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Upcoming Synod Must Address Family Disintegration
Crisis Magazine ^ | September 23, 2014 | REV. CORMAC BURKE

Posted on 09/24/2014 5:14:10 AM PDT by NYer

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Judging by the media reports on the Extraordinary Synod to be held in Rome this October, the bishops present will be mainly concerned with issues such as the admission to the Eucharist of divorced and remarried persons, the speeding up of annulment processes, and the possible revision of the Church’s teaching on contraception. Implicit in most of the reports is the view that a liberalization or “relaxation” of the Church’s present discipline in these matters could help to ameliorate the pastoral problem or concern that the Synod is called to examine. What could be said about this view?

First, it must be remembered that the Synod is on the Family, not on Marriage. Certainly the health of the family depends on the health of marriage; hence the two questions are intimately connected. Yet, if the topics so highlighted by the media are discussed, then it should be in the light of their relevance to the health of the family itself.

From this latter point of view, divorce, annulments, and contraception certainly have their impact on the quality of family life. But surely it is a negative impact, not a positive one? Hence, proposals to make them more “available” or more “acceptable” would seem to run clear counter to the presumed purpose of the Synod.

What in fact is this purpose? Why has the Synod been convoked? The recent Instrumentum Laboris expresses it in its opening paragraph: “to bring about a new springtime for the family.” While this is suggestive (implying also that the family is going through a winter), it is not too concrete. Let us go directly then to Pope Francis himself, who can certainly tell us what is central in his concerns about the family and, therefore, what he wants the Synod to discuss.

The media might have taken more notice of a letter of his of February 2, 2014, the Feast of the Presentation, addressed directly to Christian families themselves. There, along with requesting prayers for the Synod, he expresses his mind about the role of the family, and the dangers that threaten it today, in a very condensed but beautiful manner.

It is certainly no accident that Francis chose to date this brief letter on February 2. On the contrary, the Pope uses the Gospel of the feast to show how the family can make generations more united, overcome individual self-centeredness, and bring joy to itself and the world. He first dwells on how the presentation of Jesus brings together two old people, Simeon and Anna, and two young people, Mary and Joseph. “It is a beautiful image: two young parents and two elderly people, brought together by Jesus. He is the one who brings together and unites generations!” And then, “He is the inexhaustible font of that love which overcomes every occasion of self‑absorption, solitude, and sadness. In your journey as a family, you share so many beautiful moments: meals, rest, housework, leisure, prayer, trips and pilgrimages, and times of mutual support … Nevertheless, if there is no love, then there is no joy, and authentic love comes to us from Jesus.…”

This is very positive. It presents an ideal. But it also communicates the underlying concerns of the Pope regarding the family, and the recommendations regarding them that he hopes to receive from the synodal debates. To understand this, it should be enough to ask ourselves a few questions.

Are Christian families today united in themselves, and with others? Do they help their members out of self-absorption? Do they give an example to those around them of generous and dedicated love? There is the ideal of the Christian family; there is the role it is meant to play in the new evangelization of the world. And, yet, it seems that a great majority of Christian families today do not sense the greatness of their ideal, and do not know how to live it, or are not motivated enough to engage in their privileged evangelizing role. If so, then this must surely suggest the main topics that the Synod of this year, and that of 2015, should address.

The Lost Concept of “Family”
My almost 60 years as a priest have been particularly involved in the consideration of marriage and the family from many points of view: theological, moral, juridical, and pastoral. While not pessimistic by nature, I must say that we are blinking at reality if we do not face up to the fact that since the 1950s, marriage and the family, outside and inside the Church, have been plunged into an ever-growing crisis—to the extent that their nature, and very existence, are threatened by total collapse.

If I had to sum up the causes of this crisis in one factor, it would be this: marriage is no longer approached as a family enterprise. It has become basically a “you-and-me” affair. It is essentially a (tentative) commitment of two persons, one to the other; and no longer a total commitment of love, where a sexual love-union is expected to lead to, and be cemented by, the children that this union should naturally give rise to. In this secular view (which has become so widespread in the Church), marriage is basically an à deux arrangement, while a family is a possible annex that can be added later on, if convenient. Children, instead of being the natural fruit of married love, and the glue that holds it together in times of stress, are reduced to the category of minor accessories to the personal happiness of each of two fundamentally separate people, hence dispensable (like the marriage itself), if they no longer serve each individual’s happiness. Under such a view, marriages open-to-divorce, or simple cohabitation, become valid and even preferable options.

