…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.
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 runclear 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 which 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. 1
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. 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. 2
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.” 3
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. 4
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,” 5 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.
[1] cf. “Marriage as a Sacrament of
Sanctification” (Annales Theologici 9 (1995), 71-87), at
http://www.cormacburke.or.ke/node/353
[4] cf. “Family Planning and Married Fulfillment” International
Review, 13 (1989), 189-196 (at the same site: node/347
[5] Or (in apparent contrast but actually in logical complement) the
“right” to a child: for a married couple, for a same-sex couple, for a single
person.
1.
cf. “Marriage as a
Sacrament of Sanctification” (Annales Theologici 9 (1995), 71-87),
at http://www.cormacburke.or.ke/node/353 ↩
2.
cf. the author’s Covenanted
Happiness, Scepter 2011, ch. 8: at the same site: node/995 ↩
3.
Homily, Washington,
D.C., October 7, 1979. ↩
4.
cf. “Family Planning
and Married Fulfillment” International Review, 13 (1989), 189-196 (at the same
site: node/347 ↩
5.
Or (in apparent
contrast but actually in logical complement) the “right” to a child: for a
married couple, for a same-sex couple, for a single person. ↩
About Fr. Cormac Burke
Cormac Burke, a former
Irish civil lawyer, was ordained a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature in 1955.
After 30 years of pastoral work in Africa, the United States, and England, he
was appointed a judge of the High Court of the Church, the Roman Rota
(1986-1999). On retirement, he returned to Nairobi, Kenya, where he continues
to teach and write. His latest book, The Theology of Marriage: Personalism,
Doctrine and Canon Law, is being published Fall 2014 by the Catholic University
of America Press. His website is: www.cormacburke.or.ke
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