Executive summary
The symposium brought together theologians and pastoral ministers in the area of family and marriage ministry from around the country, in order to consider how the Catholic Church in the United States might strengthen its ministry to married people and those considering or preparing for marriage in the Church. Its proximate goal was to provide suggestions drawn from research and ministry experience to inform the process leading to the U.S. Bishops’ pastoral letter on marriage scheduled for publication in 2008. Toward that end, we asked all participants to offer these suggestions in light of their work; further, we asked all participants to read and comment on the existing draft outline for the pastoral letter.
Summary of presentations
Julie Rubio: parishes must think critically about how to sustain marriage. Good intentions are not enough! For example, the way they plan meetings often compromise family time during the week. Many middle-class families are extremely pressured for time and do not have opportunities to dig beneath the surface of their relationships or spiritual lives. On the one hand, expectations in our culture for marriage are low; but on the other hand, the vision that John Paul II presents can seem out-of-reach. How, then, is this vision communicated? Suggestions:
• Ask parishioners to reflect on the pace of their lives. What’s going on in the culture?
• Create deep and real bonds of community by giving sustained thought to the activities in
the parish
• Ask time from parishioners for substantive reasons that deepen communion.
David McCarthy: Families experience some kind of “ism” (workoholism?) and parishes need to do an intervention. Issues of marriage have to do with space and time, and we must think about how to address them in the context of our theological understanding of the sacrament. We want to foster networks of families, in order that families are not isolated in themselves. Marriage has become perceived as a private endeavor; our parishes must invite people outside of this thinking. Even the notion of “domestic church” can be perceived as isolating families into their own “private” home churches, when the real challenge has to do with opening us through our family lives into a communion with others in the parish.
Jim Healy: People’s attitudes toward the Church color marriage ministry. Those that see religion as a threat to their spirituality will be a challenge. We have to make the case for Church; the best place for a marriage to be embedded is in a faith community that shows commitment to spirituality. Practically:
• We simply do not do baptismal preparation well. We must use these as teaching and
community-building moments in people’s lives.
• There are two Americas in marriage: the wealthy and well-educated marry; the poor
don’t, according to recent studies.
Joanne Heaney-Hunter: How can we minister to teens so that they are more ready for marriage? How do we do remote, proximate, and immediate marriage prep? And how do we do mystagogy—in baptismal preparation? We must help teens to connect with the faith community to give them reasons for seeking out the Church. Further we must ask questions of how young adults are connected to the Church. Mystagogy: supporting couples in the early stages of their marriages.
David Thomas: Let’s look at the rest of the story, after the wedding. We are not inviting people into an institution; we are inviting them to make a public promise to a person and a process. Marriage is “administered” by the husband and wife in each moment, and as such is not a state of life but rather a way of life. We must beware of what Sartre called the “egoism of the two,” i.e. the tendency to become isolated as a couple; we are called into ever greater communion. Paul reminds us that marriage (even marriage!) can bear the truth of God’s story.
Tim Muldoon: Catholic theology of marriage developed out of pastoral need in the early church, but marriage was originally seen as a secular act that the church invited people to consider through the lens of faith. As the theology developed, it focused on the proper contracting of marriage but did not develop a similar emphasis on developing holiness as a married person. Our challenge today is to invite people to view marriage through the lens of faith as a religious vocation, rooted in the fundamental understanding that we see in Genesis and Jesus’ commentary on it—namely, that “it is not good to be alone”—that God calls us to friendship, and the spouse is the sacramental sign of friendship with God. Our parishes can manifest this truth by recognizing the grace that already exists in relationships—even, for example, those which involve poor choices on the part of the couple—and inviting them to deepen their relationship through the life of faith and the reflection on the sacramental vocation to marriage. A practical consequence is seeing marriage not only for procreation, but also for growing in holiness and communion—especially by being open to adoption and other forms of generosity in married life.
Paul Covino: our wedding liturgy is our primary theology of marriage. Let’s use what we already have and really do it well, taking advantage of the riches of the liturgy in creative ways. Some propositions:
• Include liturgy in marriage prep; let the couple use it as prayer
• Give some thought to the new Order for Celebrating Marriage as a practical consequence
of the National Pastoral Initiative on Marriage
• Consider the symbolism of the lay presider at wedding liturgies
• Use the liturgy as an opportunity for evangelization, since for many it’s their first
experience of the Catholic Church, or the first in a long time
• Proclaim against the commercialization of weddings
Alejandro Aguilera-Titus: If love comes from God, then marriage is inviting God’s love into a relationship. We must approach ministry with a sense of “both-and” in the midst of a culture that is “either-or.” Cultural assimilation is far from Catholic ecclesiology. Cf. the 1983: Bishops’ statement on Hispanic ministry—a blessing from God. Evangelize, not Americanize. Observations:
• Hispanic ministry in more than 4000 parishes nationwide. By 2020 half of Catholics will be
Hispanic. Hispanic culture is a Catholic culture.
• Figures for marriage and family among Hispanics are significantly higher than the national
average.
• Impact of forced immigration: many families divided by borders.
• New process of mestizaje coming from Latino culture and entering US society.
• We’ve made the assumption that Hispanic children will assimilate into existing youth and
young adult ministry programs, but this assumption has been shown wrong. They just
stay away. Inculturation of the gospel needs to be at the center.
• There are seven stages to developing parishes that minister to Hispanics.
1. we must be missionary: reach out to Hispanics and call them by name.
2. we must welcome them (hospitality) by providing ecclesial space for them to be themselves
(e.g. Spanish mass)
3. developing ministries and ministers
4. building bridges among cultures
5. invest in education of parents/spouses to empower them to do ministry
6. open the door to decision making process—Hispanic couples doing their programs for others
7. strengthen the sense of ownership and stewardship
Andrew Lyke: Talking about race is difficult for white people; speaking out of love for the work, the Church, and colleagues. The U.S. Church is shaped for the upwardly mobile. There is the question of how dioceses are structured: direct services to ethnic groups are uncommon; it means really that ministry is to white people. Direct ministries are left to ethnic ministry offices, and so they don’t do marriage ministry per se.
Jonathan Tan: Five proposals for marriage ministry, based on the experiences of Asian and Asian-American Catholics
1. outreach—don’t expect people to come to you. Become more missionary.
2. train pastoral leaders
3. from sympathizing to empathizing: cross-cultural proficiency
4. from traditioning to imagining
5. dialogue: change comes from getting families to find common ground. Pastoral leader as
facilitator, not initiator of change
Lee Williams: interchurch couples. Joint religious activities can help interchurch couples; they are a predictor of reduced risk for divorce. 44% of couples who are interchurch at the wedding become same-church eventually. But they need to have dialogue early so that it doesn’t become a conflict at the time of the first child. Lee’s project is online at http://www.sandiego.edu/interchurch/index.html.
Bonnie Mack: Welcoming and hospitality are key for couples who come from different churches. How to balance feeling passionate about one’s faith tradition with being open to another’s tradition? Some people’s first impressions of the Church are through the marriage preparation program.
Flossie Bourg: Her high school students do not perceive themselves to be living holy lives, and they perceive holiness to be related to religious life. They find it difficult to recognize Christian role models who do not fit traditional paradigms. The message they hear is that to be holy, one has to be a priest or a nun. But neither live in the messiness of family life, and often cannot relate to the challenge of leading holy lives amidst chaos. The “theology of the body” language can be perceived as too grandiose. We must ask what message parishes send in the way they deal with people coming to them to be married—example of how the fees for weddings suggest that the imperative is the “beautiful day” that the wedding industry exploits, rather than an invitation to grow in love in the community of the faithful.
Bill Roberts: Spirituality of Christian marriage: a holistic approach to life (body-soul, spiritual-secular), to become a loving, giving person in the context of married life. Living our married life in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Accepting God’s gifts and returning them to the Father. Seeking forgiveness for our sins and imperfections. Seeking wisdom from God for our decision making as a couple; helping us in our discernment. Love: the will to extend oneself for the purpose of spiritual growth of self and other (Peck). Segundo Galilea: love as accepting the other in his/her deepest identity. Antidote to the temptation to possess her. Louis Etterly: love is to invite someone to live and to bid someone to grow. Cf. the preface to the Eucharist on the Feast of Christ the King: the kingdom of truth and love, of justice and peacemaking. Keeping the peace might be accomplice to injustice; we are called to be peace makers. Kingdom of compassion and empathy (e.g. overcoming sexism).