What is needed is a more natural, noble, and generous response to the family ideal that should inspire every healthy decision to marry. What we have instead, and it has been growing powerfully over the past 50 years, is a calculated individualistic approach to marriage and the family. Such an approach can only increase solitude and sadness, never overcome them.

Pre-marriage Instruction
To me, perhaps the most important issue to be addressed by the Synod is the need for pre-marriage instruction, inspired by sound anthropological (and not just theological) arguments, that draw out the positive, if challenging, nature of the commitment to marriage and the family. I say this because, in my experience, premarital instruction is often seriously deficient in its presentation of the power and appeal of Christian marriage; and this on both the supernatural and human levels.

The supernatural aspect: marriage must be presented as a genuine, God-given vocation to holiness, dwelling equally on the specific graces that, as a sacrament, it continually offers for the joyful and faithful fulfillment of this divine calling and mission.

The human aspect: bringing out, in-depth, the marvelously positive anthropological teachings of Vatican II, which present marriage as a covenant of love, highlighting marital consent as a mutual self-gift, and seeing children as both the natural outcome of that love, and the guarantee of its continuance in the future.

Both aspects need to be developed in any proper catechesis. But the second, if presented in all its human power, should come first. Only if fully expounded and personally absorbed can it counter, and gradually overcome, the pervading modern mindset which considers any binding choice to be alienating, and a threat to one’s freedom, and regards marrying and having a family as a fool’s choice, when all one needs is sex—which can be had free, just provided that it is made “safe.”

The personalism of Vatican II, firmly grounded in the Gospel, and with its human logic and appealing challenge, offers the jolting but only true answer to this dead-end individualism. Self-centeredness is the great enemy of happiness and salvation (“whoever seeks his life will lose it”). We all need to be drawn out of isolating self-protectiveness (“it is not good for man to be alone …”). People’s hearts are made for love, not for selfishness. They need to be reminded that selfishness leaves the heart cold, empty, and alone; only love can fill and expand it. We need love that is true, love that admires, and wants to respect and give. For true love wants to give, as well as to possess. Without giving one’s self, one cannot experience true love. We all need a self-gift that is for something worthwhile as well as total (if the gift is not total, then it is, at most, a loan). For the vast majority of persons, marriage is meant to be precisely such a gift: freely, totally, and unconditionally made. Those who baulk at such a self-gift will remain progressively more and more trapped in their own isolation and solitude.

Then children can be seen as what they are meant to be—“the supreme gift of marriage” (GS 50), a gift that comes from God, and binds the spouses more strongly together in the noblest aspect of their common enterprise. Children are what make each married couple uniquely rich. Other people may have a better job or house or car; only they can have their children.

Divorce, Nullity
Divorce, ungrounded petitions of nullity, and contraception, have never favored happiness; certainly not that of the children, but not that of the spouses either. These are anthropological, not theological, truths. Divorce is always a collapse of a dream, a failure. It destroys the family. Those who most suffer from it are the children. Hence, anything that might make divorce seem an acceptable option (and not, as it almost always is, a major reneging on freely accepted responsibilities) is anti-family.

Declarations of nullity, if they are truly based on the facts, are a matter of justice to the parties; but, if there are children, they also mark the breakup of a family. If the necessary process for deciding a petition of nullity can be quickened without detriment to truth and justice, I am all in favor. But the anti-family aspect of the matter remains.

As a former judge of the Rota, I do think that matrimonial processes can be simplified and, thus, speeded up—but marginally. To address that question however is not to address the problems facing the family. Besides, if “speeding up” were to be at the cost of truth, we would have done harm to people’s fundamental trust in the Church, as well as to the whole institution of marriage.

A further marginal, but important, observation on this point: For more than 50 years, our tribunals have been treating nullity cases almost exclusively on the grounds of consensual incapacity (c. 1095). I do not believe that the great majority of those marrying today are incapable of giving valid consent. I believe that they are quite capable; but many do not give it—not because of incapacity, but because of exclusion of one of the essential properties of matrimonial consent (the indissolubility of the bond, for instance). That is not incapacity, but simulation (c. 1101).

Contraception
To my mind, the main cause of greatly increased marital breakdowns, and the consequent breakup of families, has been the lost sense of the sacredness of human sexuality, and of how the meaning and dignity of the sexual relationship must be respected both before, and in, marriage. Once contraception within marriage began to be presented as legitimate (in a generalized form from the 1960s on), it was inevitable that we reach the present situation where the one and only rule about sex is that it be “safe.”

