Pope Francis Offers Vigorous Defense of Sacramental Marriage

Today, marriage is more of a social event than a sacrament. That’s what Pope Francis told nearly 8,000 members of the International Schoenstatt Movement in a private audience on October 25, 2014, as part of the movement’s 100th Anniversary celebration.

The Schoenstatt Movement, founded in Schoenstatt (Vallendar) Germany on October 18, 1914, by Fr. Joseph Kentenich, has as its charism the renewal of the Church and world, particularly through the support and formation of families and youth. After a three-day celebration in Schoenstatt, Germany, October 16-19, the movement members made a pilgrimage to Rome to celebrate with the Holy Father and present to him their gifts and abilities for his work in leading the Church.

The audience, which took place in the Paul VI Hall, was arranged as a family-like Q&A between the Holy Father and representatives of Schoenstatt. One of the questions included a request for his advice as to how to better accompany those who still feel unwelcome in the Church and how to better accompany young couples and families so that they can become “an irresistible and living proposition to those seeking a way to fulfillment.” In this regard, the Schoenstatt Family assured Pope Francis that he can count on them to “walk along this path that was started in the Synod [to rebuild the family].”  

To this, Pope Francis responded that there is a very sad, painful thing, “That the family is hit, that the family is knocked and that the family is debased as [how can this be] a way of association … Can everything be called a family? How many families are divided, how many marriages are broken, how much relativism there is in the concept of the Sacrament of Marriage. At present, from a sociological point of view and from the point of view of human values, as well as, in fact, of the Catholic Sacrament, of the Christian Sacrament, there is a crisis of the family, a crisis because it is hit from all sides and left very wounded!”

The solution, Pope Francis said, is to clearly declare the principles of marriage and to let others know that what they’re proposing is not a marriage. “What they are proposing is not marriage, it is an association, but it is not marriage! It is necessary to say things very clearly and we must say this! The pastoral helps, but in this alone it is necessary that it be ‘person to person.’ Therefore support, and this also means to expend time. The great teacher of expending time is Jesus! He expended time to support, to have consciences mature, to heal wounds, to teach. To support is to journey together.”

He went on to explain that accompaniment means to “make a way together” and that the sacrament of matrimony has been devaluated and reduced from a sacrament to a rite. It is more a social matter than a religious one.

He then expressed his sadness over the vast number of couples he’s met who cohabitate because they think they can’t afford a wedding. “When you ask them, why don’t you get married? You are just being together but not married. And they say, well, we have no money, we cannot make a party. So the social makes the most important part and not the sacrament,” he said.

The Holy Father gave the example of priests in Buenos Aires who would encourage couples to have a civil marriage and later that same day, a sacramental one in the church. While the motivation – to help them to have a sacramental marriage – is good, its long-term effects are bad.

“You can’t prepare couples for matrimony with two encounters. That you cannot do. That is really a sin of omission from the part of the pastor, especially because we want to save families,” he said. “So, the sacrament and accompaniment has to go much, much, further. And it has to be person to person to prepare them, to talk to them, to tell them what they are supposed to do because many do not know what they do. They just marry, and they marry without really knowing what it means, the conditions, they don’t know what they promise. They say ‘yes, yes, everything is okay’ but they aren’t conscious what it really means.”

Accompaniment isn’t necessary only for couples; it’s also necessary for the children of separated and divorced parents, because they suffer the effects of poor marriage preparation. This concern was raised during the Synod.

“Many of those children have to suffer, because one parent is talking bad about the other parent and vice versa. So there is a big, big challenge to accompany those children but also to make the parents conscious of what they do to their children,” he said. “And nowadays there are varied situations. They don’t marry, they stay at home, they have the boyfriend or girlfriend, but they don’t marry.”

In his characteristic humility, Pope Francis admitted that, even in his own family, there is sin and shared that a young couple related to him lives together from Monday through Thursday and with their parents Friday through Sunday. This is wrong, he stated.

“They are new forms, totally destructive and limiting of the grandeur of the love of matrimony,” he said. “There are so many [persons] living together, and separations and divorces: therefore, the key to know how to help is ‘person to person,’ supporting and not engaging in proselytism, because this does not lead to any result: to support with patience.”

Pope Francis concluded his remarks on marriage and family with the encouragement, “a word today: an attitude tomorrow, that’s what I suggest to you.”

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I was wowed by the Holy Father’s words on marriage and family to the Schoenstatt Movement. His entire discourse was packed with insight and wisdom. One point in particular hit home for me: that marriage is underappreciated as a sacrament and mostly seen as a social event.

Let me share with you an example of what this looks like on the ground level, so to speak, so that you understand how easily this rot can decay the value and necessity of the sacrament of marriage.

Some months ago, I heard an acquaintance rant about her nephew/godson’s wedding. This woman, a middle-aged Catholic, was soon to be blessed with her own marriage – her first, after a good many years of praying and waiting for the right guy to come along. Her rant included nothing but criticism, even going so far as to declare her godson’s wedding “a disaster.”

I know the couple, and I know that it was a sacramental marriage that took place with a fully Catholic ceremony in a Catholic church. It was a truly Catholic wedding. Isn’t that what any good godmother would want?

Apparently, not this one.

Sadly, the “disaster” for this godmother was that her godson/nephew’s reception was simple and low budget, taking place in a park with a homespun, Western-style barbeque. It lacked all the bells and whistles that she believed a great wedding should have. And certainly, her wedding wouldn’t be such a disaster because she and her fiancé had budgeted for all the bells and whistles that would make a "dream wedding."  

What a shameful pity. You’d think at least a godparent would appreciate the sacramentality of a marriage above elegance of a reception.

This is precisely what Pope Francis was talking about to the Schoenstatt Movement. Marriage is rapidly becoming a social event – only for those who can “make a party,” as the pontiff described it. We’re even going so far as to claim a disaster of the marriages that are done well, sacramentally speaking, because they weren’t up to par socially according to our standards.

I think it’s not only the couples themselves who have strayed from the sacramentality of marriage, it’s also their family and friends. Whether we realize it or not, we put pressure on couples to “do it up right” by putting more emphasis on the reception than on the sacrament. Instead of asking what hall they’re renting or which DJ they’ve hired, we should be asking them what church, which priest, and how we can help to make the Mass or ceremony as beautiful and meaningful as possible.

That’s the person-to-person accompaniment that Pope Francis is encouraging, not only of the Schoenstatt Movement, but of all of us. When a couple we know begins seriously dating, we should already be gently guiding them toward a holy engagement and sacramental marriage. When a couple becomes engaged and is planning their wedding, we should intentionally de-emphasize the “party” and let them know that we will be delighted with their wedding no matter how simple. It’s the marriage that’s the center, not the reception.

I pray that no godmother ever does to her godchild what my acquaintance did to her godson. And I pray that we, as a society, as a Church, learn – fast – how to accompany those preparing for marriage so that we won’t have to accompany them when it falls apart. If we don’t, we, too, will have committed a sin of omission.

Marge Fenelon is a Catholic author, columnist, and speaker and a regular guest on Catholic radio. She’s written several books about Marian devotion and Catholic family life, including "Strengthening Your Family: a Catholic Approach to Holiness at Home" (Our Sunday Visitor, 2011) and I"mitating Mary: Ten Marian Virtues for the Modern Mom" (Ave Maria Press, 2013). Find out more about Marge at www.margefenelon.com.