Reflections and conclusions
The hopeful tone of the symposium reflected the literally hundreds of years of combined experience of those gathered. Many were able to reflect on the joyful work of helping couples to grow in love and maturity in the light of Catholic faith, even while acknowledging the challenges that lie ahead. Several were discussed:
• tendencies on the part of couples to treat weddings as consumer-driven events: seeing the
church’s role as less important that that of the caterer, and of marriage prep as “hoops”
to jump through
• pastoral insensitivity: from secretaries who only ask for fees rather than congratulating
the couple, to pastors unfamiliar with Canon Law (as with interchurch couples)
• time poverty: being stretched by tight schedules among parents and children, and unable
to engage in parish life
• perceptions of the Church: especially among younger couples unformed in faith.
In light of these challenges, I suggest several conclusions that emerged from our conversations:
1. Marriage ministry is an element in the larger challenge of ministry in the Church today, and as such reflects the larger trends that affect Catholic life. Catholics today come to the Church less frequently from a sense of obligation (as in the past); they come because they desire something from the Church. Perhaps it is a deepening of their childhood faith; perhaps it is community; perhaps it is only a nice place to take pictures for the wedding or because Mom and Dad wanted a wedding in the Church. Regardless, the challenge is to remember that people come voluntarily, and our first responsibility is to practice active hospitality. Our message must be joy in celebrating their decision to marry (a decision which is not always a given in contemporary U.S. society) and inviting them to understand marriage in the light of faith.
2. Marriage and the celebrations within the context of married life offer the Church opportunities to evangelize and invite deeper exploration of the mystery of faith (mystagogy). Our attitude must be joyful, not juridical.
3. The great challenge is to foster a deepening sense of communion, among husband and wife; among members of the family; and among different families in the parish.
4. The pastor and the ministers in the parish can be catalysts for this communion, but cannot make it happen themselves. Weddings, baptisms, first reconciliations, first Eucharists, confirmations, funerals, and all other celebrations of the lives of families are opportunities to invite people into deeper consideration of faith, and deeper service to each other in a spirit of love.
5. We will do well to take advantage of the opportunities that already exist in our celebration of sacraments before inventing new opportunities. For example, baptismal preparation was mentioned several times as a ripe opportunity to have young families meet one another, grow as community, learn about Church tradition, and renew their understanding of baptismal faith and vocation, and so on. Similarly, really using the wedding liturgy as an opportunity for catechesis can impact a couple more than just asking them to select readings and music.
6. Perhaps we send the wrong message when parishes charge exorbitant fees for weddings or allow only parishioners to have weddings there. Further, some creative thinking about how to manifest the Church’s joy at weddings can yield good ideas. Invite parishioners; take a collection that will be the couple’s donation to a work of mission.
7. Our Church must give sustained attention to questions of how to celebrate the weddings of its poorer members, especially in light of data that show that in the U.S., richer people marry and poorer people often live in various cohabiting relationships.
8. We must do specific outreach to Hispanic, African-American, Asian-American, Native American, and other culturally specific groups of Catholics. This includes careful attention to how we do marriage preparation, since assumptions often betray awareness only of white, middle-class models of weddings, marriages, and families.
9. Similarly, we must develop greater sensitivity to the weddings and marriages of Catholics and non-Catholics, focusing on the theme of hospitality.
10. The integration of marriage-willing messages and symbolism in the Sunday liturgies will help foster awareness of its centrality in the Church. But it must be done with pastoral sensitivity to single people. Some examples: families involved in various ministries at the same mass (greeting, lecturing, bringing up gifts, Eucharistic ministry); intercessions for the engaged, newly married or for couples celebrating anniversaries; blessings for those embarking upon marriage preparation (akin to RCIA/the catechumenate).