Elsewhere (avoiding any appeal to theology) I have tried to elucidate the purely natural reasons why contraception is incompatible with, and destructive of, any genuine expression of married love.

Natural Family Planning has come to occupy a disproportionate place in premarital instruction. Well-formed Christian couples, with a proper understanding of the greatness of their married mission, will always see it, in the context of “the proper generosity of responsible parenthood” (cf. CCC 2368), as a privation which sufficient reasons may indeed impose on them; but still remains a privation for them and especially for their existing children. How they need to be reminded of that incisive observation of John Paul II early in his pontificate: “it is certainly less serious (for a couple) to deny their children certain comforts, or material advantages, than to deprive them of the presence of brothers and sisters, who could help them to grow in humanity, and to realize the beauty of life at all its ages, and in all its variety.”

NFP, if not adopted for serious reasons, introduces that element of calculation into married life, which in turn makes the fostering of generous ideals among the children more difficult. Generous parents make for generous children; calculating parents, for calculating children. Generous parents rear generous children. Calculating parents, smaller-hearted children. The great decline in vocations to the priesthood, etc., over the past 50 years surely finds part of its explanation right here.

Only proper instruction can free our young people preparing for marriage from the pervading anti-family mindset of the world in which they are immersed. The Christian ideal has always appeared as “counter-cultural.” It is no longer just unborn children, but the family itself, the first school of humanity, which is threatened by the culture of death, to which John Paul II so strove to alert us, calling Christians to oppose it with a vigorous culture of life. “Life to humanity,” “Life to the family,” these are the rallying cries that Christian couples (and the world through them) need to be inspired by, and to incarnate in, their married lives.

Little sense of marriage as a God-given call and mission; self-defeating fear of commitment; children seen as “optional extras,” to be rationed or simply avoided; the family regarded as a demanding burden, and not as a fulfilling privilege. All of this is becoming the prevalent outlook of modern western society. And it powerfully affects married Christians, or those preparing for marriage. There are really major issues facing the Synod.



TOPICS: Catholic; Ministry/Outreach; Religion & Culture
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1 posted on 09/24/2014 5:14:10 AM PDT by NYer
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To: Tax-chick; GregB; Berlin_Freeper; SumProVita; narses; bboop; SevenofNine; Ronaldus Magnus; tiki; ...

Ping!


2 posted on 09/24/2014 5:14:30 AM PDT by NYer ("You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears." James 4:14)
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To: NYer

It is all government-caused.


3 posted on 09/24/2014 5:24:59 AM PDT by Cowboy Bob (They are called "Liberals" because the word "parasite" was already taken.)
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To: NYer

Ping


4 posted on 09/24/2014 5:43:49 AM PDT by scouter (As for me and my household... We will serve the LORD.)
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To: NYer

This is one of the best sets of observations on the matter that I have read to date.


5 posted on 09/24/2014 5:50:04 AM PDT by livius
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To: Cowboy Bob

No. It is all caused by selfishness. People want to have the cake, eat it, and not ingest the calories.

People want the perfect wedding, yet the ability to jump as soon as their feelings change.

The issue is that the State, who used to care about the next generation being raised in a stable environment, has bowed the the wishes of those who only care for their personal lusts.


6 posted on 09/24/2014 5:52:14 AM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: NYer

I’m afraid they’re about 30 years too late.


7 posted on 09/24/2014 5:53:05 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: NYer

I agree with Father Burke 100%.


8 posted on 09/24/2014 6:01:31 AM PDT by Tax-chick (I can play the piano just as well with or without shoes.)
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To: Cowboy Bob

I disagree.

The ignoring of Humanae Vitae and the acceptance on contraception is the reason for the disintegration of the family.


9 posted on 09/24/2014 6:47:34 AM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: Salvation

It was a symptom, and certainly helped speed it alone, but you can’t blame contraception alone.

Contraception has been available for just about as long as civilization was around. Same with abortion. The difference is that it went from a net evil (or something that was only to be used in the gravest need) to a net good (ie, not using it is only to be done in the gravest extreme).

Men and women have been having sex for fun since Adam and Eve. Kids were assumed to be part of that.

I think the biggest difference was a shift from worrying about the next generation to actively destroying that generation in order to have pleasure today. Contraception is a huge symptom of that, but not the cause. If people still valued life, contraception would be a moot point. But people would rather feed their appetites than a new child.

