Today should one attend a wedding, it is quite
possible that the parents of either the bride or groom in attendance will be married,
either in the Catholic Church or outside it, to someone other than the one they
were first married to. In such a case, one would find oneself praying that the offspring
of said marriage will not meet with the same fate.
The state of marriage today
is what it is in part due to poor sacramental preparation in the years
immediately following Vatican II for reasons I take up in my book, another
fruit of the “sexual revolution”. Sad, but as is well-known, many young Catholics
these days are delaying marriage, hooking up, practicing birth control, and cohabiting before getting married. Traditional marriage is under assault, and many baptized
Catholics are joining in the attack, especially in favoring “same-sex marriage.”
Thus it is inspiring to see the shepherds of the flocks gathering in synod to discuss “the pastoral challenges
of the family in the context of evangelization.’ I say again, the synod will
deal with the family in its various aspects – not with the single issue of Communion
for the divorced and remarried.
Fr. Reese at National Catholic Reporter has
described the document as “boring and joyless.” Well, I find the situation
described in the first paragraph of this post as such. Boring might only be true for the synod if
one did not understand the genre of the document or if one was indifferent to the pastoral concerns of the shepherds. The bishops (and I) have the joy of hope for “a new springtime for the family,” which they believe will be led by young people who appreciate the
value of a stable, enduring relationship, and express a real desire to marry
and form a family.
From what I can gather, the bishops see the need for
an encounter with Christ on a personal and communal level. True, the lack of
comprehension of the biblical and magisterial teaching on the family is legion;
in addition, many Catholics lack a felt encounter with Christ and his Church,
and so in turn misunderstand who man is, and who he is to God and to his
community. From Part I of the Catechism on the Profession of Faith:
Jesus
knew and loved us each and all during his life, his agony, and his Passion and
gave himself up for each one of us: “The Son of God . . . loved me and gave
himself for me” (Gal. 2:20) He has loved us all with a human heart. For this
reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation
(cf. Jn 19:34) “is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that .
. . love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father
and all human beings” without exception.
Significantly, the bishops also express a desire “to
defend and encourage forms of popular piety in support of the family". I for one
have always preferred the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as it serves as a
reminder to wish to be with Christ, to make one’s heart like his.While Fr. Reese may ridicule the hope of the Synod,
I find it joyful to see that the Church herself always tries to make her heart
like Christ’s.
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