FACET topics: Catholic section

andCATHOLIC SECTION
As acknowledged in the previous section, two practicing Catholics are not necessarily at the same place in their spiritual journey. This section asks the couple to look at their marriage in the light of Catholic teaching, given that at least one is Catholic and therefore having their marriage in the Catholic Church. It is important that they look at this as something that requires from each one a basic understanding of what Catholics believe, and what they especially believe regarding Catholic/Christian marriage.

This section is an opportunity to catechize the couple and help them understand the power of the Catholic theology of marriage that regards marriage as a covenant or sacrament. It is more than a contract. Instead, they need to understand that at their wedding they will become the sacramental minister to each other — thus promising that they each will become responsible to provide the other with an experience of being loved by God. This will become a reality based on how each chooses to love the other in all sorts of unselfish and generous ways. They are saying, "yes" to a future without knowing how it will unfold, but believing that by God's grace each partner promises to live it out. In our culture, this is a radical stance because we live in a world that wants to know up front and may not subscribe to a vow involving what has yet to be seen. This is a promise to live a life of extraordinary love. In doing so, the couple expresses to the world a mirroring of how God loves us all. The Catholic section is about how we bring all the previous sections together into a vision for a married couple's future and living out their lives in sacramental love. We invite them into this vocational calling from God and to witness a God who never stops loving us. (For clarification of statements 154-160 see “A Catholic Take on Marriage below. It includes citations from the Catholic Catechism to support the teachings.)

Additional Questions to assist the conversation:

• What does being married in the Catholic Church mean to you?

• Is there anything that surprised you about the Catholic understanding of marriage?
  Anything you'd like to know more about?

• Will we want to participate in a faith community?

• How can we help each other grow in our faith?

  The following is an explication of the first statement in the Catholic section. It was compiled at the request of facilitators who wanted a guide to help the engaged couples understand what was different between the culture’s understanding of marriage and the church’s understanding.

  The Catholic Take on Marriage

  The Catholic Church teaches the following things about marriage:

  (The numbered statements are excerpts from the Catholic Catechism)

  -that it is a covenant (not a contract)  A covenant relationship is one that is based on a promise of an unconditional and everlasting relationship. God established a covenant with the Israelites, and even though the people were not always faithful to God, God remained faithful to them. 1611 Seeing God’s covenant with Israel in the image of exclusive and faithful married love, the prophets prepared the Chosen People’s conscience for a deepened understanding of the unity and indissolubility of marriage.

  -that it believes in permanence.    Based on the idea of a covenant relationship, the church expects a lifelong commitment from the partners toward each other 

  1644    The love of the spouses requires, of its very nature, the unity and indissolubility of the spouses’ community of persons, which embraces their entire life: “so they are no longer two, but one flesh.”153 They “are called to grow continually in their communion through day-to-day fidelity to their marriage promise of total mutual self-giving.”

  -that it believes marriage has two purposes; to be life-giving, and to unite the couple The two purposes of marriage are equal in importance: to be united in love, and to be life-giving. Coming into marriage the partners need to be open to the possibility of having children.  1601  “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.”

  -that it believes in faithfulness (“forsaking all others”) which we believe includes virtual others i.e., pornography Being faithful to each other, both emotionally and physically, is a part of the Catholic view of marriage. It is the choice we make entering into this union.1646  By its very nature conjugal love requires the inviolable fidelity of the spouses. This is the consequence of the gift of themselves which they make to each other. Love seeks to be definitive; it cannot be an arrangement “until further notice.” The “intimate union of marriage, as a mutual giving of two persons, and the good of the children, demands total fidelity from the spouses and requires an unbreakable union between them.”

   -that it believes it is a sacrament, a sign of God’s love in the world. A sacrament is “an outward sign, instituted by Christ to give grace”. In the sacrament of marriage, it is the husband and wife who confer the sacrament on one another.

  1131    The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.

  -that it is a vocation - a special calling to mirror God’s love for the world and Christ’s love for the church. In this state of life we are choosing, we accept the call of God to be God’s agents of love in the world. 1603  “The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws.... God himself is the author of marriage.”87 The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator.