Everyone concerned about the future of marriage should welcome the recent synod.
Lost in the headlines in the last week was a main reason Pope Francis convened a series of meetings on the family: because it is in “crisis,” as he’s put it, and needs help. In a recent open letter, intellectuals, activists, and ministers, among others, both encourage and seek to offer practical advice:
This Synod is an opportunity to express timeless truths about marriage. Why do those truths matter? How do they represent true love, not “exclusion” or “prejudice,” or any of the other charges brought against marriage today? Men and women need desperately to hear the truth about why they should get married in the first place — and why Christ and the Church desire that, once married, they should remain faithful to each other throughout their lives on this earth. That, when marriage gets tough (as it does for most couples), the Church will be a source of support, not just for individual spouses but for the marriage itself.
As the synod is an ongoing process whose fruits can be a great aid in renewing family life, Hilary Towers, a developmental psychologist and a mother of five who helped organize the letter, talks about what just happened in Rome, why it’s important, and why everyone concerned about the future of marriage and the family should welcome it.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: What were your thoughts as you watched the drama in Rome? What excited you?
Hilary Towers: I saw that the majority of the Church hierarchy — those men entrusted with the immense task of shepherding the flock in the ways of eternal truth — is fully prepared for the very difficult work ahead. They are ready, willing, and able to uphold the eternal truths concerning marriage and family. As Cardinal Pell put it, “Our society desperately needs what we Catholics and what we Christians have to offer.”
Lopez: What worried you?
Towers: Part of what we saw at the synod — the expression of views by a small minority that caused confusion and disillusionment to many faithful — is simply the boiling over of misguided ideas that have been simmering under the surface for some time. So let’s shine a bright light on these ideas — let’s engage in a serious discussion, much as a family would, about what we really believe, and whether we’re ready to go to the mat for these beliefs, regardless of public-opinion polls or sociological trends. I think that this — albeit uncomfortable — global dialogue about our teachings on marriage may, perhaps ironically, result in the strengthening of our Catholic beliefs on these issues, and of our faith in general. So to answer your question: I’m not worried!
Lopez: Having kept an eye on it, do you find under-the-radar issues the press missed? The bishops?
Towers: This synod and the one next year are tremendous opportunities to express, as a global community of believers, our unqualified support for the marriage bond. This doesn’t mean “irregular situations” haven’t been formed or won’t continue to occur. But as Cardinal Caffarra put it: “Christ teaches us that before considering particular cases, we must know what it is we are talking about. Here we are not talking simply about a norm that may or may not admit of exceptions, nor of an ideal after which we strive. We are talking about the very essence of marriage and the family.”
This really isn’t complicated. If we don’t show young people (especially the ones who have experienced the brokenness of divorce as children) that we, who are stewards of the Church Christ founded, enthusiastically and unconditionally support the “essence” of marriage — fidelity and permanence — they will continue to believe that the “irregular situations” are regular situations.
Lopez: Why did you pull together the letter you did?
Towers: Truthfully, the impetus for the letter was my own observations of men and women abandoning their marriage vows, all around me. I see the spouses left behind, their children, their parents, and their communities suffering tremendously because of the fateful decision of one spouse to say, “I quit.” And these are the “good Catholics”! Marriage has always been very hard; this has not changed. What has changed over time is that the support structures for marriages — in families, in churches, in government, in the media — they’re all gone. Those positive societal pressures that have historically served to keep individual spouses in line and marriages together when times get tough (as they will for almost every marriage) are gone. So part of the task before us is to recreate these community-based networks of support for marriages, and this is the central theme of the letter we sent to the synod.
Lopez: Not everyone who signed the letter was Catholic — Rick Warren, for example. Why is that significant?
Towers: As someone with such broad, ecumenical reach and appeal, Rick Warren had much to lose, and so little to gain, in signing this letter! It says a whole lot about his core convictions and his character that he did. As a convert to Catholicism myself, I am aware of the values shared between many Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church. There are so many wonderful people of faith around the world who see clearly the crisis that marriages are facing and who care enough to speak up about it, and to engage in and promote creative solutions to the problem.
Lopez: Last week at the synod there was some discussion that the destructive influence of pornography on the family needs to be addressed. You could not agree more, right?
Towers: I believe that when we look back on this time in history – say, 40 or 50 years from now — we will be able to see with much greater clarity the utter devastation that the Internet pornography industry has unleashed on marriages and families. We now have a whole generation of kids who have been exposed to this stuff from elementary-school age on. Their views of “normalcy” with regard to love and courtship have been shaped by the sexting/porn model, and many seem to be genuinely unaware of another way. The consequences of this tragedy — our unwillingness to protect our children from real, calculable harm, in the name of protecting our own “freedom” — will become manifest in, among other places, our children’s future marriages (or in the increasing chasm where marriages used to exist but are no longer sustainable or even desired). I think we’re seeing this happen already.
Lopez: But are practical things like porn an issue for a synod of bishops?
Towers: The effect of pornography addiction is nothing short of a silent and invisible atomic bomb exploding in the home, but because the source of the destruction is not clear (as it would be for, say, a heroin addict or an alcoholic), we have allowed it to get ahead of us. To the extent that the leadership of the world’s largest religious denomination cares about protecting the foundation of our civilization — marriage and the family — then they will care about getting a hold on this problem. And, of course, they do care. The bishop of my own diocese, Paul Loverde, has produced an excellent “call to arms” on the subject. One of the most comprehensive, solid online resources for pornography addiction was created by a Catholic couple who travel around the country educating people and offering real solutions. I have no doubt that the Church can and will lead the world in this effort.
