Thursday, July 18, 2013

4 Pillars of Sacramental Marriage

4 Pillars of Sacramental Marriage


Posted: 18 Jul 2013 08:43 AM PDT
Archbishop John C. Nienstedt
Archbishop John C. Nienstedt
by Archbishop John C. Nienstedt: Recently, I was addressing a point on the unique understanding that we as Catholics have on the sacredness of the Holy Eucharist, when one of my listeners blurted out, “Well, why doesn’t the Church get honest and admit that her annulments are just another name for divorce!”
Surprised at the abrupt change of topic, I asked: “Do you understand the difference between civil marriage and sacramental marriage?” The man admitted that he did not. I regret to say that many other Catholics do not either and that is a terrible shame.
‘Marriage in the Lord’
Civil marriage is based on a contract or written agreement that this man and this woman freely bind their lives together as one social entity (originally this was the idea behind them taking one name). That contract continues as long as the two parties desire it to be so.
Civil governments have a stake in the outcome of such unions because they provide future social stability through the children who are born, educated and prepared for citizenship as a result of those contractual relationships. When the well-being of civil marriage is threatened, the future of the common good is placed at risk, and that ought to be of significant concern for governmental leaders.
Sacramental marriage externally looks just like civil marriage, but the internal reality is far different. Sacramental marriage rests on what I call the four pillars that give it definition:
  • Faith-filled: It is a union between a baptized man and a baptized woman;
  • Free consent: It is knowingly and willingly entered into by a man and a woman who understand what they are doing and have the capacity to follow through;
  • Indissoluble: Both believers recognize that this is a lifelong, exclusive and monogamous union because it is a “marriage in the Lord”;
  • Fruitful: Being believers, the couple models the generative love of God as seen in the Blessed Trinity in willing that their love for each other will bear fruit in the procreation and education of their children.
When we view the meaning of sacramental marriage over and against that of a civil marriage, we begin to understand why the Catholic Church defines the sacrament of marriage as a “covenant” — a union in God and dependent on his assistance of grace. Accordingly, divorce has no place in terms of sacramentality because God’s grace never dies even in the presence of human sin or weakness.
An annulment, on the other hand, results after careful consideration has been given as to whether or not all four pillars were present the day that the couple said their “I do’s.” If one or more dimensions were missing, then that union, which admittedly was a civil marriage, was never capable of being a sacramental marriage.
On the other hand, when two Lutherans are married in a Lutheran Church, the Catholic Church presumes they, too, have entered into a sacramental union due to the validity of their baptism. (The same understanding of validity does not, however, extend to a Lutheran theology of the Eucharist.) If they later divorce and one of the parties desires to marry a Catholic, his or her union would require an annulment before marriage to a Catholic could take place.
Some will say that all this is needless bureaucracy or “red tape.” However, the Catholic Church sees that the dignity of the human person requires respect for his or her public promise spoken through the wedding vows before a recognized religious minister and two witnesses. The Church in that sense is only holding each party to his or her word and thus defending the integrity of their promises.
In addition, the increasing number of marriages in our archdiocese between persons of “mixed religious”
backgrounds is a source of deep concern for me, precisely because a mutually unified understanding of sacramentality in many cases is not present and because a fully unified practice of faith is not possible.
In such instances, pastoral leaders must devote extra time and attention to ensure that these couples are prepared to face the inevitable challenges that will face their commitment.
Importance of children
Lastly, allow me to speak to the overall importance of the procreation and education of children in regard to the sacramentality of marriage.
The Second Vatican Council’s constitution, “Gaudium et Spes,” did not use the distinction of “primary” and “secondary” in referring to the two-fold significance of the conjugal act, namely its procreative and unitive significances. This has led some commentators to conclude that a conflict could arise whereby the procreative significance may legitimately be ignored in favor of the unity of the couple, thus rationalizing the immoral use of contraception or sterilization.
My bishop, John Cardinal Dearden (for whom I served four years as his priest secretary), served as the committee chair when that section on marriage was being drafted. He told me personally that the above interpretation was never intended by the Council Fathers. While the two ends are essential, they do not bear the same moral weight. The procreative intent of marriage has been its defining character “from the beginning.” (Genesis 1:28)
St. Paul speaks of marriage as a “great mystery,” a marvelous participation in God’s life and mission. It is a blessed vocation and a holy adventure, wherein a man and a woman entrust their hearts, their lives and their eternal destinies to one another. God is the silent companion in the living out of that commitment. Marriages flourish when that is understood and when God’s assistance is sought in daily prayer and Sunday Eucharist.
Discover More

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Where the hell is God?

