Celebrating matrimony: Church's urgent task

Oct 13, 2016

Going through the records of the dioceses and parishes it is not uncommon to witness only a handful of weddings have been celebrated in a whole year in a given parish.

I was in a discussion with a group of students from several countries attending a course on pastoral studies. We had to share on a significant pastoral challenge from the Church you come from. Having served the people of God in Uganda, I shared that the greatest pastoral challenge affecting the Church in Uganda is cohabitation—life without the sacrament of holy matrimony. It affects sacramental life the individual concerned, the family, the immediate society and the church at large.

Going through the records of the dioceses and parishes it is not uncommon to witness only a handful of weddings have been celebrated in a whole year in a given parish. In the same material time the Church has baptised hundreds of children. How can we build the ‘Church as a family' when the families are not built on the basis of sacraments and Church's cherished faith practices? How can the Church (as well as the society) recognise the union of two adults as husband and wife when it is not in order as per sacred and secular laws?

Cohabitation gives enormous opportunities for couples to live suspicious of each other, does not give them moral and spiritual courage to face the problems of the present day, makes the union to break easily even for flimsy reasons, makes them unable to give their children moral and spiritual examples and lessons and above all makes them to live in constant guilt of not doing the right thing at the right time in faith and daily living. It is also possible for them to get used to such a living and become complacent about all religious and social values and ethos.  

Family is the domestic church. It is the face of the church for growing up children. It is in the family the children are initiated to faith, sacraments and to personal sanctity. In religious life, if the family set up is weak surely the children will assimilate less of the love God and knowledge of the Church. When life of faith is weak, it further weakens the mechanism that helps the young people to practice morals and meet the challenges of today's secularised world.

Secularism is not just the matter of western world or the developed parts of the world. It is also very much part of developing countries such Uganda and other African countries. Cohabitation is a child of a secularised world that plays down the role of God and other institutions of the society such as the Church. Secularised trends of the world look at the institution of marriage as irrelevant, out of date, unnecessary hassle, too expensive, and extraneous. But actually the underlying reasons for cohabitation are lack of commitment to a life-long relationship, misplaced priority and lack of commitment to Christian faith and sacramental living.

How do we explain couples' willingness to spend several millions of money on kwanjula (betrothal or introduction ceremony) and not approaching Church's blessing in holy matrimony? How can we understand someone who claims Church wedding to be expensive while embarking on building magnificent home? How can we trust couple who postpone their Church wedding "for a while" but having become grandparents? Perhaps it caused by the messiness and realities of 21st-century humanity, which considers marriage as life-long burden. It also considers children as rights and commodities rather than gift of God. It becomes a fertile ground for divorce, child abandonment, domestic violence and single parenthood.

At this given situation the society calls for more pastoral understanding, guidelines and even stronger persuasion to push the faithful to approach this humane sacrament that ought to be natural for people to choose.

Pope Francis who wanted the Church to be a "field hospital" that treats the wounded in the moment of emergency wants the pastoral to reach out to people. After all the mission of the Church is to ‘bring the Church to the people and people to the Church.' Making concluding remarks about the synod on the family of 2014-2015, the Holy Father said, "The Church must accompany with attention and care the weakest of her children, who show signs of a wounded and troubled love, by restoring in them hope and confidence ...." Campaigning and celebrating matrimony in our local Church be a priority of the Church. It is both ordering and sanctifying of marriages.

According to the papal document on family life, Amoris Laetitia  all that Church and its pastors have to do is, "...need to find the right language, arguments and forms of witness that can help us reach the hearts of young people, appealing to their capacity for generosity, commitment, love and even heroism, and in this way inviting them to take up the challenge of marriage with enthusiasm and courage." (# 40). Indeed it is the new evangelization which the Church is badly in need of!

The writer is a priest

www.arasulazar.org

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