My Catholic family

The Vatican has launched a worldwide survey to find out what Catholics really think about its teaching on marriage and family life, the BBC reports…Pope Francis is calling bishops to Rome next October to discuss possible reform that considers modern social realities.

This survey has been badly organised by the Vatican civil service- haphazard distribution, and couched in ecclesiastical language that risks being lost on ordinary souls. But it remains a rare democratic exercise involving the Catholic faithful worldwide. It has got me thinking about my faith and my family. Here is my response.

My principle reference on the value of the family has to be the story of  that most exemplary of all families –that of Jesus’s. As a Catholic I was taught that Jesus was the son of God, made man, that his was a Virgin birth, his mother Mary-wife of Joseph-immaculately conceived- an  impossible act to follow. 

  My faith tells me that we are all children of God, and thus, through the humanity of Jesus, trust in his love and forgiveness. But what is it that draws me  to the Christmas story? It is  the simple narrative of the young family escaping persecution, seeking humble shelter in the company of good shepherds, noble kings, and domesticated  animals- a context resonant of trust, peace, and hope.  It is this joy filled harmony that we strive for in our family life. Responsible parenthood means following Christ and trying for  the good of ourselves, our children, and the whole of human society to imitate him in the  true evangelical spirit of The Beatitudes(Mt. 5, 1-12).

The Gospels  remind us of some of the  challenges of being a fair and loving parent . I think of the parable of the prodigal son who inspires boundless mercy and love in his father. I think too of  the sisters Mary and Martha whose contrasting spiritual and material values are of a kind, in a modern context,  that can provoke tension  in family life- besieged as it is by relentless consumerism.

When I started going through  the questions in the Vatican’s survey of Catholic opinion on the ‘pastoral challenges of the family’ with my adult daughters (28 and 27)-both educated in Catholic schools-, they said they simply could not understand what was being asked or why. “This is Gobbeldygook,” said one. “Does the Vatican inhabot another planet?” said the other.

So I found myself translating the questionnaire into a language I felt could better touch on  their generational experience. Their comments did not surprise me for we have brought up our  children to be respectful of the values of honesty and openness, even if we may have failed to impose orthodoxy on them.

They believe in relationships that dignify the human person- boyfriends and girlfriends should respect them, and they them, and look to their parents for advice. Pre-marital sex is not sex without limits but part of developing a loving relationship and it goes with social responsibility- the use of contraception. They believe the weekly Sunday dinners they share with their parents are a worthwhile event for it is quality family time. We gather as a community. My daughters are not regular Church goers, and live their  life as Catholics according to their own judgement, intuition, and feelings. This includes a tolerant attitude toward friends who are gay or single or separated parents. They deserve to be welcomed to, not thrown out of  ‘God’s house’, they said almost in unison.

Our daughters each wear  Christian crosses, still fill in Advent calendars, and join us in Church at Christmas and Easter. As well as fellow Catholics and other Christians, they count Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Budhists and agnostics among their friends.And they vote Labour.

 As for myself- of the papal documents  the survey mentions ,  Gaudium et Spes resonates with me most  for I remember  growing up in the 1960’s listening to my late father and his Catholic friends regularly quoting this text  as exemplifying all that was most positive and hopeful in the Second Vatican Council, bringing the Church into full and open  engagement with the challenges of the modern world and pointing to a better future.

Subsequent papal documents- or at  least the manner on which they were widely quoted within the Church and by the secular media-led me to believe that the Vatican was increasingly out of touch with the  reality of my existence where responsible birth regulation by artificial methods seemed broadly accepted by my Catholic and non Catholics friends, where growing sexual equality formed part of civilised society, and where the suffering partners of broken marriages seemed badly let down by official Church teaching.

Most Catholic families I know of , and I count mine among them, are conscious that in our most positive expression,  we are not so much a ‘domestic church’- to claim it would strike me as sanctimonious, fundamentalist even- but a small community in which, from childhood, we can learn moral values, honour God and make good use of freedom. Family life is both the main anchor and departure point for our relationship with the bigger community, the broader society. It  should not be inward looking or exclusive.

We have learnt from  our parents and we try and teach our children that we have a special responsibility for the young, the old, the sick, the handicapped,  the poor, and the environment. That we have a moral duty to stand up for human rights, to be compassionate to others, including those of a different sexual orientation or who have been unable to maintain a stable family environment.  The difficulties in maintaining a sense of Church in our family midst come partly from the pressures of a secular consumer society but partly from the negativity and hypocricy with which the institutional Church has been viewed by Catholics as well as non-Catholics.

