The Catholic Leader Flipbook - Issue 5594 - March 22

23 / 32

23
The Catholic Leader, March 22, 2020
Relationships + religion
Francine and Byron Pirola are the co-
authors of the SmartLoving series. Visit
for information.
BY FRANCINE AND BYRON
PIROLA
Breaking up is hard to do
Highs and lows: “There are so many factors to consider including the pastoral care of those involved in these painful circumstances,
to strategic measures to strengthen marriages, prevent breakdown, and empower couples to be leaders in their faith communities..”
WE all worry about the state of marriage today.
When marriages breakdown and families are fractured, it’s
devastating for those directly involved, and heartbreaking for those
who love them.
The social impact of divorce ripples through our society and the
cumulative impact is substantial – in half a century, we have trans-
formed from a culture where life-long marriage was the norm to one
of predominant serial monogamy.
How do we respond to this situation?
There are so many factors to consider including the pastoral care
of those involved in these painful circumstances, to strategic meas-
ures to strengthen marriages, prevent breakdown, and empower
couples to be leaders in their faith communities.
The longing of the heart
The human heart yearns to love and to be loved.
This longing for total, mutual self-donation is embedded in our
human nature and ultimately leads us to The Great Lover – the God
who created us for intimate relationship with him.
That’s one of the reasons why the Church recognises marriage as
a Sacrament – the kind of love that a husband and wife share, is the
same kind of love that Jesus has for us – freely given, permanent,
total, faithful and fruitful.
Despite our earnest beginnings, every couple will flounder to
some degree in our marriage.
As imperfect people, our capacity to understand and accept each
other is limited and thus our experience of the permanent, intimate
communion for which we long, is flawed.
For some couples, the weight of their challenges overwhelms
them, and, lacking the support and resources needed to sustain their
relationship, their marriage breaks down permanently.
It is always painful and traumatic for the couple, their children if
they have any, and their family and friends.
It also impacts the wider community eroding our confidence
in the reliability of love – If human love is so fickle, can we trust
God’s love?
The vocation crisis
Strong marriages are therefore vitally important for the procla-
mation of the Gospel. For without a solid witness of married love,
God’s love is more difficult to believe and experience.
We’ve often said that the vocation crisis in the Church began in
the 60s with marriage.
Everyone worries about the declining number of priests and
religious, but we forget that these vocations are born and nurtured in
families.
When the faith of the couple is underdeveloped, they are unable
to fully embrace and live their vocational call to be prophetic lead-
ers in their families and in the Church.
They are thus less able to nurture the faith in their children or to
guide them in discerning a priestly or religious vocation should one
of them have it.
Catholic weddings
Many couples marry at a church rather than in ‘The Church’.
The church is really just a venue for the ceremony rather than a
critical part of their commitment made in faith – they don’t really
embrace their vocational call to live a Catholic married life.
They seek a Catholic wedding for reasons that are not ideal – for
example, to appease parents, to fulfil to a childhood dream of a
church wedding, to secure a place for their children in a Catholic
school, or simply due to force of habit.
A recent Vatican commission explored the issue from an unex-
pected perspective: what is the appropriate response to baptised
non-believers presenting for Catholic marriage?
And how does it impact the validity of their marriage should the
couple later be in a situation seeking an annulment?
Some couples who marry in the Catholic church do not really
understand or embrace Catholic marriage.
This is most evident around issues of contraception and raising
children in the Catholic faith.
Increasingly, couples may also be ambivalent about the expecta-
tion of sexual exclusivity and permanency.
Should these couples be discouraged from or denied a Catholic
wedding?
There are no simple answers but what is apparent, is that forma-
tion for the couple, before and after the wedding, can only be a
positive.
A marriage catechumenate
Pope Francis has repeatedly called for a ‘marriage catechume-
nate’ – a framework of formation that begins with children and
continues throughout married life into the mature years.
In our work with engaged couples, we are well aware of the limits
of effective formation during the busy engagement period. In fact,
the formation needs to start much earlier, when the couple is dating,
or even among single adults before they form romantic attachments.
And it needs to continue after wedding when the challenges of
living Catholic marriage sharpen. This is a prime opportunity for
we as a community of believers to provide accompaniment for each
other as we strive to grow in faith and marital intimacy.
This is certainly of high priority for us at SmartLoving. We
are working with digital technology and online learning to create
resources that will enable parishes and local communities to provide
quality input. It’s a model we have dubbed: centrally enabled – lo-
cally delivered.
And in an age of coronavirus with restricted travel and avoidance
of large gatherings, online learning and neighbourhood communi-
ties will become even more important. Despite the challenges, we
are optimistic about the possibilities for reclaiming the primacy of
marriage as a life-long commitment.
Reversing the decline
The number of Catholic weddings has been in decline for the past
25 years.
Some people think we need to make it “easier” to marry in the
Church, but we’re not so sure.
Incentivising couples to marry at a church by making the prepara-
tion less demanding, reducing the theological and spiritual content
or relaxing our expectations of couples may increase the number of
Catholic weddings, but it won’t increase the number of couples who
sincerely embrace their vocational call.
Nor will it make their marriage more robust. Amarriage catechu-
menate, on the other hand, can make real inroads in nourishing the
faith of couples and in reducing the number of marriages that fail.
Breaking up is hard on everyone.
Let’s see if we can make it rarer.
SmartLoving Engaged
Give yourself the best start to your marriage
Quality Presentation
Fully online learning
Flexible and affordable
Extra resources including wedding planner
Sign up NOW!