In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

The last two answers to be reproduced here!

41. How can the Christian community give pastoral attention to families with persons with homosexual tendencies? What are the responses that, in light of cultural sensitivities, are considered to be most appropriate? While avoiding any unjust discrimination, how can such persons receive pastoral care in these situations in light of the Gospel? How can God’s will be proposed to them in their situation?

Experiencing same-sex attraction is a special case of the problem of chastity in a hypersexualized culture; it is not an essentially different problem, as a male and a female are still just that. What makes it a special case is the unlikelihood of successfully forming a family or freely choosing a celibate vocation—and for this reason, it is unusually likely that the person who experiences same-sex attraction will be severely tempted to despair. Inclusion among faithful families, particularly inclusion along with other singles and with celibates, will alleviate that despair. When the temptation to despair is daily resisted, the grace to practice chastity will be strengthened—and with the growth of the virtue of chastity, the overmastering nature of sexual desire and especially the influence of a hypersexualized culture should become less evident. In time, the freedom from a mistaken reduction of humanity to sexual experience should be discovered—and in some, this will be a more definite and glorious liberation to serve than even many married people will ever achieve; for some, it will mean a discovery that they were not born to be defined and limited by sexual desire, but to depend more fully on God’s grace and grow to serve Him in freedom. Those who have achieved that freedom—who are free from “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” according to those who know them well and those with expertise in spiritual formation under difficult circumstances—may well make first-rate clergy or members of religious institutes.

42. What are the most significant steps that have been taken to announce and effectively promote the beauty and dignity of becoming a mother or father, in light, for example, of Humanae Vitae of Blessed Pope Paul VI? How can dialogue be promoted with the sciences and biomedical technologies in a way that respects the human ecology of reproduction?

I don’t know, but I know that honest appraisal of the real empirical evidence in the hard sciences—not the routine statistical conflation of various nominal essences in the “soft sciences,” and not the popularizing ideological nonsense routinely touted as “science” in public discourse—yields many confirmations of what reason has long declared, and revelation more fully explained, about human growth and development. We have never been so well positioned to declare that a human being, “from conception to natural death,” is at all times a rational soul endowed with a unique creaturely dignity characterized by moral freedom that demands a just social order open to authentic spiritual formation and not closed against the prerogatives of revealed religion.

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

Several questions with shorter answers this time; by this point, many of my answers had already been mostly given in other parts of the survey.

25. Are people aware that the rapid evolution in society requires a constant attention to language in pastoral communication. How can an effective testimony be given to the priority of grace in a way that family life is conceived and lived as welcoming the Holy Spirit?

People are aware that “the rapid evolution in society requires a constant attention to language in pastoral communication” is the sort of language we are constantly offered, these days: whether people think those words mean anything, or whether they know what if anything they mean, is a question that one would need “attention to language in pastoral communication” to answer. As a scholar of literary theory and a teacher of rhetoric, let me say simply that “rapid evolution in society” has not resulted in any changes in human being; it has only led to “constant attention” to the lack of clarity about essences which bedevils any self-authorizing human discourse. Or still more simply, that we only feel compelled to change our terms constantly when social pressure seems more real to us than the realities we are discussing.

I have no idea what the second sentence of this “question” has to do with the first. I also have no clear idea what that sentence could possibly mean. Perhaps we could begin “constant attention to language in pastoral communication” with speaking plain English.

32. The pastoral accompaniment of couples in the initial years of family life — as observed in synodal discussion — needs further development. What are the most significant initiatives already being undertaken? What elements need further development in parishes, dioceses or associations and movements?

NFP training is gradually increasing its profile, but needs to be more clearly integrated into total marriage preparation and enrichment. Efforts to support marriage in prominent movements such as Retrouvaille require identifying a marriage as “troubled” first, which makes it unlikely that couples who want to grow but do not face a crisis will pursue them. Resources for faithful couples who want training and help with practical problems must be greatly multiplied, and the best way to do that is family-to-family with a priority on training in families at all levels. See above.

33. What criteria in a proper pastoral discernment of individual situations are being considered in light the Church’s teaching in which the primary elements of marriage are unity, indissolubility and openness to life?

What I see generally is a tension between proclamation-as-ideal and reality-as-compromise. If we proclaim the reality, we ought to be able to teach how to conform what is mistakenly, ignorantly, or rebelliously mistaken for truth to the truth about reality. If we begin from the assumption that we cannot do so, we will certainly fail to do so. See above.

39. With regard to the divorced and remarried, pastoral practice concerning the sacraments needs to be further studied, including assessment of the Orthodox practice and taking into account “the distinction between an objective sinful situation and extenuating circumstances” (n. 52). What are the prospects in such a case? What is possible? What suggestions can be offered to resolve forms of undue or unnecessary impediments?

This has been extensively discussed already, and really does not need further study. See the work of Walter Cardinal Brandmüller; Raymond Cardinal Burke; Carlo Cardinal Caffarra; Velasio Cardinal De Paolis, C.S.; Robert Dodaro, O.S.A.; Paul Mankowski, S.J.; Gerhard Cardinal Müller; John M. Rist; and Archbishop Cyril Vasil’, S.J. in Remaining In The Truth Of Christ. As to how to help resolve such situations, See Above.

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

23. What can be done so that persons in the various forms of union between a man and a woman — in which human values can be present — might experience a sense of respect, trust and encouragement to grow in the Church’s good will and be helped to arrive at the fulness of Christian marriage? (cf. n. 25)

“Various forms of union between a man and a woman” are confusingly lumped together in the referenced paragraph, in a manner which makes “forms of union” tendentiously multivalent: in some cases, no “forms” in the colloquial sense of rites or observances are in evidence, and the “formal principle” of the coupling involves nothing which is essentially unifying. While there may be some aspiration beyond mere porneia in such couplings, there is nothing properly called a “union.” In other cases, what we sometimes call “common law marriage,” the unifying essence of natural marriage is ostensibly and perhaps actually achieved while the “forms” remain defective. Indeed, although the Church does not normally countenance this for very good reasons, someone might have a real natural marriage as well as celebrating the Sacrament of Matrimony while the civil “forms” of marriage remain defective (moreover, in much of the world today, we would have to call “civil marriage” itself severely defective with regard to the “forms” of marriage, given the atomizing effects of individualistic property laws, divorce laws, and many other innovations against the proper civil effects of natural marriage).

