Christian Marriage and Family in the Postmodern World (original) (raw)

Singleness and Marriage after Christendom: Being and Doing Family (excerpt)

Singleness and Marriage after Christendom: Being and Doing Family, 2021

Momentous change is taking place in Western societies and churches. Singleness is on the rise, along with growing interest in different pathways to human happiness. However, we still largely consider coupledom as the norm and a symbol of the good life. This is especially true in the Christian context, where the decline of “traditional” marriage and family patterns is often presented as an erosion of the Christian way of living. Yet when the church was very young, the world was also very concerned with the demise of traditional family ways—but the culprits accused of destroying family values were none other than Christians. A considerable number of them willingly chose to forego marriage, embracing Jesus’s vision of a new kind of a family: the church. This book follows the changes in the practice of marriage and singleness, from those early days of the Christian movement to our modern preoccupation with romance and coupledom as essential ingredients of a happy, fulfilled life. It argues that the current surge in the number of single people is actually an opportunity for us to reconsider both singleness and marriage in the larger context of a community of faith.

The evolution of modern marriage: From community to individualization. Theological reflection

Cauriensia. Revista anual de ciencias eclesiásticas, 2019

Statistical data from the past few decades indicate a dramatic increase in divorce rate. There are numerous reasons for this phenomenon. One of them is a growing process of individualization which exerts an enormous impact on mentality and understanding of marriage as a community. The first part of the paper concentrates on explaining what constitutes a community of marriage form a theological perspective. This reflection is based on the term communio personarum used by Karol Wojtyla/ John Paul II. It might be observed that individualization which is closely linked with egoism, hedonism, consumerism and the focus on “myself” clearly opposes the vision of marriage as a communion of persons. Pope Francis confirms this view in his apostolic exhortation Gaudete et exsultate claiming that individualism is an obstacle in attaining holiness, which is also a vocation of spouses. Therefore, the Pope calls the faithful to constrain hedonism and consumerism with which individualism is linked a...

Marital Aspects of Religious Life

In religious life members live in community, permanently vowing the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. In marriage, a man and woman exchange vows and consent, permanently committing to both the ends of having and educating children, and supporting one another (Cahall 2014, 104-105). Both of these commitments are community-based and lifelong, yet while marriage is an "intimate partnership of life and love" (GS 48), religious life "derives from the mystery of the Church," that it may "show forth Christ and acknowledge herself to be the Savior's bride. Religious life in its various forms is called to signify the very charity of God in the language of our time" (CCC 926). It is therefore apparent that while religious life is not the same thing as holy matrimony, it nonetheless represents an equivalently allencompassing commitment, even a "marriage" in verisimilitude. What follows then offers context and reflection on different marital aspects of religious life, that it may be better understood as a marital commitment in its own right. First I refer to scripture, in which the bases for each commitment are rooted. In a Christian context, marriage is by far the elder, described in Genesis 2:21-25:

New Evangelization, New Families, and New Singles

2016

HEN POPE FRANCIS ISSUED HIS CALLS for a synod in 2013, he stated that he wanted bishops to discuss the "pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization," surely also a link to the recent calls for a "New Evangelization." 1 Evangelization has long been tied to Catholic understandings of family. 2 Parents are deemed the original source of Christian evangelization and witness for their children, and thus the family is assumed to be at the center of any kind of broader evangelization that happens. It makes sense, then, that family becomes a central topic of conversation for bishops in relation to what it means to be church in the contemporary world. That said, in this brief discussion, I raise a tension in the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family. On the one hand, it seems to raise up the nuclear family as a kind of idol. On the other hand, it discusses several forms of singleness that present a more expanded and open view of the family.

Active faith” in Christian marriage: The challenge of family systems

Pastoral Psychology, 1997

The purpose of this paper is to examine the possibilities for creating an environment which nurtures “active faith” in marriage. I intend to do this by examining historical tradition on Christian marriage, and exploring behavioral science for its contribution to the subject. In particular, I will suggest some ways that family systems theory, with its understanding of healthy marriage and family life, can be a transforming element for the study of marriage today.