Franciscan at Home

When I was in my early 20s and had begun to attend daily Mass, I recall the excitement that the presence of a young person caused the other parishioners. I would often have elderly ladies approach me and say, “You are so holy! You are going to be a priest.” They were well-intentioned and very supportive of me; however, underlying these sentiments was a notion that holy people become priests and religious whereas the “not-holy” get married. This idea is similarly expressed in the statements such as so-and-so has a “vocation” or when we pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life and omit the mention of marriage as vocation.

Yet, the Second Vatican Council had reaffirmed the universal vocation to holiness.[i] All Christians, regardless of their state of life, are called to a life of sanctity. If we are honest, I think it would be fair to say that few married Christians know this. Moreover, how many married Christians know how to live holiness as married persons? It is this problem that repeatedly presented itself when I was involved in the pastoral care of marriage. Many couples desired to grow in holiness as married persons but were unsure as to the means of doing this.

In the first place, many people understood baptism as the primary source of holiness whereas marriage was merely the environment in which this holiness is lived. From this perspective marriage does not contribute anything specifically to sanctity. However, the Church has clearly articulated in the last hundred years that the Sacrament of Marriage itself is a source of holiness.

Why marry in the Church? I ask this question because of a startling shift in our collective contemporary perspective. In the United States, Catholic marriage rates over the past four decades have precipitously plunged, with nearly sixty percent fewer weddings being celebrated in the Church in 2010 than in 1972.[i] Such a move away from sacramental marriage raises an important question for pastors, parents and catechists: why should couples today choose the Sacrament of Matrimony?

When Pope Francis called for a synod to address the pressing issues of marriage and family life, many responded by speculating that the moment had finally arrived for the Catholic Church to change its official doctrines on sex and marriage. Voices from within the Church and from without took to the internet to foster anticipation for this change, evoking memories of the buildup to Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae in 1968, with some suggesting that the synod offers the Church the chance to “get it right this time.”

Of course, the call for a change to the official Catholic doctrines on sex and marriage is nothing new. It has been a recurring murmur within the Church, especially among so-called revisionist Catholic theologians, for the past fifty years. A central component of the revisionist position has been the apparent disconnect between the doctrines and the real lives of contemporary men and women. Under the notion of historicity, the revisionist position further contends that the official teachings of the Church have become outdated and out of place in the modern world, failing to meet the real needs of men and women in the modern sexual sphere. The proposed doctrinal changes, so the claim goes, would bring harmony between doctrine and reality, with the teachings on sex and marriage finally conforming to the living of sex and marriage, thus allowing the teachings to speak to the needs of real men and women.

While this mentality of change is nothing new, the anticipation of change has gained new energy as Pope Francis has been fashioned by the media as some sort of new pope for a new Church, who will—perhaps—teach new doctrines. As misguided as this sort of thinking may be, the question of doctrinal change has been serious enough to lead members of the hierarchy and even the pre-synod documents to clarify that no doctrinal change should be expected from the synod. Instead, the synod has been presented officially as an opportunity to continue and renew the work of the recent Magisterium, especially Pope Saint John Paul II, in proclaiming God’s plan for man and woman and marriage. As a result, the synod fathers have explicitly set before themselves the task of finding a “credible manner” of “proclaiming and living the Gospel of the Family” in response to the social and spiritual crisis “so evident in today’s world.”

I know what they are thinking. Most of the seminarians and lay students that follow my course “Catholic Social Teaching” in our seminary/school of theology begin with the assumption that this is the “social justice” course. Some like this reduction of “Catholic Social Teaching” to “social justice.” Others dread it. Few question it. I savor the guilty pleasure of playing off of this supposition, building it up in crescendo-like fashion, until at last it is obliterated by the logic of the Church’s social documents themselves. I do enjoy this, but I also do this for pedagogical reasons: I want the assumption that Catholic social teaching reduces to social justice so utterly razed in the minds of my students that when it falls it can never rise from the ashes of its ruin. No resurrection here, please.

Social justice is a part of Catholic social teaching, and an important part. However, it is only a part and it cannot be equated with the entirety of Catholic social teaching without doing serious harm to both. Social justice is that form of justice that regulates one’s relationships according to the standards of law. Typically, it is taken to be about society’s larger institutions like business corporations, political structures, and forms of the market. Catholic social teaching, on the other hand, includes social justice and much, much more. Catholic social teaching covers each of our relationships and socializations in general and, most importantly, does so in a manner where the demand of justice (what is due to another) is not the sole focus. This also means the Church’s social teaching can reach to those forms of relationships that in whole or part elude the categories of justice and law, such as the relationship of friendship. The social teaching of the Church is capable of this wide perspective because, first and foremost, it begins not from law, but from God’s Trinitarian love as manifest in Jesus Christ.

And so, this clarification is an important one. Catholic social teaching is not first about the state of one’s nation, and then somehow extended to other realms of life in a secondary, derivative manner. Catholic social teaching is as much about the living room as it about the halls of Congress.

Marriage: God's plan of love to live, not an injustice to remedy

For Christians, marriage is a sacrament: a sacrament which enriches spouses and their families and contributes to the greater good of the whole community. In recent years the very idea of marriage has become a subject of contention and controversy in our society. Voices have been raised to say that marriage does not belong to any religious group. We would, of course, be the first to agree: for marriage belongs to humanity.

It may sound strange but we want to sleep in a barn on Christmas Eve. After Christmas Eve Mass, we would put the children in the car, drive to a friend's farm and sleep in their hayloft, above the cows and sheep. We would leave the presents, decorations, and fancy clothes at home, and experience for ourselves what the birth place of Jesus was like.