 
21 March 2011


Photo by nanda_uforians at flickr.com
Photo by nanda_uforians at flickr.com

Where the hell is God?

Richard Leonard SJ

In a new book due to be launched tomorrow in London, Australian Jesuit, Richard Leonard looks at how we understand the presence of God in our lives when we are faced with suffering. Using his own experience of a family tragedy, Fr Richard speaks about his personal response when he is tempted to ask: ‘Where the hell is God?’


download
this article
in PDF
format

Most explorations of where or how God can be found in human suffering tend to be fairly academic. I have found them to be immensely important, even when I have disagreed with their arguments or conclusions. I have even found the intellectual distance they establish to be somehow helpful in dissecting an anything but distant enquiry.
My passion for some answers in this area started from a different base. It was not, primarily, an academic question, though I hope my thoughts are intelligent. My interest started from experience, from my grappling with a family tragedy which forced me to confront how I can hold on to my belief in a loving God in the face of suffering.
On 23 October 1988 my sister, Tracey, was involved in a freakish car accident: she dislocated the 5th cervical vertebra and fractured the 6th and 7th vertebrae. For the last 23 years she has been a quadriplegic. Tracey is one of the finest people I know, and even at the time of the accident, at 28 years of age, she had already lived in Calcutta for three years and nursed the poorest of the poor at Mother Teresa’s House of the Dying. She had returned to Australia and got a job working with the Sisters of Our Lady of Sacred Heart, running a health centre for Aboriginal people at Port Keats. It was near there that the car accident happened.
Within twelve hours of my mother finding out about Tracey’s accident, she was standing in a hospital room in Darwin asking, ‘Where the hell is God?’
In the months that followed I received some of the most appalling and frightening letters from some of the best Christians I knew. A few wrote, ‘Tracey must have done something to deeply offend God so she had to be punished here on earth.’ They actually believe that God is out to get us. I have discovered since 1988 that this theology is far more common than I would have ever imagined. I have met people with cancer, couples with fertility problems and parents who have lost a child – all of whom have asked me what they ever did to deserve the curse under which they think God has placed them.

Why Bother Praying?

 
12 July 2013


Photo by jemasmith at flickr.com
Photo by jemasmith at flickr.com

Why Bother Praying?

Richard Leonard SJ

 

Australian Jesuit, Fr Richard Leonard, is the author of the 2010 book Where the Hell is God? and the Director of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting. He introduces the themes in his new book by explaining what motivated him to explore the question: Why Bother Praying?


download
this article
in PDF
format

  I never thought I would write a book on prayer. The Lord knows that at this stage I am no mystic. In fact, given that there are three routes to canonisation – heroic virtue, mysticism and martyrdom – I think my only chance of making it is via the latter. I share with many other Christians the usual desolations, and a lack of discipline and focus, that see my own prayer life a very humble offering to God each day.
Why Bother Praying?, however, emerged from the responses to my earlier book, Where the Hell is God? I discovered that others had very different ideas about prayer to mine. They are fully entitled to hold them – indeed they must follow their informed consciences – but the image of God behind their positions was frightening to me. It all came down to me saying that I thought we should, ‘stop praying for rain.’ For the record, I am delighted if others want to pray about the weather; I cannot do so, because if God is a big meteorologist in the sky then he seems to be very bad at it – we go from a drought to a flood in a matter of days.
In their responses, my readers outlined their reasons why they are not troubled when their prayer does not seem to be answered, or when things get demonstrably worse. Some were familiar to me:
· ‘we were praying about the wrong things, because God knows what we need rather than what we want’;