In still other cases, people have observed some “form” and announce themselves as having a “union,” when in fact the nature of the “union” remains at best uncertain because the form observed was radically inappropriate to the uses of natural marriage. A local priest recently attempted marriage, and despite having a civil certificate issued, we may be sure that in fact no marriage occurred—no natural marriage, no Sacrament of Matrimony, and therefore nothing properly called “marriage” regardless of civil legal fictions. Similarly, there are those who are not capable of marriage in other ways who attempt or simulate marriage for a variety of reasons—from political propaganda to genuine longing for family life, for example—and who have no natural marriage and are incapable of celebrating the Sacrament of Matrimony, who are not able to minister those graces to the Church and who have therefore not received from God the means and strength do do so, regardless of what “forms” they may have used, including civil legal fictions which cannot be regarded as having any just effects (though, just as civil “forms” of marriage are often defective with regard to the civil effects of natural marriage, they are also often defective in assigning legal effects to things not capable of being called marriage). In some cases, this is the state of those who are plainly married, having had an acknowledged ratum et consummatum bond and an inappropriate civil divorce.

In other cases, however, there is genuine and ongoing confusion about the nature of what seems to be a “union,” often ratified by some civil “form,” often called “marriage” without clarity about the meaning of the term. Those who are living “at common law” but represent themselves as married, rear children, and then encounter the civil and ecclesial dimensions of marriage, for example, may either discover that they have a natural marriage which requires certain “forms” that have been defective and which guarantee their capacity to serve as ministers of the Sacrament of Matrimony among the People of God, or discover that they ought to be married in order to make a true “union” out of their coupling, and by so doing to begin to heal damage they have done to each other, their children, and their neighbors. In both cases, most of the “forms” will look the same, but the underlying recognition—and the Confession and healing Penance, or the washing away of sins in Baptism—will be crucial to the spiritual wellbeing of all concerned (which can never be the couple alone; it is impossible for marriage to affect only two people). What is important, though, is that by being taught the difference between natural marriage and even the most harmonious illicit coupling, the couple are enabled to recognize their marriage, whether already subsisting or inchoate in “time of ignorance,” for what it really is and must be. They are then able to choose marriage; the essential conversion that is at the heart of the Sacrament of Matrimony, the conversion of concupiscence to chastity within a truly charitable bond, will take place. No amount of trying to “help” the man, the woman, or the children will be truly fruitful unless it addresses them in their integrity, that is, as what either is our ought to be a family formed by marriage.

And what has been true in these cases is still true when we come to the most difficult cases, in which confusion is most likely—and often most chargeable to sloppy teaching within the Church. The case of baptized people who attempt marriage in civil “forms” without consenting to the Sacrament of Matrimony as offered by the Church is a particularly difficult one, because it is hard to explain with precision whether rebellion and ignorance produce the same result with regard to actual “union”—and what happens when they rectify the error. Are those baptized who simply refuse canonical form simply unmarried, regardless of their assertion and any civil recognition? Or are they naturally married, but in disobedience and therefore still separated from communion? Would it be different if their failure to observe canonical form were the result of invincible ignorance or wicked pastoral counsel? In either of these cases, is convalidation simply supplying form to an underlying natural marriage, thus assuring all concerned that the sacramental character has indeed been conveyed to that marriage? Or does what would otherwise not in fact be a natural marriage become a marriage once the baptized have received convalidation of their marriage in the Church? Doubts about this, enlarged by the increasingly defective “forms” of civil recognition of marriage, made severe by wicked priestly advice and “gaming” of the ambiguities, and perpetuated by sloppy or wrongheaded instruction from many who should be teachers among us, not only reduce the incentive for all Christians couples to minister the Sacrament of Matrimony properly within the Church but also make it hard to avoid charges of artificiality. We need the Church to clarify and renew this discipline, possibly even altering some regulations concerning canonical form, so that the reality—natural marriage as definitively characterized in the Sacrament of Matrimony—may not be confused with legal fictions which subvert proper civil recognition of marriage, on the one hand, and vague, unmotivated, or misguided pedagogy of marriage within the Church, on the other.

Finally, there is only one additional layer to the problem in the matter of those who have received a civil divorce and claim to be married to another person, and have observed some civil “forms” that assert these. Unlike other cases in which a claim of marriage is made, and which may be backed by some civil “form” that claims to recognize a marriage, in the case of divorce there is not only a man and a woman, plus any children, plus a neighborhood to be considered—there is also another man or woman, possibly other children, and possibly complications in more than one neighborhood. No decision about marriage affects only one individual, or only one man and one woman; but decisions about attempted marriages after divorce are always by definition decisions about other marriages (or putative marriages). It is therefore only slightly more difficult, but orders of magnitude more important, to speak clearly about the presence or absence of real natural marriages, as definitively characterized in the Sacrament of Matrimony, among those who claim to have dissolved or contracted marriages in such circumstances.

Nothing will benefit those who need “respect, trust, and encouragement” more than being treated as those with the dignity and competence to hear truth about reality clearly and honestly spoken, to be approached as those who might be trusted with the ministry of the Sacrament of Matrimony—the very mystery of Christ’s love for His Church!—and welcomed to the neighborhood of families who model the sharing and service that grows from that sacrament. In the case of those who cannot be reconciled to a true spouse, and cannot be separated from one who is not a spouse, it is vital that their state be clarified as altogether different from marriage. The help of neighborhood could alleviate the demands that might make a separation impossible; it would certainly help to provide models of family to children who must learn that civil divorce alone cannot end natural marriage (though it may mark the admitted nullity of an attempted marriage), and that the couple caring for them are not husband and wife. Families living hospitably and sharing each other’s daily life would also lessen much moral hazard and scandal in the situation, as it will be harder to hide in ambiguity and easier for all to tell that the couple are not living as though they were husband and wife. In that situation, lapses should be less frequent—and easier to repent without seeming to recurrently call into question the entire situation (though the situation should be subject to occasional reassessment). Finally, as these advantages of mutual care, proper models and clear distinction concerning marriage, and reduced moral hazard and scandal are realized, it will also be the case that there will eventually remain no reason for the couple to continue to share a household.

