Population trends: lessons for RP

By Fr. Gregory D. Gaston, SThD
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 19:47:00 01/02/2010

REMEMBER the population bomb? The new threat to the planet is not too many people but too few,” Michael Meyer reports on “Birth Dearth” (in Newsweek, Sept. 27, 2004). He continues: “The world’s population will continue to grow – from today’s 6.4 billion to around 9 billion in 2050. But after that, it will go sharply into decline. Indeed, a phenomenon that we’re destined to learn much more about – depopulation – has already begun in a number of countries.”

In general, a total fertility rate (TFR or children per woman) of 2.1 is necessary to replace a country’s population. The UN Population Division (UNPD) states, “The primary consequence of fertility decline, especially if combined with increases in life expectancy, is population ageing. It adds, “Globally, the number of persons aged 60 years or over is expected almost to triple” between 2005 and 2050.

Population controllers never highlight population ageing and decline. In countries where these phenomena happen today, a huge number of elderly have to be supported by proportionally fewer working people. The pension fund and the social security system are overburdened. The local labor force grow older and less efficient, hence they need immigrants.

Having fewer and older people means a smaller market, especially for certain sectors such as baby food, clothing, vaccines and certain other medicines, sports facilities, office equipment, education, etc. –products and services the elderly employ less. More countries will soon need more coffins than cradles.

Below replacement levels

A population with an above-replacement TFR (that is, with 2.1 or more children per woman) will have a pyramid-shaped “population pyramid.” In this scenario, the economically active persons support their children and a small group of elderly dependents.

If a country’s TFR goes below replacement level, the wide bases of the pyramid are replaced by narrower bases each year, reflecting the fewer children born each year.

Continued below-replacement TFR will lead to a diamond-shaped figure.

By this time the economically active persons will have to support a relatively few children and a rapidly increasing number of elderly.

This condition contributes to the present economic boom of rich countries, since the workers will get to keep a big share of their earnings, instead of spending them for the needs of children and the elderly.

This is the situation that population controllers want us to foresee: They explain that the Philippines will become well-off when it reaches this stage. But they never explain what will happen beyond this stage, which, to say the least, is a disaster.

If the country’s TFR remains below replacement levels, the diamond-shaped population pyramid will become shaped like a toy top.

If the trend continues, the country will end up having an inverted population pyramid, with an extremely aged and shrinking population.

Babies needed

Because of an elderly and forthcoming collapsing population, Dr. Joseph Chamie, former UNPD director, said to the Population Association of America that governments were “adopting polices... to increase their child bearing,” including restricting or limiting contraception [and] abortion, match making, conducting public-relation campaigns for marriage

, childbearing and parenthood, and giving out cash bonus for the birth of a child.

They have not succeeded so far. But if ever they do succeed in increasing birthrates, their population “pyramid” will acquire the shape of an hourglass.

In this scenario, their workers will have to care not only for their big population of elderly dependents, but also for the increasingly big batches of children they want to have, the young dependents.

This will mean a double economic burden for them. Hence, these countries will soon be in a serious predicament: Continued economic woes and the nation’s extinction if they don’t produce more children and doubled economic woes if they do.

They hope to return to the scenario they were in 50 years ago: To have many babies who would eventually replace the work force, and in turn care for both the young and the elderly dependents. That is, they seek a normal population pyramid, shaped like a real pyramid, with a wide base and a narrow tip, and not like a diamond, a toy top, an inverted pyramid, or an hourglass.

In short, they want to revert to the type of pyramid that the Philippines still has – a pyramid that it will soon lose, as its TFR continues to decline. Within two decades, our country will fall into the same trap where ageing countries find themselves in and want to escape from right now, a TFR below the 2.1 replacement level.

Lessons

The UNPD figures indicate that it is not an exaggeration to say that as early as now the Philippine TFR is already dangerously low.

Whereas in the early 1970s the average Filipina had six children, today she has around three, and in another 20 years, only two.

Shortly after 2020, the Philippine TFR will sink below its specific replacement level of around 2.29 (higher than the usual 2.1 because of higher infant mortality and other factors).

It will be too late and useless to wait for the TFR to go below replacement level and then try to raise it up again. The only solution would be to try to prevent its further decline today – an effort that will probably not succeed within a few decades, but will hopefully at least lessen the impact of an ageing population. If approved, the bills promoting population control will certainly plunge the Philippine TFR further down.

The Philippine population pyramids of 2000, 2025 and 2050 (from the US Census Bureau website) reflect the TFR’s downward trend.

We can no longer sit back, relax and think of “just crossing the bridge when we get there,” because we have already reached the bridge. At the rate its TFR is declining, the Philippines will, within 20 years, join the other countries that have fallen into the river. It will be a point of no return, or at least, of extremely difficult return. Why go there in the first place?