Unfortunately, and I can't imagine why, the children aren't as impressed with this idea as we are. For the last three years, they've been yelling "No, No, No" whenever we try to discuss it. Well, yes, we'd miss the Christmas Eve feast at the grandparents, and yes, there's be no tree with presents in the morning. We could live without that for one year, couldn't we.

"No, NO, NO!"

Alan Schreck concludes his summary of the vital teaching document of Blessed John Paul II on family life and family catechesis.

As we approach the thirteenth anniversary of Familiaris Consortio (Nov. 22, 1981), Blessed John Paul II’s concerns and direction for the family appear even more relevant and urgent today. As he taught in 2001 (NMI, 47), ‘At a time in history like the present, special attention must also be given to the pastoral care of the family, particularly when this fundamental institution is experiencing a radical and widespread crisis.’ In FC, John Paul presented four major tasks for the family in the modern world:

1. forming a community of persons;
2. serving life;
3. participating in the development of society;
4. sharing in the life and mission of the Church (no. 17).

In the last Sower, we discussed the first task, so now we must ask: ‘How does the family serve life?’ This is ‘the fundamental task of the family’ (no. 28). Echoing Pope Paul VI’s encyclical letter Humanae Vitae, FC teaches ‘that love between husband and wife must be fully human, exclusive, and open to new life’ (no. 29).

Seven years ago a young guest surprised me by suddenly asking, “Mrs Flynn, what is Natural Family Planning?” Our guest was a young woman called Asel Ibraeva, whose family had befriended one of our daughters when she was travelling in Central Asia a few years earlier. Asel was living in Karakol, a town in the east of Kyrgyzstan, near the splendid lake Issyk-Kul. In the summer of 2003, after six months studying English in London, and before returning home, she spent a fortnight with us in Oxfordshire.

I gave Asel a short summary of how NFP works, but realised that this brief explanation could not do justice to the subject, so I telephoned Colleen Norman, who is a very experienced Natural Family Planning teacher, and asked her if she would be willing to run a training course in Kyrgyzstan. To my surprise and delight, not only did she accept, but she immediately sent us a copy of the Russian translation of her own NFP manual, which had just been published. She followed this up by meeting us at Heathrow Airport a few days later, when Asel was about to return home. By the time Asel went through the departure gate, it had been agreed that she would try and interest as many people as possible in NFP, and see if she could gather enough support to make a course the following year feasible.

When she arrived home in Karakol, armed with the NFP manual in Russian, she boldly approached a doctor who was responsible for the training of local GPs. This doctor proved to be very responsive to learning about a method of family planning that does not involve the contraceptive pill, which is not only expensive but also increases the risk of anaemia among women whose poor diet already puts them at risk. She willingly agreed to help Asel organise a course. Asel advertised in the local press and on television, and soon there were over twenty enquirers, nearly all doctors and nurses; premises were then booked at a local lakeside resort. An important factor in their ready acceptance of this course is a Kyrgyz Government policy, established in 1997, that the health care of the new nation should be based on the promotion of healthy family life. A project to teach and encourage the use of NFP would quite clearly meet this aim.

This project is one which emphasises and promotes fundamental human values which are too often rejected in western society. In this way it plays an important part in spreading the good news of the Kingdom.

Following William Newton's article, in the last issue of The Sower, explaining Blessed John Paul II's encyclical, Familiaris Consortio, he now discusses the pope's understanding of the value of the person, presenting the central ideas in his theology of the body.

We begin with a simple and profound question: what is the purpose and meaning of human life? The answer that John Paul II gives to this question is remarkably simple. The goal of human life is to make a gift of oneself for the sake of communion. Gift and communion: these are the hermeneutical keys through which Blessed John Paul II viewed the world. In effect, he says, that at the end of your life, it will be judged to have been a success or a failure not on the basis of fame, wealth, or pleasure; but on the basis of whether you took the opportunity to make a gift of yourself to others and whether or not you achieved profound communion with others and with God.

If you are not acquainted with the thought of John Paul II, the phrase ‘gift of self’ might strike you as unusual; and even if you are, it can remain a bit nebulous. So let us look at this this.

In many ways, ‘gift of self’ is synonymous with ‘love’. Of course, the word ‘love’ is used analogously for a whole range of realities that come under the umbrella of ‘desiring the good for someone’. Here is not the place to draw all the distinctions, but in Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla does just that and concludes that ‘a total gift of self’ or ‘betrothed love’ is the highest possible form of love.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Pope John Paul’s teaching document on the family. Alan Schreck explains why it remains of crucial importance today.

In the first years of his pontificate, Pope John Paul II directed his attention to what he perceived to be a critical challenge to the well-being and integrity of human society: the relationship between man and woman and the fruit of their human and sacramental union-marriage. John Paul’s Wednesday audiences on what has come to be called his ‘theology of the body’ were a necessary backdrop and foundation for his teaching on marriage and the family. The importance of this teaching already had been recognized by the bishops at the Second Vatican Council, who in writing the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World (which the Bp. Karol Wojtyla helped to author), identified marriage and family as the first ‘urgent problem area’ to be addressed in Part II of the constitution.

The Council Fathers recognized that marriage and family is the foundation of human society. If that foundation fails, society collapses. The response to Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on the transmission of human life, Humanae Vitae (1968), was a clear indication that the Church’s long-standing teachings in this area were being subject to scrutiny and criticism, even within the Church. Pope John Paul II sought to present a thorough reasoned response to these issues, first, by developing his ‘theology of the body’, and then by calling a synod to discuss the family. One fruit of this synod is John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation on The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World (Familiaris Consortio – FG), issued November 22, 1981—almost thirty years ago at this writing.