Working toward this goal in a heavily overlapping neighborhood of hospitable, generous, faithful families—who intentionally include singles, celibates, and others in their ministry to the Body of Christ—should reliably produce better results than attempting to proclaim the truth about marriage while excusing every kind of breach as “only human” and then attempting to make compromises between discipline and the myriad of claims people will make about cases. When we refuse to make the effort to direct families toward mutual support and encourage them to make and to model clear distinctions about marriage because we are afraid to tell couples in complicated pseudo-marriage or putative marriage situations that our eventual goal is to remove any obstacles to their true marriage or definite separation, we fail them. We either lie to them or, what is no better from a pastoral perspective, we tell them that we do not respect them enough to tell them the truth; that we do not trust them enough to ask difficult things of them; and that we despair of their ever being brought into full conformity with Christ. To do so is pastoral malpractice, and should lead us to tears of repentance.

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

22. In the case of those who have not yet arrived at a full understanding of the gift of Christ’s love, how can the faithful express a friendly attitude and offer trustworthy guidance without failing to proclaim the demands of the Gospel? (cf. n. 24)

It is inconceivable that we could understand friendship or be “trustworthy” if we failed to proclaim the Gospel, and it is in the Gospel that we learn of God’s gracious provision for our healing—a healing which demands, first, that we know we are sick; a sickness that is sin, the destruction of our cooperative union with the Creator who sustains life within and around us. To affirm that there is any actual tension between “friendly attitude” and “trustworthy guidance” and “to proclaim … the Gospel” would be to believe the Satanic lie that stands in opposition to the Gospel, the ancient serpent’s lie to Eve.

We do seem to experience a tension, though, that derives from several sources: our immaturity and insecurity in friendship; our lack of confidence, or rank unbelief, in the Gospel; our intellectual incapacity to articulate the truth about friendship, charity, and Gospel in the face of cultural misconceptions and even poor teaching in the Church that presumes the real existence of such a tension. The last is the most serious, as it tends to enforce and perpetuate the nominal existence of this banal error.

With regard to the first, or most common, cause of the delusion that cultivation of amity and ethos is at tension with sharing the Gospel clearly and adequately, we must help people to develop mature friendships and surround them with a neighborhood in which such friendships are normal. Having become secure in such friendship, a person will recognize that in a situation where a tension between the Gospel and the ease of friendship seems to exist, it is not of the nature of real friendship or true Gospel that such a tension exist. It will then be a matter of justice to determine what is due in that situation, to be surmounted with a charity which seeks to creatively infuse the situation with goodness and truth. Does a friend seem to feel “attacked” whenever the Father’s gender is brought up? The friend can still enjoy lunch with a friend, and can still be encouraged to think about what role a Creator would play in the lives and loves of [His] creatures. If that friend insists that continued friendship hinges on one’s denial of the Father’s paternity or the Son’s essential masculinity, however, then that insistence is unjust; charity demands equally that one show care for that friend in appropriate ways and that one refuse to deny the truth that alone can truly help that friend.

One cannot move forward in charity by destroying the ground of charity; such an act is not the act of a friend. The general good of “friendliness,” or affability, itself a form of justice, is to be cultivated; but it is less than charity, and must be overruled by the gracious work of God that makes us bold witness of a healing Truth. As the Ox says,

Because man is a social animal he owes his fellow-man, in equity, the manifestation of truth without which human society could not last. Now as man could not live in society without truth, so likewise, not without joy, because, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. viii), no one could abide a day with the sad nor with the joyless. Therefore, a certain natural equity obliges a man to live agreeably with his fellow-men; unless some reason should oblige him to sadden them for their good. (II.II.114.2)

With regard to the second cause of this sad misconception, we often doubt that we can help friends by risking their friendship in the service of the healing Truth because we ourselves are wounded by disbelief and despair, whether we succumb to those wounds or bear them. This challenge, too, is best met by surrounding the faithful with a neighborhood where faithful friendships are normal. However, to this we must superadd the more essential step of boldy, forthrightly, without fallacious and equivocal faux-intellectual nuancing or pandering to secular cultural impositions, proclaiming the Gospel as we have received it: in Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, in the dominical sayings, in the whole of the Book of the Gospel and the whole of the Scriptures, in the dogmatic definitions of the Church, in the utterances of her Fathers and Doctors, in the concomitance of the whole of Sacred Tradition that bespeaks the sense that those who are faithful do indeed have of the faith.

Sociological totalitarianism and merely majoritarian accounts of reality, alike, fail to address the real core of human desire for and aversion to God, and have as their first move a dismissal of the “democracy of the dead” and the divine Authorship of the whole of Creation with particular privilege for the signature works of Redemption. When doubt and disbelief are trumpeted from the highest reaches of the Church, you may surely expected that the Church militant is struggling within itself more than contending with the “principalities, powers, thrones, and dominions”; we know that “the whole world is under the power of the evil one,” but depend on those proclaiming the Gospel for the spiritual strength to witness confidently to its truth.

And the last is an educational matter: without real hermeneutical resources that proceed, as the Gospel does, “from faith to faith,” not only the faithful but also their teachers are left to respond incoherently to the chaos and confusion of dominant popular thought. When the Magisterium sounds like a gabbling talk show, how are the faithful to respond to the accusatory and indistinct challenges they are posed by their culture? We must know how to unfold the riches of Scripture accurately and without alienating and fragmenting compromises with hostile theories of truth, history, and literacy; we must know how to make the elementary distinctions of category and causality that will help us to answer cultural questions usefully, rather than to slip into the web of lies posed as either/or choices about merely nominal essences. Unfortunately, neither our ecclesial leadership nor (still less!) our educational models are well suited to teaching us these necessary intellectual virtues. This must be rectified.