Banning the pill wouldn’t change that. Neither will banning abortion. I fear the only thing that will change it is what changed it before. The collapse of the civilization that is actively destroying itself.


10 posted on 09/24/2014 7:09:17 AM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: redgolum
Contraception and abortion becoming socially acceptable and in fact applauded is a huge factor. Yes they have been around for ever but they were not seen as good. Loose women of low morals were seen to have used them. So in our"compassion" they moved to make them normal.

The gay agenda is now doing the same. Soon we will be made to accept child rape and bestiality unless someone stops this decline.

I just can't decide who we more resemble the Roman Empire or the Third Reich. We certainly are taking up some of both. Neither of those "civilizations" ended well.

11 posted on 09/24/2014 7:20:54 AM PDT by defconw (Both parties have clearly lost their minds!)
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To: Salvation

Relying on the state to define the institution of marriage conditioned many to accept that marriage was simply a state contract between any parties allowed by the state and could be broken and resumed as long as the state gave its permission. What parties allowed by the state in the modern era is determined by whatever judges, pols, or the voting majority think should be allowed at any one time, that’s all it will ever be to the state. Pope Leo XIII warned about this 130+ years ago.

Freegards


12 posted on 09/24/2014 7:29:16 AM PDT by Ransomed
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To: redgolum
Dear redgolum,

Law and culture shape each other. The law, whether just or unjust, is a moral teacher. Most people draw from what is legal that which is moral, even when the underlying premise, that a particular law is just, is false.

Thus, legal restrictions and bans on evil things can help shape the consciences of persons. Failure to make illegal certain evils encourages many, especially the weaker-minded, to believe that these evils are not, after all, evil.

Therefore, a ban on abortion, if it were achievable via democratic methods (as opposed to judicial whim) would encourage many to form their consciences a little more properly than they might otherwise.


sitetest

13 posted on 09/24/2014 8:39:49 AM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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To: redgolum

I agree with you on the culture of abortion.


14 posted on 09/24/2014 8:45:35 AM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: sitetest
Siterest.

I totally agree. Law has a huge moral component (no matter what the libertines like to say).

My point was that the shift happened in the culture before the law. Roe V Wade was met with a whimper according to some of the older Pro Life people I have met with (I was born in 75 so I don't remember). By that time, people viewed a woman choosing to kill her child as a net good. The law changed to reflect what the morals of the nation said.

As for what drove what (did the loosening of the contraception laws lead to loose living, or was the trend to loose living in the 1920’s driving the change of the laws) I am leaning to the culture changing. My Grandparents lived through the Roaring 20’s, and had some rather interesting stories what what the youth were doing back then.

The typical Catholic view has been that the laws shape the culture. My point is that the culture shaped the laws. So if we want to truly bring people back on board, we have to create an attractive culture that values life, even sacrificially. My problem is that, as an engineer, I am not the one with the skill set to do that.

15 posted on 09/24/2014 9:17:18 AM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: redgolum; Salvation

It actually goes even deeper than that. The root problem is the denial of the order of creation of man as distinctively male and female each with unique nature and roles and with the purpose of drawing them together in marriage for the procreation of children. When women were driven out of the house to work in the market place the whole purpose of the family was destroyed.


16 posted on 09/24/2014 9:47:42 AM PDT by Petrosius
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To: Petrosius; Salvation
Except the shift happened well before the massive introduction of women in the workforce. There was great pressure to legalize contraception in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

We have to realize that the change isn't new. It happened generations ago, and is only now reaching its peak. Which is also why I have some hope.

Popular culture is starting to turn on abortion. Movies and TV shows that 20 years ago would have shown the “Brave WOMAN having an abortion” now feature the same woman having the child, and often the man being involved in raising it. We are seeing some small shifts.

It isn't a sure thing, and Western civilization may fall soon anyway, but there is signs that the rebellion of the youth of tomorrow will not be to more hedonism, but more morality.

17 posted on 09/24/2014 9:56:09 AM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: redgolum
Dear redgolum,

“My point was that the shift happened in the culture before the law. Roe V Wade was met with a whimper according to some of the older Pro Life people I have met with (I was born in 75 so I don't remember).”

This is mostly not true. I'm a little older than you, and I can tell you, Roe was already a big, stinkin' deal by the time you were born.

