World Meeting of Families Speakers Assert, “Family Life is an Activity, NOT an Accessory”

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“We need to rediscover the gift of family life; that family life is its own activity, not an accessory.  We can’t simply “have” a family but work on everything else in our lives. Instead, we need to prioritize regular, daily and weekly appointments to work, play, talk, and pray together as a family, and schedule every other outside commitment around those rituals of connection that represent the skeleton of family life.  We need to protect those rituals of connection as the sacred rites of the domestic church.  The family that does this is a revolutionary family that God can use to change the world.”

From Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak’s upcoming World Meeting of Families Talk, See How They Love One Another:  The Family and the Faith.   To learn more about how you can create a family that can celebrate life to the fullest and be an agent of graceful change in the world, check out Parenting with Grace: The Catholic Guide to Raising (almost) Perfect Kids and our brand new title, Discovering God Together:  The Catholic Guide to Raising Faithful Kids.

Spiritual Infidelity: A Crisis in Catholic Marriage

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Image via shutterstock. Used with permission

Image via shutterstock. Used with permission

New study says 83% of Catholic couples are committing ‘spiritual infidelity’.  Are YOU in a spiritual ‘open marriage’?

Over the last several weeks, infidelity has been a top story in the news after hackers released the records of 35 million users of a popular adultery website. According to the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, approximately 20 percent of husbands and wives will commit sexual infidelity and another 20 percent will fall prey to an emotional affair, in which they develop strong, sustained romantic feelings for someone other than a spouse.

Spiritual infidelity

These are disturbing findings, but they pale in comparison to a recent report suggesting that up to 83 percent of Catholic married couples commit what I call “spiritual infidelity.” Infidelity is the betrayal of one’s marital vows. Sexual infidelity is the betrayal of a couple’s vow to be “true” to one another. But there is another implicit vow that Catholic couples make to one another that is broken with disturbing frequency.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1661-2) tells us that, in the Sacrament of Matrimony, couples promise to become partners in Christ’s plan for each other’s sanctification. In other words, in a Catholic marriage, a couple promises, at the altar, to do everything they can to help each other get to heaven. Presumably that requires couples to actively share their faith, to worship together, to challenge each other to grow in Christian virtue in their daily lives, and to pray together so they may sit at the feet of the Author of Love himself and learn how to love.

Unfortunately, a recent study sponsored by Holy Cross Family Ministries and conducted by Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found that only 17 percent of Catholic couples pray together. So what? In practical terms, if a Catholic couple is not actively sharing their faith, worshipping together and praying together, they are, in effect, committing spiritual infidelity by placing something other than God and the Faith at the center of their lives together.

A spiritual open marriage

In my extensive work with Catholic couples, I find that, sadly, Catholics take spiritual infidelity for granted. It is a tremendous scandal that the majority of Catholic spouses do not assume that they should be expected to pray with their spouse, or even to expect their spouse share their faith, or at least actively support it (as opposed to passively tolerating it). I hear all the time from husbands and wives who say, “I can’t force my spouse to go to church,” or “I can’t make my spouse pray.”

It isn’t about forcing anyone to do anything. It is, however, about presenting a persistent invitation to your mate to be faithful to the promises he or she made at the altar to share more deeply in your faith journey with the clear expectation that — if for no other reason than out of respect for you — your spouse will come to Mass with you at least weekly, share a meaningful prayer time with you daily and support your moral values always. Failing to do this is to consent to a spiritual open marriage where anything — money, careers, sports, hobbies or just sheer laziness — occupies the central place that faith has a right to enjoy in Christian marriage.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

It is true that you cannot “make” anyone share your faith. But, by saying “I do” in a Catholic church and promising to live marriage as the Church defines it, your mate gave you the right to expect certain things…CONTINUE READING..

 

“Christians Need Not Apply.” What Carly Fiorina Gets Wrong About Religious Liberty.

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Image via Shutterstock

Image via Shutterstock

Republican Presidential hopeful, Carly Fiorina, was asked what she thought of the Kentucky Clerk of Courts who refuses to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of the law and a court order.  Here is what she said.

“First, I think that we must protect religious liberties with great passion and be willing to expend a lot of political capital to do so now because it’s clear religious liberty is under assault in many, many ways,” she said. “Having said that, when you are a government employee, I think you take on a different role. When you are a government employee as opposed to say, an employee of another kind of organization, then in essence, you are agreeing to act as an arm of the government.”

I appreciate the challenge of answering such a gotcha question on the fly, but to my mind, this answer is deeply, deeply flawed.  It essentially says, “Faithful, traditional, Christians need not apply for government office if they are unwilling to sacrifice their beliefs at the altar of what they believe are unjust laws.”  Fiorina’s first statement about “protecting religious liberty” is completely neutered by her second statement requiring anyone who disagreed with a law to resign.  Her answer is the literal definition of double-speak and it says a lot about her personal position on this issue.    If Ms. Fiorina–or any of the presidential hopefuls–wants to be a serious candidate, she is going to have to demonstrate considerably more awareness of the importance and role of the free exercise of religion in the marketplace.  Here is what I think she, or any other candidate who wants the religious vote, is going to need to say.

“What we see here is a person exercising her right to engage in civil disobedience. Civil disobedience, by its nature, makes civil society uncomfortable. It demands to be heard.  It insists that “I will NOT be ignored or discounted or disenfranchised.”  There are consequences to civil disobedience, sometimes even grave consequences, and this woman must be prepared to accept the consequences of her actions–like Thomas More– if her civil disobedience is to be anything but an affectation. But I respect her willingness to sacrifice herself in service of her beliefs–indeed, I respect EVERY citizens right to do the same– and I look forward to seeing how her conscience-driven actions advance the public dialog about how our country can practically apply the social changes that have been imposed upon us by judges who have claimed for themselves the right to legislate from the bench.”

Show me a candidate who has the guts and the wisdom to say this and I’ll show you a serious candidate who just might actually deserve to sit in the Oval Office.  Sadly, I haven’t seen one yet.