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

21. How can people be helped to understand that no one is beyond the mercy of God? How can this truth be expressed in the Church’s pastoral activity towards families, especially those which are wounded and fragile? (cf. n. 28)

“Do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not know that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” St. Paul’s opening discourse in the Epistle to the Romans, especially ch. 2 vv. 1-11, is uniquely appropriate to this conversation; it addresses both the unjustly judgmental and the selfishly “merciful” in one sin-crushing call to repentance and conversion. Gossip and sexual perversity, slander and slaughter, are alike included in the list of sins manifesting the wickedness pervasive in human hearts and human culture. All who recognize some acts as evil, as offenses against a culture-transcending and non-situationally-bounded norm, as personally repugnant to reasonable people and a just God, are bound to admit that they too have committed such acts. In the face of such universal condemnation, we cannot justify ourselves by our innocence of the crimes of others; we cannot shape civil laws so as to incriminate only those who do not share our preferred mix of virtues or vices.

Our only justification is found in our surrender to Christ, our submission to His Church as the conduit of His grace, our love for His Mother as the vessel of His Incarnation; we will never be justified by our own doing, unaided, nor will we be justified by our own delusion, vindicated by being “on the right side of history” or otherwise relatively triumphant or dominant in our transient day. The Church, to whom we have been entrusted by Christ, to whom Christ has entrusted Himself in the Eucharist and His Word in the Gospel, should be clear that we are all sinners, all in need of grace which follows from repentance and becomes evident in conversion; we should never tire of declaring, in the words of a song whose Protestant author likely believed they were contrary to Catholic doctrine, that

I’m only a sinner, saved by grace!
This be my story, to God be the glory,
I’m only a sinner, saved by grace!

But if we are being saved by grace, then we are being transformed by grace, not left to our misery and sin, our self-justifications and our rationalizations, our hostility against hard and healing truths, our rejection of goods harder and more worthwhile than our little pieces of the good. If we are being saved by grace, we will think of substantial beauty rather than of consumptive passions or consumer pleasures.

The more “wounded and fragile,” the more they must be included in our hospitable and generous attachment of those who do not enjoy the blessings of family. Some will be best attached to mentoring couples past parenting age, who often make excellent “surrogate families” for the unattached and damaged. I can personally attest to the healing power of more than one couple who took me “under the wing,” bought and cooked meals, helped me move, and found me avenues of participation in local Christian groups. I can personally attest to the value of spending time among young families and families with growing children, especially as a thirty-something single man in a strange place, an experience I repeated in several cities on two continents.

There is no substitute for honesty about our own struggles (Non Sum Dignus) and kind firmness about the call to repentance, but its necessary adjunct in the case of people seeking healing and re-introduction to the norms of “natural marriage” and family life as a preparation for life in the Church (and, if so called, the Sacrament of Matrimony) is a definite, promoted, supported involvement in the life of faithful families active in the Church.

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

18. What initiatives can lead people to understand the value of an indissoluble and fruitful marriage as the path to complete personal fulfilment? (cf. n. 21)

Well, someone seeking “personal fulfillment” is likely to be disappointed, as “personal fulfillment” is not possible on the terms our culture offers. Instead, one will be compelled to pursue distractions and delusions to the point of exhaustion, for satiety is impossible in such circumstances.

Nevertheless, for the one who hears the call to participate in the lives of others, most highly in the life of God by being made part of the Body of Christ, and therefore part of the lives of all the faithful in all times and places, whose joys and sufferings are essential to the good of all souls and the fulfillment of all Creation, there can be “personal fulfillment” in the form of surrender to the Creator, the Christ, His Cross, and His Church. The Sacrament of Matrimony is the way in which Christ especially calls into that life many of those not called out of this world (to holy virginity) or not configured to His foot-washing Headship within the Body (in the Sacrament of Order). Until we are satiated with Christ, so that we hunger for Him more than necessary food, we are condemned to restlessness (acedia) and avidity (concupiscentia).

Almost every religious and philosophical viewpoint except that of perpetual adolescence in a consumerist culture, that is, every mature viewpoint not obliterated by the “youth culture,” recognizes that this restlessness and avidity are the diseases common to all; that physical poverty is only the most recognizeable mask of spiritual poverty, and its least dangerous one. By boldly proclaiming that the Sacrament of Matrimony, as the ministry of the faithful husband and wife to the Church, embodied most plainly in their children, is a calling unlike any simulacrum available, and that even “natural marriage” is more truly fulfilled in the love of Christ that calls forth a response from His Bride, the Church engages in a verbal and practical catechesis, an “echoing” that has the richness God’s Word alone can give it, and is therefore immeasurably superior to any public-relations strategy or quasi-pastoral dilution.

We, married people in the Church, carry this burden—a difficult weight, an obligation, and a message—for the world, and we long for the whole Church to boldly say, “We are with you!” so that we can then say to those who struggle around us, “We, our families, our friends, we are all with you.” We cannot do it alone, or unsupported; we cannot stay strong for the whole Church while the Church weakens us by her lack of support, her uncertain words on vital matters of the Word.

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

17. What initiatives in catechesis can be developed and fostered to make known and offer assistance to persons in living the Church’s teaching on the family, above all in surmounting any possible discrepancy between what is lived and what is professed and in leading to a process of conversion?

It will be necessary to build a two-headed approach.

On the one hand, we need to bring families more formally into the life of the parish, and neighborhood-building more concretely into perspective as a good of parish life, so that the practical life of families becomes both the functional life of the parish and the means of diffusing the graces of Matrimony throughout the parish. On the other hand, we should make it an intentional practice to attach singles and “the stranger among you” to household through bonds of shared hospitality and shared work. This requires a more thoroughly practical understanding of the fruits of religion than is common in American thought, today, where “separation of church and state” has become an ideological fixation that prevents clear understanding of spiritual formation and religious obligation as concrete, consequential, and local. Even well-meaning and faithful teachers often express their understanding of the faith in almost Gnostic terms, incorrectly bifurcating material/spiritual and bodily/eternal as though the eternal were the invisibly ideal, rather than the durably and essentially real; as though any good could be spiritual if it were merely notional.

In integrating these two prongs (family-to-family and attaching-to-families), it will be necessary to rely on a diversity of informal education methods as well as any formal methods that may be available. Responsible teachers should be prepared to direct interested groups of the faithful to approved materials, and to integrate such studies with the teaching ministry of the Church by involving both catechists and priests in visitation and assessment of these efforts, concentrating on their doctrinal and spiritual-formation effects without ignoring their practical and social worth.