Lopez: Why do you want the Vatican to get into social-science research work?
Towers: First, I have come to believe that there is a great need for a new approach to studying the various components of the marriage crisis. For too long we have taken a detached, long-range view of problems like divorce — asking the same, broader questions about the average differences between families who divorce and those who don’t. But the problem isn’t diminishing; it’s still with us in full force. In order to solve a problem, you first need to understand its true nature — the full scope and severity of the issue from every possible angle.
Obviously, we are not proposing that bishops and cardinals conduct this research. We are suggesting two things. First, that there are Catholics who value marriage as an irreplaceable good in every corner of the world, working in every possible setting and profession, including the social sciences. If some portion of these men and women took on the challenge of investigating these issues through their own lines of academic research, this would be a large step forward. Second, because of its sheer size and organizational capacity, the Church, and more specifically the Pontifical Council on the Family, is in a prime position to coordinate such an effort.
Lopez: Do you have reason to believe seminarians are being insufficiently equipped to help families?
Towers: Yes. I have multiple friends who are young or middle-aged priests who have shared with me that formation in the realities of marriage and family life is lacking in most seminaries, and absent in some. But, again, this is a problem we can address. Let’s bring social scientists and solid marriage therapists and married couples themselves into the seminaries to educate — not once, but at regular intervals — and begin a conversation with these young men about what to expect in their parishes: how they can (and why they should) make marriages in their parishes a top priority. Show them how to establish marriage ministries and couple-mentoring programs; encourage them to give homilies that promote permanence and fidelity in marriage; give them resources to create vibrant singles ministries that encourage chastity prior to marriage, and that help young adults who are serious about marriage to find one another.
Lopez: Why is Mary Hasson’s research on women and homilies so important?
Towers: Mary’s findings show that people (women, in particular — but one hopes it is equally true of men) are actually listening intently to the messages their priests bring at Mass during that 15-minute or so interval called the homily. Every priest should be aware of this. It is a tremendous opportunity every week to communicate truths about our faith and about the importance of faithfulness and self-sacrifice within every vocation, married, single, or religious.
Lopez: You want to see the Church encourage the reconciliation of married couples who have been divorced by civil courts. Is that really realistic?
Towers: Well, let’s look at the alternative and where it’s gotten us. The alternative to reconciliation is “moving on” to new sexual relationships or marriages, and this is something our culture has learned to do over the past four decades with great ease and agility. Marriage therapists recommend it. Social-science research speaks of it as predictive of “well-being” for those who initiate divorce. Parents and siblings of divorced spouses frequently enable it.
Our family courts have all but enshrined this mantra into law by routinely undermining spouses who remain committed to the marriage and by granting rights to so-called de facto parents – the sexual partners of the biological parents — to influence and have authority over their children. But where has this gotten us? Are spouses who leave low-conflict marriages to “move on” really finding happiness at the end of the rainbow? Divorce rates for second marriages among middle-aged to older Americans suggest not. And even if one asserts that he (or she) has “moved on” and that this is for the best, what about the spouse and the children left behind? Do they not matter in the “happiness” equation?
Let’s try something new. Catholics believe that the marriage bond endures even after a civil divorce has occurred. But there are non-Catholics who remain committed, too. So first, let’s showcase these spouses around the world as examples of true love, true mercy. Second, let’s begin to be aware of men and women in our lives who have abandoned their spouses and children but whose families are waiting for them to quit the extramarital affair, ask for forgiveness, come home, and start again. Let’s encourage these folks, in a spirit of charity, to put their family first — assure them that we’ll be there to help in any way we can.
Let’s give our young people a new and bold model of marital commitment and, perhaps, over time, their faith in marriage will be restored.
Lopez: Is Church teaching on divorce realistic? What if you are remarried? Is living as brother and sister, as they say, possible or humane?
Towers: These questions call to mind a buzzword at this synod: “mercy.” Is this virtue — this hallmark of the Christian life — connected with any knowable reality or truth? Or is it to be measured by the way people feel, or by the degree of difficulty of the task ahead? Can mercy — can real love — be achieved at the expense of teachings given to us by Christ Himself? At some level, there is a core issue here that spans each one of the controversies that garnered so much media attention at the synod. It is our common vocation to chastity, as understood and taught by the Church since its inception.
Father Paul Check, who heads the Courage apostolate, pointed to this in a recent interview: “There is a loss of confidence that revealed truth, understandable and knowable by human reason, can be lived and that it can lead to fulfillment. . . . Do we have the conviction that a chaste life is part of the good news of Jesus Christ, no matter what our state of life?” The depth and beauty of this teaching is difficult to convey in sound bites. It seems absurd in a culture that increasingly defines itself in purely sexual terms. And yet there are many people around the world who find themselves in excruciating marital or relationship circumstances but have found internal peace and happiness for themselves — and often their children — through their determination to live out this principle.
Lopez: Are the media focusing disproportionately about some of these issues — annulments and homosexuality and divorce and Communion?
Towers: Sure. They sense some points of division within the Church and they’re exploiting them. One of my friends said recently, “It’s like the whole world knows now that we’re a dysfunctional family!” But we are a family, nonetheless. And good families work through their differences in love, always in light of the Truth. So long as the Church continues to lead according to the truths revealed and given to Her by Christ, no problem that we face can or will divide us.
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review Online, and founding director of Catholic Voices USA.