It has to be stressed that the Philippine TFR will probably reach below replacement levels within two decades even without additional population control efforts.

Filipinos now marry later in life, marital unions have become less stable, emigration to urban centers makes rearing children more difficult, emigration to other countries is on the rise (physically subtracting members from the country, especially those of reproductive age, and reducing the number of children those left behind beget), decisions on how to spend money have left having more children out, and the mass media greatly influence spouses to have few children.

Population control

Countries that were already rich 30 to 40 years ago when their TFRs started to decline and are now ageing encounter extreme difficulty in solving their economic problems.

Their efforts to encourage their citizens to produce more children have not yielded acceptable results after a decade. They depend on immigration to maintain their population growth.

The Philippines is not a rich country and may or may not be rich within 50 years. How will it support its aging population? Will it also invite workers from other countries to replace its dwindling workforce? Will it also pay mothers for each child born? Impossible.

Even if it becomes rich by then, it will have to face the same problems rich countries face now and will have to tell the people to raise more children.

Graphically speaking, we cannot afford to have in the future a population pyramid like the rich countries’ and then, like them, wish to regain the population pyramid we have now.

Population control has to be ruled out as a quick-fix solution to poverty. This in no way means telling the people to have as many children as they can, to uncontrollably “go forth and multiply” (as some erroneously claim the Church teaches).

Rather, parents should be guided and supported to attain the number of children they can generously and responsibly raise and educate. For some spouses, this means having one child or two and for others, 5, 10, 12, or in some cases, 15 or even more. If they could really manage to properly care for them, why not?

Neither the government nor the Church may compel, instruct or encourage spouses to raise a specified number of children, as what population control programs definitely try to do. Rather, the government and the Church should form and guide the people to reflect on their actual circumstances and to freely, generously and responsibly decide whether or not to have another child for the time being or indefinitely.

Human capital

Any economic, social or political policy proposed to solve poverty should take advantage of, rather than suppress, our abundant human resources. As Dr. Gary Becker, 1992 Nobel Prize winner in economic science, says, “human capital,” which refers to the skills, education, health and training of individuals, comprises around 80 percent of the wealth of advanced countries and hence “can be neglected [only] at a country’s peril.”

Any solution to poverty, furthermore, has to take into account, support and promote our closely knit family ties, the time and dedication parents give to their children, the care children and extended families give to the elderly whom we truly love, the moral principles and holistic training children receive from their parents and all the other values that the Filipino family has until now maintained, in spite of the pressures exerted upon it by secularism.

The contribution to the national economy of these services and values that find their dynamism within the family is impossible to calculate, but they provide a key – the most important one – to good governance in the public and private sectors, a condition sine qua non to attain stability in society, reach economic development and diminish poverty.

(Gregory Gaston is a priest of the Archdiocese of Manila, professor and former dean of the Graduate School of Theology of San Carlos Seminary in Makati. He holds a doctorate in sacred theology. He presented this topic at the Society of Catholic Social Scientists’ annual meeting at the University of Mississippi School of Law on Oct. 31, 2009. This article is excerpted from “Familia et Vita” (2007), the Quarterly Review of the Pontifical Council for the Family [full text at www.safe.ph].)

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The Facts of Life & Marriage: Social Science & the Vindication of Christian Moral Teaching

By W. Bradford Wilcox

In 1968, Pope Paul VI released Humanae Vitae, an encyclical affirming the Christian tradition’s ancient and constant moral teaching that contraception is wrong. Sadly, Humanae Vitae came as a shock to many Christians inside and outside the Catholic Church, who thought that the church was ready to accommodate herself to the modern view of marriage as primarily a relational, not procreative, institution.

Indeed, in the wake of Humanae Vitae, the Catholic Church largely lost her ability to successfully convince the American laity, not to mention Christians throughout the West, of the truth and beauty of her moral teaching on matters related to sex and marriage. Three historical, sociological, and intellectual factors help account for this failure.

Three Failures

First, Humanae Vitae came at the worst possible moment in history. The encyclical arrived in the wake of Vatican II, just after the Catholic Church had thrown open her windows to the modern world. Unfortunately, the modern world was then succumbing to the siren song of the sexual revolution, was awash in a pervasive anti-authoritarianism, and inclined to a hedonistic ethic fueled by unprecedented affluence. As the Catholic biblical scholar Luke Timothy Johnson observed at a forum sponsored by Commonweal magazine, “American Catholics truly became American at [precisely the] moment when America itself was undergoing a cultural revolution.”