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

12. How can people be helped to understand that a relationship with God can assist couples in overcoming the inherent weaknesses in marital relations? (cf. n. 14) How do people bear witness to the fact that divine blessings accompany every true marriage? How do people manifest that the grace of the Sacrament sustains married couples throughout their life together?

Does not the last part of this question subtly confuse the direction of ministry in the Sacrament of Matrimony? The Sacrament, celebrated and ratified by the couple and ministered to the faithful, is solemnized and witnessed and blessed by the Church. Nor is the Sacrament one which, like Holy Communion or Reconciliation or Anointing of the Sick, is fundamentally oriented to the renewing and nourishing of the wayfarer; it is one which, like its correlative Order, conveys divine grace precisely for the purpose of faithfully responding to a certain call. Thus, in large measure, the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony is manifested precisely insofar as the bond itself is honored and fruitful; by being fruitful, especially in bearing and rearing children, and also in every avenue of service to which the Church calls them, the couple ministers the grace of the Sacrament among the faithful. As a sentimental favorite says,

He giveth more grace, when the burdens grow greater;
He giveth more strength, as the labors increase;
To added afflictions, he addeth His mercy;
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.

Therefore, when the Church calls on the couple to be faithful, the Church calls forth the grace of the Sacrament which is already theirs.

Every couple, and each husband and wife, and every child, will likely fail in great ways or small, to heed this call and realize the goods of Matrimony and family life; the grace will be “spilled,” or wasted (at least in appearance, and for a time). These failings will affect the family, and certainly the family must be reminded of the special gift of frequent forgiveness that belongs to the “domestic church”; yet these failings do not only affect the family’s internal working, but affect the whole Church—they impede the ministry of grace that flows from the Sacrament of Matrimony, they distort the currents of her working, they leave ruptures within and among her members, ruptures which must be healed at their source or repaired when the harm is done and the cost is higher. Therefore the Sacrament of Matrimony must not be treated as self-healing, or self-supporting, as though for all things marriage we had only one relevant Sacrament. Rather, the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the importance of performing penances and reparations, as well as living in justice and charity in more easy and obvious ways, must be taught boldly as the necessary supports to Matrimony as well as other states in which we live the life of the Body of Christ together. Reconciliation must not be understood only as the technical precondition for Communion for those consciously guilty of a narrow class of not-quite-rationalized sins, but as the remedy that it is for breaches in the life of the Church; when we are angry with each other in marriage, we harm not only ourselves, but the whole Church, and it is an act of the whole Church, of the “one Christ” that is Head and Body, through which the life of Matrimony is faithfully lived. Therefore both frequent and full Confession and the performance of truly healing penitential and reparative acts, and the worthy and reverent reception of Communion with clear conscience and right disposition, should be treated as necessary adjuncts to fidelity in marriage.

When the Sacrament of Matrimony is treated as graced for the service of the Church, and the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist are treated as the necessary adjuncts of Matrimony for the free and full sharing of the graces needed for fidelity in marriage and fruitful service in the Church, then we may expect to see “divine blessings” manifested in transformed lives and transformative bonds.

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

10. What human pedagogy needs to be taken into account — in keeping with divine pedagogy — so as better to understand what is required in the Church’s pastoral activity in light of the maturation of a couple’s life together which would lead to marriage in the future? (cf. n. 13)

The question and the text of the Relatio paragraph are once again obscure. Nonetheless, we will muddle on.

The Relatio at 13: “By reason of the divine pedagogy, according to which the order of creation develops through successive stages to the order of redemption, we need to understand the newness of the Christian Sacrament of Marriage in continuity with natural marriage of the origins, that is, the manner of God’s saving action in both creation and the Christian life.” I parse this as a reference to the dual ordering of causation we often observe in theology, that is, to the difference between the order of generation and the order of causation.

Because God is perfect act, when we observe an unmistakably divine action in process, we know that the end is already realized in the order of final causation, that is, with regard to what will be accomplished inclusive of all contingencies encompassed by the divine decree. Because God’s action does encompass and maintain in force such contingencies, including the moral liberty of rational creatures, divine acts which encompass such contingencies appear in seed form and flower in history, assuming they are such as must flower and not wilt. (Of course, we know that an “indelible mark on the soul” may remain indelible, though one may still choose separation from God, though Heaven forfend such a result!) Therefore, we must understand that natural marriage, intrinsic and fundamental to the Order of Creation, and therefore prior to the Church in the order of generation, is ineradicable and unalterable even by the Church.

Christ, the “Lord of the Sabbath,” has already revealed the direction of the unfolding flower of natural marriage, the Sacrament of Matrimony. The Church has always recognized that she is bound by the dominical sayings that determine clearly within history the orientation of the divine action in marriage; this action is always present in seed in natural marriage, and flowers in the Sacrament of Matrimony, though its full fruit remains bound up in the mystery of the Body of Christ, reserved to the Last Day.

A man and a woman inclined to marriage—or a man seeking a woman, or a woman seeking a man, desiring marriage—have begun to receive the seed of marriage, in their desire for permanence and their inclination to exclusivity, especially as those two are linked to their sexual behavior. However, the planting of this seed remains uncertain until all of the elements that determine marriage—the elements the Church has recognized in the dominical sayings, as well as the rest of revelation—are manifested in the marriage.

Thus the divine pedagogy, and the Church’s Magisterium as its submissive agent and authoritative recognition, require of all responsible people an earnest teaching that marriage must be an indissoluble, exclusive union of a man and a woman ordered to the engendering and education of their children. That is, the divine pedagogy through both nature and dominical teaching establishes this meaning, and this responsibility for teachers, with regard to natural marriage. (We must at all times avoid confusing “natural marriage” with “civil [recognition of] marriage,” which is related to but not constitutive of “marriage” per se.)

In the Sacrament of Matrimony, Christ and His Church bless, witness, and enlarge the spiritual and practical benefits of marriage. In the order of generation, the family—the society formed by natural marriage—stands prior to the Church, and is not constituted by her. However, the action of Christ in determining within history what might have been obscured by human sinfulness also teaches us to recognize a special grace, and a special obligation, that a man and a woman may minister to the Church who witnesses their marriage. The Church has clearly recognized that the man and the woman together are the ministers of matrimony, and as ministers of grace for the whole Church, the man and the woman have both a privilege and an obligation which honors their calling and holds them responsible, not alone to themselves, but to a whole community.

