Fr Patrick Rogers CP is director of the popular, one-day “Together” marriage preparation courses (www.together.ie) held about 15 times per year. He says the Church needs to take account of where young people see themselves. “It is not enough,” he says, “to appeal to the faith of our fathers when today’s young people feel so deep a sense of living in a new era, full of new possibilities”.
Faced with hundreds of engaged couples on their marriage preparation course each year, it is my task and privilege to remind them of the Catholic Church’s hope that they will pass on the faith to their own families, the next generation of young Christians.
Getting married in church, I want to tell them, is so much more than a nod towards their parents’ wishes, or a question of ceremonial or architectural taste, a background to the wedding photos. It is meant to be a genuine statement of faith, a question of basic personal values, a public act of trust in the grace of God, and opting for a lifelong, life-affirming union. I refer them to our pre-marriage website (www.together.ie) to prepare their wedding ceremonial, and read various articles about marriage in today’s world.
So far, they seem to be reasonably in accord with what’s being said. But when I go on to detail the final promise they are asked to make just before taking marriage vows -‘Are you willing to accept children with love… and bring them up in accordance with the laws of Christ and his Church?’ – there can be an uneasy silence in response to the idea of a Church of laws. They are not, one feels, too impressed with the notion of religious laws, or that the Church should be obeyed.
Culturally, they are more drawn to a Church that would facilitate rather than command them, a faith that offers a service to their well-being, that can help them keep in touch with the loving, all-wise God, rather than offer them a set of rules. The important requirement that they pass on a genuine religious practice to their offspring is one that needs some persuasive unpacking, before the couple seal their wedding vows in church.
On the positive side, it is a fact that, despite the increased level of premarital cohabitation and the notable falling-off in church attendance among the 17-35 age group in Ireland (as elsewhere) over the past thirty years, there seems to be no significant drop in the number of couples who want to enter a sacramental marriage.
Whether they marry here in Ireland or, as an increasing minority of them are now opting to do, arrange to be wed in some picturesque sanctuary abroad, they still seem keen to call on our Heavenly Father, through a priest, to seal and bless their union. This is very encouraging, no matter what reservations they may have about becoming active members of their local Catholic parish on their return from honeymoon.
Looking at the body language of these engaged pairs, one cannot help loving their love of life, their enthusiasm for each other’s company, and their palpable desire to make their wedding clay a memorable, once-in-a-lifetime festival. This pre-nuptial excitement is genuine, and it’s often a real pleasure to see the couple deferring to each other on details, and showing signs of a real partnership in planning for the occasion. You’d really want to help them in any way that you can.
Still, a priest will no doubt see many an engaged couple as posing a challenge to his pastoral skills, even if they are also a blessing to society. He may worry if it’s right to bind them indissolubly by the marriage sacrament, if at the start of the interview they candidly admit that their external practice of the faith has been pretty minimal.
Just before administering the vows he will ask them some formal questions about their intended union, among them, ‘Are you willing to… bring up your children in the spirit of Christ and his Church?’ When I pose this question, I do so with a real hope that they and their generation will help to redefine what is the spirit of Catholicism for today’s world, here in Ireland.
We must make an act of faith that these are vibrant, hard-working young people, who really do have some feeling for God in their lives. Even if their church attendance may leave much to be desired, and there is a notable measure of à la carte in their beliefs, they are still valued members of the community of the faith.
What we need to think about with them is the kind of Church to which they can give a fuller, personal allegiance. It will certainly not be a Church too clogged with regulations, nor too fussily hierarchic; rather, it will be a sort of supportive faith group that makes sense to them, that can be seen as enhancing life, and therefore worth belonging to and passing on to their children.
What are the prospects that today’s newly-married couples will actually hand on the faith? Very good and very real, I think – provided we are willing to equate faith more with a seeking, religious openness and social concern, than with a ready-made package, whose heartbeat is attendance at weekly Mass and regular private confession.
There is a notable willingness in young couples, especially at the time when they become parents for the first time, to look again at what they cherish. If we are to help them in discerning their role as educators, we the pastors need somehow to relativize some of what were formerly the main hallmarks of Catholic practice. We need to adapt our language to today’s legitimate desire for an authentic spirituality, in a spirit of generosity.
It is not enough to appeal to the faith of our fathers, their religious practices and customs, when today’s young people feel so deep a sense of living in a new era, full of new possibilities. Faith, for this generation, needs to be redefined mainly in functional terms, as honesty, loyalty to their family and community, a dependence of divine providence, a grateful appreciation of life as a gift to be shared. This will be their principal way of bringing up their children in the love of Christ and his Church.
‘All well and good!’ the hard-pressed parish priest may say, ‘but what am I to do at a couple’s pre-nuptial enquiry session, if I have never once seen them at Mass over the past year or more? How can I find any ground for saying that they intend to be active members of the parish once they are married?’
He will have to call on the Holy Spirit yet again, and look for some pieces of spiritual common ground, try to talk of religious values that they find meaningful, ask them about aspects of their actual, lived spirituality. In that pre-marriage dialogue, we simply cannot afford to limit the idea of Catholic religious practice to regularity at Mass, Confession and Holy Communion, or we may be tempted to exclude too many couples from the sacrament of matrimony. They may simply be going through a phase of relative aversion to ceremonial, while still having a real spirit of prayer, of faith and of charity.
In my view, it’s best to start on a positive note, and work on the assumption that they feel a sense of good will towards the Church, insofar as it can offer something worthwhile in their lives. One can then try asking them what they would like to pass on to their children, when they have them.
How often we have seen and heard new parents respond to their children with a whole new sense of caring and responsibility. It may be enough to ask them to build on that, to pass on the best of what life has given them, including a basic trust in God and an honest decency towards other people. If this can be rounded off with a personal relationship with Jesus as a deep, hidden presence in their lives, then there is every chance that they will hand on a faith just as valid as that of their parents, and even of their pastors.
God pours the Spirit out on them as truly as upon their pastors, and surely God himself will ensure that through them, true religion will be passed on. We must try to be the midwives of this, as best we can.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (October 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