At the time of Roe, change in the law through legislative means had pretty much petered out. A few liberal states had permitted abortion under limited circumstances. Liberal scum had “interpreted” those laws, especially in California, to permit widely-available abortion, but even in those states, they had to maintain the fiction that abortion was only for “therapeutic” reasons, and not abortion on demand.

In New York, where one of the more liberal abortion laws was passed while folks weren't paying as much attention, the backlash was so very great, that the very next year, the legislature REPEALED their new liberal abortion law, only to have the repeal vetoed by the demonic Nelson Rockefeller, who, if there are human souls in Hell, is probably among their number.

The very reason for Roe was that once ordinary folks were awakened to what was being done, they shook off their slumber and began organizing and becoming active, and were SUCCEEDING legislatively, and the death-lovers realized that abortion would not become widely available unless they got the judiciary to take up their cause.

It is true that during the 1960s, folks slept while the forces of Satan gathered strength to make their assault on abortion laws, but the population was never widely pro-abort. Many people were in favor of abortion in the “exception cases,” but nearly no one accepted a general “right” to abortion.

But then, folks woke up, and even BEFORE Roe, pro-life movements were underway in those states with the greatest legislative threats to the rights of unborn children.

That was the very motive behind Roe - the increasing opposition to legislative change.

Of course, in the early years AFTER Roe, pretty much nearly every ecclesial community collapsed and gave its approval to Roe, even the Southern Baptists. The seal of the Supreme Court was like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Law shaped culture. And conscience.

The Catholic Church stood nearly alone in formal opposition to the abomination. It took a few years before the others wiped the demonic scales from their eyes and began to see “abortion rights” for what it is: child sacrifice to idols.

Even within the Catholic Church, although our prelates and hierarchs denounced Roe from the start, this has been a movement of the laity, as too many clerics then, and now, still fail to grasp that the Democrat Party is the Party of Satan, of Death, of Hatred, of Hell, of Murder. So we wind up with part-time Catholics/full-time Democrats like Dolan, O’Malley and Donna Wuerl.

But even to this day! Even to this day, roughly three out of five Americans is more pro-life than pro-abortion, in that roughly that percentage would ban abortion except in the “exception cases” that comprise less than 4% of all surgical abortions. Even to this day, some 40+ years after Roe!

Nonetheless, the law has “taught” 40% of our people to be bloodthirsty baby-murderers. May God have mercy on them.


sitetest

18 posted on 09/24/2014 11:43:08 AM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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To: sitetest

Please read this (good book)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Christianity-Religious-Centuries/dp/0060677015

The Early Church grew, and then took over, a society that viewed life much cheaper than we do today. One of the main reason Christianity grew is that they did something the prevailing culture did not do. They kept their little girls alive.

The law was such that it encouraged the killing of babies, and girls more than most. Yet the Church flourished.

Eventually, the law changed (though it took the germanic barbarians coming in to do it).

That is why I don’t see the change in the law as the whole issue. It isn’t even the main reason. The Church isn’t under the same persecution as it was in the bad old days, yet if you look at the abortion stats many “Christian” people are pro abortion.

We went from a religion that valued life, to one that values money. Why? What changed? It wasn’t just the law. The culture inside the church changed.


19 posted on 09/24/2014 12:10:50 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: redgolum
Dear redgolum,

“That is why I don’t see the change in the law as the whole issue.”

Straw man. Read what I actually wrote:

“Law and culture shape each other.

It goes in both directions.

“We went from a religion that valued life, to one that values money.”

Although the culture may value money above most else, my religion does not. Not that there aren't plenty of Catholics who don't value money most, but it can hardly be said that that is an authentic expression of Catholic faith. Rather, it is a defect in the practice of their faith, to the degree that they practice it at all.

As well, although lay Catholics have many flaws (when my sons are here, we spend much time together lamenting the problems of both our hierarchy and our laity), but among the devout Catholics that I've personally met and known (and I am a cradle Catholic who has never not been involved with my church), overvaluing money has not been a common problem that I've encountered. In fact, the opposite has often been the case, in that many Catholics have really messed up economic ideas based on how little they appreciate money and how difficult it is to earn it, especially in great gobs.

As to what changed in the culture generally, it was in some ways a good thing that changed. As issues of class status, of station, of nobility and aristocracy, of position, of all the ways by which people are snobby toward each other, as all these ways receded in importance, one of the last surviving ways to distinguish oneself from the others, one of the last bastions of ego, has been money.

You can trace this desire to be better than the next guy to something we call Original Sin.


sitetest

20 posted on 09/24/2014 12:42:36 PM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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