The Church’s “pastoral activity,” therefore, must continually work to annex to the desires of man of woman, and woman for man, the ideas of fruitfulness and permanence; to annex to the desires of man and woman for permanent, fruitful union the ideas of responsible and blessed service, in rearing children and in sharing the blessings of holy matrimony with the whole Church; and to clarify that there is not, and cannot be, any other “marriage” but that which by nature has been clearly set forth, but revelation underscored, and by dominical saying determined beyond all contingency.

To that end, the Church must clearly state the distinctions between marriage and “civil [recognition of] marriage,” which is valid when there is a natural marriage actually recognized by a civil document, and a dead letter (or perverse folly!) when there is no such natural marriage. Two men, or two women, or whatever else is not one man and one woman mutually consenting to indissoluble, exclusive union ordered to fecundity, cannot be the subjects of marriage, and no regime can cause them to be so. Nor, indeed, can the Church; the Church can no more make a “marriage” of a same-sex union than she can make Aphrodite a member of the Holy Trinity.

It is therefore urgent that the Church clearly define her own deference to the authentic definition of “natural marriage,” so as to distinguish both the “ecclesial [recognition of] marriage” that is part of the discipline of the Sacrament of Matrimony and the “civil [recognition of] marriage” that is part of a just civil order’s response to the realities of marriage and family life, without appearing to muddle categories or to speak in Gnostic fashion of a secret “sacramental marriage” invisibly exalted above mundane “civil marriage.” These incoherent terms must be abandoned at all costs, lest we add confusion to a disordered world, rather than speaking as the “experts on humanity” we once claimed we could be.

Finally, then, we ought to proceed in “human pedadogy” on two fronts, at the same time: First, we must fully engage faithful families, precisely as families, in the life of the Church, building neighborhood and ending our seduction by the “youth culture” that defeats intergenerational tradition-building and robust spiritual formation. The “divine pedadogy” of marriage is a double witness, to the children of the faithfulness of the parents through their participation in the life of the Body of Christ, and to the assembly of the faithful of the family through their fidelity and growth as a family, including their honest struggles and the resources those will demand from the Church. Only by rigorously forming those who are to be married, and warmly engaging them in the life of the Church, can this fruit of the sacrament be enjoyed—too often, today, it is partly or wholly wasted, withering on the vine unused (or falling off, rotten). Second, we must fully engage singles, strangers, friendly unbelievers, and whoever else comes into the neighborhood of the Church with the lives of families, not with mere programs—especially not programs with segregate them with “their own kind” and pander to them without providing them the examples and blessings of interacting with those who express the various vocations of familial, clerical, and religious life. Breaking down these segregating, atomizing, individualistic programs in favor of a richly interdependent neighborhood families, we can and should shape a neighborhood where single people and those with damaging or disordered experiences of “family” can be quite literally touched by those living this vocation, and can share in the mutual assistance of all walks of life, assistance sanctified and supported by the Sacraments of Matrimony and Order.

We cannot integrate those who reject “natural marriage” into the life of the Church as married, for they are not; we can integrate anyone into the life of the Church as friends of her families, her clergy, and her vowed religious brothers and sisters. When we make faithful families, by their example and their generous and hospitable sharing in the life of the Church, the ministers of grace that Christ made them, we can expect those who are not attached to families, or who misunderstand families, to begin to benefit from their example—and more profoundly, from the grace they minister to the whole “household of faith.”

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

9. What marriage and family values can be seen to be realized in the life of young people and married couples? What form do they take? Are there values which can be highlighted? (cf. n. 13) What sinful aspects are to be avoided and overcome?

There are a number of goods aspired to by adolescents approaching adulthood, and sometimes those goods are realized in a lifetime of fruitful marriage (not forgetting the coordinate goods of celibacy and single service). As a college professor, I can tell you that most students do imagine future lives as including marriage and family, and they are motivated to consider problems such as providing for and educating families. However, they have been brought up in a culture that provides no clear path from dependent childhood to responsible married life, preferring to multiply distractions and prolong adolescence. This “youth culture” is a seedbed of profoundly debilitating ideological delusions. Compounding this, even the brightest students are taught to emulate teachers and members of elite culture whose faulty anthropology and political ideology pits them against the “heteronormativity” (as they call it) of family life. Young people comfortable with a hedonistic, consumerist lifestyle are therefore kept in perpetual adolescence by their commercial culture, while those interested in growth and the common good are taught to celebrate everything except intergenerational family culture, and to regard traditional marriage as a negotiation for power rather than a unique good.

Under these conditions, the goods of marriage would be hard enough to attain even if our culture had not taken as axiomatic the exploded pseudo-psychology of Freud, in which sexual drive is a deterministic constant which varies only in its expression, and “heterosexual” marriage a conventionalization of that expression for purposes of social utility—a view of marriage now inaccurately regarded as “traditional” by many well-meaning people and by many academics critical of intergenerational family culture. Under these conditions, almost all people are persuaded that it is “healthy” to express sexual impulses and “unhealthy” not to do so, and that reasonable patience and acceptance of limitation in sexual desire is “repression.” For those so taught, all relationships are modifications of a drive to sexual mastery of others, the modifications being more or less successful from one situation to another. When people so taught are offered no alternative to the infantilizing “youth culture” but a “liberating” ethic of suspicion against family culture, their normal sexual impulses are thwarted; for many, there is no correspondence of their desires, the end of those desires, teaching and practice in fitting those desires to their ends, or even social reinforcement for seeking such fitness. As a result, the sexual practices of college students are not so much promiscuous as thoroughly confused, incoherent both rationally and socially. Unfortunately, that confusion does not eliminate the consequences of sinful behavior.

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

7. To what extent and by what means is the ordinary pastoral care of families addressed to those on the periphery? (cf. n. 11). What are the operational guidelines available to foster and appreciate the “desire to form a family” planted by the Creator in the heart of every person, especially among young people, including those in family situations which do not correspond to the Christian vision? How do they respond to the Church’s efforts in her mission to them? How prevalent is natural marriage among the non-baptized, also in relation to the desire to form a family among the young?

