(Part 5 of 6)
To rescue the family in this time of deterioration, we need to consider strategies that will strengthen marriage and help families survive the adverse pressures they experience in today's world. These strategies need to be developed and reflected upon by our priests, deacons, and laity. If we do nothing, the situation will only continue to grow worse. The following are topics that I recommend to your prayerful reflection.
1. The first area of attention must be how better to prepare people for marriage. The preparation needs to be remote as well as proximate. Self-mastery and self-giving are indispensable virtues for a successful marriage, and need to be learned from childhood as part of our human and religious formation.
The family is the first theater for marriage preparation. Parents should take every opportunity to encourage their children to have a high regard for the Sacrament of Marriage as a pivotal part of God's plan for humanity.
Shared prayer and time spent together are essential ways of strengthening family life and the vocation of married life. The capacity for forgiveness, service, and self-discipline must be cultivated in young hearts if they are to grow into men and women apt for the vocation of married life.
2. Catechetical programs, Catholic school curriculum, youth ministry, retreat movements and Confirmation programs must include some conferences and discussions geared at preparing young Catholics to have a sense of vocation and mission and to have an understanding of, and reverence for, the Sacrament of Marriage. There, too, our young people could be taught the virtues that counteract prevailing cultural trends of promiscuity, materialism, and individualism that undermine people's marriages.
3. In our parishes and on the diocesan level, we must intensify our efforts to prepare those who come to our parishes asking to be married. Ironically, the other Sacraments receive much more preparation than the Sacrament of Marriage: Confirmation, First Penance " First Communion Programs are generally 2 years long. The R.C.I.A. process consists of one year of weekly instruction, and preparation for Permanent Diaconate lasts 3 or 4 years, while preparation for the Priesthood is 6 years.
We encourage the introduction of surveys like FOCCUS, a premarital questionnaire that helps measure compatibility between the fiancés and facilitates conversations in areas of discrepancies.
In the proximate preparation, the witness of committed married couples, deacons and their wives, and various professionals are an invaluable contribution to the preparation of future marriages.
We all owe a debt of gratitude to those dedicated individuals who have worked with Family Life Offices and Pre-Cana Program and the Engaged Encounter.
4. We must all work harder to dissuade young people from cohabitation through parental advice, sermons and homilies, Catholic schools, CCD programs, and youth ministry. This should be done early on, so that our young Catholics will understand the negative consequences of this practice.
5. The spiritual nature of marriage as a Sacrament needs to be stressed. The ritual recommends that occasionally a parish should celebrate the Sacrament of Matrimony at a parish liturgy on Sunday as a way of teaching the ecclesial dimension of the Sacrament. Ethnic parishes and smaller communities where many parishioners know each other lend themselves to this kind of celebration. Sunday marriages help to place the wedding in the context of a community of faith that is not only responsible for preparing the couple, but also for nurturing their sacramental life as a married couple. Such a parish celebration of a wedding is a clear sign that “marriage in the Lord” is building up the Body of Christ.
When young people think about “marriage preparation”, their minds turn to gowns, groomsmen, bands, cake and caterers, honeymoon and how to pay for it all. Our task is to convince them to spend a little more time and energy in preparing for the marriage than for the wedding. The wedding is one day, marriage a lifetime.
Often times, weddings cost many thousands of dollars and are a serious drain on the financial resources of a family. People should be encouraged to have simpler celebrations that will allow the bride and groom to enjoy their wedding and be freed from the pressures of excessive demands and countless details.
Some couples are intimidated by the cost of a wedding and therefore hesitate to seek a Church wedding. There needs to be a clear message that a Church wedding does not require all the expenses so often associated with a wedding celebration.
6. We need mentoring couples, husbands and wives who have experienced the joys and sorrows of married life and who live the Sacrament. Such couples could help both in diocesan programs and in parishes both in preparation programs as well as in support groups aimed at strengthening young couples in their marriages.
7. More must be done to acquaint the community at large with the advances in Natural Family Planning that have come about and to dispel many myths that exist about the teaching of the Church in this area.
As statistics indicate, couples who practice N.F.P. develop very strong marriages and almost never end in divorce.
The work of the Couple to Couple League, Dr. Mercedes Wilson's Family of the Americas, and other organizations have done much to promote the new scientific methods of natural family planning that are 98% effective in avoiding pregnancy and are also very useful for couples struggling with infertility who wish to conceive.
Couples worldwide are choosing the Sympto-Thermal Method and the Billings Ovulation Method and using them with great success. These methods are effective and are consistent with Catholic moral theology and the meaning of marriage. They are indeed marriage-building experiences that put couples in touch with the ecology of their own bodies, and in no way compromise the health of the women with chemicals or devices.
8. Groups like Teams of Our Lady and Marriage Encounter are invaluable resources to strengthen marriages both by the spirituality they promote and the communication skills that they foster.
Teams of Our Lady is a spiritual movement in the Church that was founded in France in 1939 by Father Cafferel when young couples asked him, “How do we find God together.” The Teams have successfully mentored many couples on the path to holiness and to a deeper communication with each other and their children. In our own Diocese, the teams exist in both Portuguese and English groups, and have made an invaluable contribution in strengthening married life.
9. Our annual celebration of wedding anniversaries and renewal of vows each October in the Cathedral is an important way that the Catholic Community publicly acknowledges the heroic witness of our so many Catholic couples who faithfully and generously live their married vocation in our midst.
10. We need to keep teaching the importance of the Sunday Mass in the spiritual life of the family.
Indeed, one of the most promising statistics relating to marriage is that although half of the U.S. marriages end in divorce, that number drops to one in fifty when the couple is married in Church and continues to attend Church regularly. More astonishingly, the failure rate drops to one in 1,105 marriages when the couple who marry in Church continue to attend Church, and also have a prayer life at home.
“The family that prays together, stays together” is not just a cliché, but a formula for success.