I have an instinctive weariness of clerical  comfort zones, and lay apologists, parroting church teaching in a way that  buries conscience and doubt. However my experience of what has  worked best at parish level has been that of lay people-men and women- being fully empowered to organise themselves , along with a strong and effective liason with a well managed local Catholic school, further outreach with other faiths  and institutions in the community, and a priest at ease with himself and his parishioners.

The institutional Church has so badly handled and conveyed Church teaching as to allow those not just outside but also many Catholics to view the doctrinal orthodoxy of successive popes as repressive rather than  life giving. There have been some very worthwhile and inspiring words in papal documents  but all too often the rays of light have been shut out by reactive forces.

I agree with Catholic journalist Annabel Miller who sees the biggest challenge facing family life today as being  represented by the culture of casual sex, drugs and drink. How sad it was indeed to watch the BBC TV pictures earlier this week of young hung-over  teenagers attending a special clinic for sexually transmitted diseases. And yes I am also concerned with evidence that male transmitted HIV is on the rise, and that far too many children continued to be abused.

If the Vatican was to turn its attention to socioeconomic justice  and refocus its teaching on sexuality,away from sin and towards love and respect of the human body, it would indeed, as Annabel  puts, “find many friends in unexpected places, inside and outside the Church.”

The survey asks what specific contribution can couples and families make to spreading a credible and holistic idea of the couple and the Christian family today? My answer is one word –LOVE. We have to show, as a couple and as a family , that our shared love is not exclusive but a permanent bridge to others.

The question the Bishops need to ask themselves:  Is Church official policy  a. compassionate and b. does it make sense as part of an evangelisation process in the 21^st century?

 Take the case of an old friend of mine. Brought up a Catholic, she fell in love and married a Catholic, only to discover subsequently that he had become  an alcoholic. His condition  worsened after she had given birth to their two children. He not only got drunk periodically but turned verbally and physically abusive towards her when he did do. She was forced to try and hide from her children this fact together with  his incapacity to hold up a job and his squandering of the family assets until she decided to separate for the sake of her own sanity and her children’s survival. She eventually met a non-Catholic but deeply religious divorcee with children of his own with whom she entered a deeply loving relationship. But her exclusion from communion on the basis that she was “obstinately  persisting in manifest grave sin” (Canon Law clause 915)and the refusal of the Church to accept her  second marriage as valid left her frustrated  and angry and with a deep sense of betrayal towards the Church she felt she been born to be loyal to.

She could have of course tried as others I know for ecclesiastical annulment of her first marriage on the basis of alleged non consummation according to the Catholic Church affirmation that, in a true marriage, a man and a woman become “one flesh” before the eyes of God.  But the  process of annulment before an ecclesiastical  tribunal would have been a dishonest affair predicated on the premise of an idealised version of marriage when all sorts of complex  feelings and situations contributed to a initially loving couple breaking apart in a personal and pastoral crisis.

In  British dioceses the Catholic marriage rate is dropping despite an increase in the estimated Catholic population. Could it be, as the religious affairs commentator Clifford Longley suggests,  that younger Catholics favour less formalised structures where the price of failure is  less rejecting. (See The Tablet 26^th October 2013)?

I agree with Longley that the bishops should think back to Pope John Paul 2  own words in Familiaris Consortio in  which he recognised there was “in fact a difference between those who have sincerely tried to save their first marriage and been unjustly abandoned, and those who through their own grave fault have destroyed a canonically valid marriage.” JP2 also mentioned “those who have entered into a second union for the sake of the children’s upbringing, and who are sometimes subjectively certain in conscience that their previous and irreparably destroyed marriage had never been valid.” I would argue that there are many divorced Catholics who recognise one or the other of these scenarios or a mixture of both.”  JP2 urged reasonable pastors to exercise careful discernment.

But Church canon law needs to be adapted to bring home those Catholics, married or otherwise,  that never deserved to be excluded.Pope Francis has shown himself capable of speaking  a language of compassion. He has also shown he is prepared to listen. I hope that under his papacy society can be offered a renewed vision of the value of human life, and how a loving marriage and family can help heal wounded humanity. I hope that God’s understanding can be truly experienced by those whose marriage has irreversibly broken down, and others who have felt marginalised by Church teaching. We are all deserving of God’s forgiveness, and love.