It is hard to make plain sense of the language of the Relatio here: “People need to be accepted in the concrete circumstances of life. We need to know how to support them in their searching and to encourage them in their hunger for God and their wish to feel fully part of the Church, also including those who have experienced failure or find themselves in a variety of situations.”

What on earth could we mean by this? What people have not “experienced failure” and do not “find themselves in a variety of situations”? What “concrete circumstances of life” are under consideration? Among whom, and for what purpose, do these “people need to be accepted”?

Lung cancer patients are accepted in the oncology ward for treatment; smokers are not accepted in neonatal intensive care, though they can be if they scrub in and agree not to light up. Burn victims are accepted by the burn unit, even if they are also arsonists, but we do not thereby think arson acceptable. We accept children for elementary school, but we insist that adults who can’t read attend literacy programs elsewhere. When we embrace those who are at least open to the idea of sharing in the goods of Creation and, we hope, of Redemption; we do not thereby take into ourselves the smoker’s lung cancer, his addiction, or his defiance of doctors’ advice.

To truly accept the poor in their concrete circumstances is first to regard people without regarding their poverty, and then to regard their poverty as a problem to be alleviated. When we turn to addicts, or white-collar criminals, or violent felons, or asthmatics, or many another voluntary or involuntary, habitual or episodic, moral or incidental problem, we should always regard people first without regarding their ills and evils, and then we should seek to remedy those ills and evils in a manner actually suited to each specific problem. Each person’s dignity is unquestioned, but that dignity can be obscured by sinful action in ways that “concrete circumstances” by themselves cannot accomplish; and every person needs to actually be made a partaker in Redemption, someone to be regarded “in Christ” as a “new creation,” more than to be welcomed into any society not oriented to accomplishing that end.

Those who are not attached to an intact, faithful family need, as a practical matter, to be integrated into the life of families; the hospitality of families and their interdependence with any who belong to the Church and her neighborhood is the means par excellence of achieving this end.

Some notes: The call to marriage bears almost no resemblance to what our commercial and political culture inculcates under such headings as “sexual awakening,” romantic pursuit, coupling, and having a wedding. Unfortunately, even within the Church, we have too often been colonized by the ideology of our culture: Where we should point out that wounds received in our families and from our culture do limit culpability, but also demand education and discipline as a healing remedy, we are all too prone to oscillate between a determinist view (in which our sin is involuntary and overpowering) and a Pelagian view (in which all necessary moral resources are bound up in each individual’s willpower). The Church, even in its most recent teaching, has wisely condemned both of these views.

Training specifically necessary for those young people who will most likely need to know how to work and live as a family fundamentally comes from families trained to serve in the Church. These families model the response to Christ’s call for themselves and for other families. Understanding the outright hostility of our culture to those who embrace this call, though, it is perhaps especially important that those who serve Christian families should work to strengthen and extend existing arrangements for marriage preparation. A lifelong commitment must not seem to hang on temporary emotional intensity or a single day’s training at a classroom “retreat.” Engaged couples to be married in the Church will need examples, companions, pastoral counsel, and Natural Family Planning training sufficient to begin practice months before the wedding night.

Families produce single people; single people become husbands, wives, priests, monks, nuns, and serve God in a wide variety of ways. While both marriage and ordination involve specific sacramental graces, the single person seeking a call and the vowed religious alike share in the universal call to holiness, to membership in the Body of Christ, and to dedicated service. The final vows of those who enter religious orders express the judgment of the individual and the community that a divine call to total commitment according to a certain rule has been understood and embraced. For those who serve Christ in singleness without any such final commitment, the possibility of such a commitment cannot be entirely ruled out; there is therefore always a certain shared sense of “waiting” and “looking” among singles. In this state, single people enjoy significantly greater freedom to change their situation and follow various perceived calls, making singles especially valuable in meeting acute needs and helping to launch new endeavors.

Each single person, however, will tend to also experience certain limitations in ministry: restlessness, loneliness, lack of stability, and a sense of living in the margins of the Church are very real afflictions even for those singles who patiently serve God with their lives. Families and those who serve families in the Church have an obligation to involve singles with married couples and whole families, encouraging them to have a share in the hospitality, shared work, and child-rearing opportunities that both constitute and model the family life. Singles groups and teams of singles tend to reinforce the sense that single service is a “waiting stage.” While such “while you wait” groups sometimes help faithful singles meet suitable partners, they are by no means an adequate description of the single person’s involvement in the concrete life of the Church. Healthy single service is service among, within, and to the families, vowed religious, and clergy who support them and rely on them.

In addition to recognizing that the faithful family is peripheral in our culture, and that the single person needs to be integrated among families, there are other “outlier phenomena” to be considered. The autistic young person will need special training, and the family special care; in a very different way, so will the gifted athlete. The person who struggles with feelings of anxiety and condemnation so relentless that he is tempted to disbelieve the goodness of God needs special training, and his family special care; in a very different way, so will the mother who had her child surgically killed in the womb. The successful businessman whose time and talent are heavily mortgaged in order to secure treasures needs particular admonitions and opportunities, and so will his family. The schizophrenic needs both care and medication; the alcoholic needs help abstaining. The unchaste need help recognizing chastity in a culture militantly opposed to the display of that virtue; the technically chaste need help flourishing and bearing fruit as hospitable, generous lovers.

If there are any other “concrete circumstances” than these, if any “variety of situations” we might be discussing involve matters more profound than autism or schizophrenia, more life-altering than the choice between chastity and porneia, more socially consequential than the choice between commercial success and evangelical poverty, more spiritually wrenching than a mother’s weeping for her murdered baby or the scrupulous soul’s torment, then we may need to specify them clearly in order to discuss them fruitfully.

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

6. How do Christian families bear witness, for succeeding generations, to the development and growth of a life of sentiment? (cf. ns. 9 – 10). In this regard, how might the formation of ordained ministers be improved? What qualified persons are urgently needed in this pastoral activity?

