Priests. There is further consideration of these important and valid ways to live out one's identity as a human person below.
Saint John Paul II (1981) recognized the irreplaceable importance of the family, not only to the individual, but also as the gift that it represents to society at large. The Pope emphasized that the family is both the setting for physical nurturing and the privileged place where children are educated in all aspects of what it means to be human (Diocesan Department of Religious Education, 2005 p. 76). A committed and secure marriage partnership which is supported, supportive, and loving remains the best environment for the upbringing of children. From a Catholic perspective, the family includes mother, father and children, extended family of grandparents as well as aunts, uncles and cousins. Beyond these family ties though the family is about society as a whole. The first experience of society that we have as children is in the family context. The family is where we learn to engage with other people. The Catholic perspective sees families as both inwardly focused and outward-looking engaging with society and taking an active role in transforming society by making God present. In this way, families are opened up to 'the disruptive but ultimately Christ-bearing presence of others, especially others in need' (Coultier and Mattison, 2010, p. 222). The family in turn is what the Second Vatican Council, in Gaudium et spes, calls a domestic church, which, as a sign of Christ, brings God to the world through service to society beyond the confines of the nuclear family. 'The Truine God is a communion of love and the family is its living reflection' (2016 Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia 11). A married couple who experience the power of love know that this love is called to bind the wounds of the outcast, to foster a culture of encounter and to fight for justice. God has given the family the job of 'domesticating' the world and helping each person to see fellow human beings as brothers and sisters (2016 Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia).
Celibacy accepted for the sake of the reign of God serves as a complement to the vocation of marriage (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1991 p. 94). Celibates choose not to give their life to any one person and are challenged to share it generously with many people (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1991 p. 94).