Even after reading the (rather turgid) paragraphs from the Relatio, I am quite unable to think of a straightforward sense in which “a life of sentiment” is the sort of thing whose “development and growth” we need to seek—what kind of “sentiment”? what sort of “life”? in what direction should “development” proceed? And even should we assign meanings to these terms, what would it mean to “bear witness” to such a thing? I am at a loss to process this gobbledygook. I’ll assume that we are meant to understand “provide to succeeding generations a model of emotional maturity.”

Emotional maturity means the ability to actively engage the whole of life without becoming enervated or sinking into despair, on the one hand, or seeking intoxicants and distraction for escape, on the other. Families are the model of this insofar as they concretely share not only their own but also the Church’s life, and especially when they do so in neighborhood.

Some notes, including at the end a note on those called to orders:

When husband and wife live their marriage as mutual support in ministry to the “household of faith,” beginning with their own highest responsibility for one another and their children but proceeding immediately to their Church family, and then to their whole neighborhood, the marriage covenant concretely performs what it symbolizes; its grace bears fruit, without being spent and wasted.

I would like to navigate past two errors toward a truth. The family, as a unit, has specific responsibilities both within itself and toward the Church that separate individuals would not have: responsibilities having to do with the proclamation of Christ’s love for His Body bound up with the sacrament itself, as well as the education of children for the Church. Those who serve families in the Church therefore have to address families as units of responsibility: husbands for their households, husbands and wives for each other, parents for children, and even children as responsible to their parents and for their siblings. Church ministry ought never begin from a position of dividing families into separate units, only subsequently attempting to teach these alienated souls to simulate appropriate roles.

On the other hand, it is precisely this understanding that requires us not to imagine that any family is completely autonomous, either! I have seen some “family integrated church,” home-school, and traditionalist material that comes very close to setting up each “domestic church” as its very own Protestant denomination. Precisely because the graces and promises of Christ for marriages and children are bound up with the sacramental economy that Christ entrusted to His Church, because Matrimony as well as Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist are necessary to Christian families and available only in the Church, the family as a responsible unit is responsible to Christ, and therefore to His Church. Those who serve families in the Church ought always to call families as families to serve Christ through his Church, and so fulfill their callings as Christian husbands, wives, parents, and children.

Such a call, as I’ve said, must address the family in its integrity, as a responsible unit. Families should be called to work proper to families, such as caring for children and passing on trade skills, wisdom, basic education, and spiritual lessons; and they should be resourced in a manner that fits this calling. Families can also have advantages in productivity and efficiency over single people or even teams of singles in certain areas of practical life and Christian service, if they are taught to regard themselves as functional units of society (a reality our culture actively works to obscure and fragment, today). Teaching families to work together for goals proper to their Christian calling, to forego individual opportunities in order to achieve common goals, makes strengthening family bonds one and the same as helping family members achieve their calling in Christ.

Such teaching should also help to prevent a harmful byproduct of much “traditional family values” teaching, the tendency to regard a self-absorbed nuclear family as the Christian ideal. In fact, this ideal is not “traditional” in any society, but reflects the negative impact of industrialization and its search for the smallest “atom” of human society, the economic unit that most efficiently organizes capital and consumption to serve financial and commercial interests. Strong families are not strong in themselves, but as they honor and depend on extended families and are firmly embedded in thriving communities of faith, work, and cultural practice.

Christians serving families should always focus on the family as a fruitful unity, not an atom of consumption; the family must be taught to “do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith,” and such teaching will always involve the family in the reciprocal sharing of care, hospitality, and support by which whole communities become impregnated with familial life.

Ordained ministers need to have grown up in neighborhoods comprising faithful families, so that mundane virtues will have been formed before heroic virtues are demanded of them.

We urgently need leaders who are competent to help families build neighborhood in each parish, leaders who will help to organize the local civic, economic, and educational measures required to build civil societies in the middle of a culture generally bent on atomizing them. These will be people with an understanding of the importance of trades and professions, and a good sense of how living in any occupation is a family job.

In early 2015, our Archdiocese like many others was offered a 47-question open-ended survey in order to gather information about what people throughout the world understand about the Church’s teaching, her pastoral practice, current conditions, and the reality of marriage and family life.  The survey was probably a poor translation, and the questions were ill-structured, so I ended up writing about 15,500 words in the one week window for completing it.  I have chosen to share a few of these, here, as well, for your comments.  I will quote the question, and what follows is my answer.  I have edited the answers slightly for brevity, politeness, and clarity.

4. Beyond proclaiming God’s Word and pointing out extreme situations, how does the Church choose to be present “as Church” and to draw near families in extreme situations? (cf. n. 8). How does the Church seek to prevent these situations? What can be done to support and strengthen families of believers and those faithful to the bonds of marriage?

These questions are so broad that it is hard to imagine many people answering them meaningfully in the time alotted.

I am going to interpret “how does” to mean “what do you see … doing” and “extreme situation” to refer to actual extremes, as in Libya or Nigeria or China, rather than admittedly severe first-world problems.

Judged as an NGO, the Church is pretty effective. It is a meaningful (though increasingly marginalized) broker at the UN, and Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services, and a spaghetti soup of related aid organizations do much-needed work and are highly regarded for doing so.

Whether NGO work is “as Church” in a more robust sense or not, of course, it is still good to do. However, it has a flaw. In communities with severe local culture problems but surplus wealth, the hand that gives to charity (often without clear articulation to “support of the Church”) often turns out to be a prosthesis for an amputated hand—the hand that should clasp the neighbor’s, open the door of hospitality, cling tightly to a spouse, help children walk, break down walls of injustice, and labor for the common good. It is simply easier to give sporadically to remote causes than to risk the messiness of personal involvement with families that live near us. As a result, the Church’s NGO-style activity often comes into direct competition with its more primary mission, to build Christians together fit for charity with God and each other.

At a more local level, parish ministry must stop following the age-segregating norm of secular institutions, which have every reason to disrupt the traditionary action of families and churches. Rather than having a plethora of divisions in the parish, we must attempt to have a parish of families, and to involve those not in families with families. Single people will not learn family living from other singles; the young will not learn childcare except from the married with children; the new parents will not learn wise child-rearing except from those who have survived it!