In the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s ascendancy to the presidency, and their own dramatic increases in educational and economic attainment, Catholics in the United States were coming into their own as independent-minded Americans. With their newfound status, they were less inclined to extend undue deference to the opinions of the Holy Father, and the Catholic Church more generally, especially on matters that would require them to sacrifice their cherished American aspirations to upward mobility and consumer comfort—sacrifices often associated with having a large family. For all these reasons, most American Catholics in the late 1960s and 1970s rejected Humanae Vitae.

Second, and just as ominously, this rejection led many of these same Catholics to call into question their commitment to the whole fabric of Catholic moral teaching on sex-related matters. If the Catholic Church is wrong on birth control, the thinking went, she is probably wrong on divorce and remarriage, premarital sex, and so on. As Johnson, himself a critic of Humanae Vitae observed, “The birth control issue finally initiated many American Catholics into the hermeneutics of suspicion,” a hermeneutics that made them skeptical of all the church’s pronouncements regarding sexual morality.

Indeed, the controversy surrounding Humanae Vitae was, as Andrew Greeley pointed out in The Catholic Myth, “the occasion for massive apostasy and for [a] notable decline in religious devotion and belief,” as many Catholics concluded that the Catholic Church had fallen out of touch with the modern world. This controversy also hurt the church’s ability to speak to the larger Christian community on issues of sexual ethics and family life, as she was seen to be out of touch with the realities of modern marriage.

Third, the mistaken view that the church is hopelessly out of touch, hopelessly inflexible, and hopelessly bereft of compassion on matters related to sex and marriage has been and continues to be advanced by Catholic intellectuals with substantial public platforms. The pronouncements of Charles Curran, Andrew Greeley, Richard McBrien, and other like-minded Catholic theologians and social scientists have only added to the confusion, dissent, and scandal that swirls around Christian moral teaching.

In various ways, and with varying degrees of clarity and honesty, the dissenters argue that the church must accommodate her morality to the ways of the world if she hopes to speak in an authentic way to the experience and concerns of modern men and women. They also argue—and this is important—that the most compassionate route forward for the church is one that leads to changes in her moral teaching. Law must give way to grace, rules must give way to experience, dogma must give way to the Spirit, and the pope must give way to the people.

Accommodationist Error

In the heady decade of the 1970s, when a countercultural tide swept over the Catholic Church and the nation as a whole, and the academy was in thrall to the counterculture, this accommodationist agenda seemed to have a certain plausibility. No longer.

The first problem is that the accommodationist agenda is based on bad social science. When most of these intellectuals were in their prime, the best social science suggested that the ideal posture of the church to “family change,” as it was euphemistically called, was one of acceptance and support. But contemporary social science on the contentious issues of our time—such as contraception, divorce, and cohabitation—suggests just the opposite conclusion. The shifts in sexual and familial behavior to which these dissenters would like the church to accommodate herself have been revealed in study after study to be social catastrophes.

Let me be perfectly clear: The leading scholars who have tackled these topics are not Christians, and most of them are not political or social conservatives. They are, rather, honest social scientists willing to follow the data wherever it may lead. And the data has, as we shall see, largely vindicated Christian moral teaching on sex and marriage. So the intellectual foundation for dissent on moral matters is collapsing.

The second problem with the dissenting agenda is that its moral laxity has been most disastrous for the most vulnerable members of our society: the poor. The poor have paid and continue to pay the highest price for the cultural revolution that Curran, Greeley, McBrien, and others would like the church to baptize.

Let me now offer a summary of the social scientific research on contraception and divorce that illuminates the problems with the accommodationist agenda.

Broken Connection

In Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI warned that the widespread use of contraception would lead to “conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality”; he also warned that man would lose respect for woman and “no longer [care] for her physical and psychological equilibrium”; rather, man would treat woman as a “mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.” Why? By breaking the natural and divinely ordained connection between sex and procreation, women and especially men would focus on the hedonistic possibilities of sex and cease to see sex as something that was intrinsically linked to new life and to the sacrament of marriage.

In the United States, Humanae Vitae was the object of unprecedented dissent. Let me summarize the argument of one dissenter on this subject, Andrew Greeley, a priest, Jesuit, and professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. First, Greeley argued that Catholic teaching on contraception does not appreciate that married Catholics rely on sex for bonding, and they should not have to worry about bringing a baby into their lives when they bond.

Second, he claimed that the hierarchy is more concerned about keeping its power, by blindly following church tradition on contraception, than with helping ordinary people. “The problem is the arrogance of power that makes many church leaders insensitive to the problems of ordinary people and heedless of their needs—and of the Holy Spirit speaking through their experiences,” he declared in The Catholic Myth. He even went so far as to suggest that “[messing] around with the intimate lives of men and women to protect your own power is demonic.”

There we have it. The popes’ and bishops’ efforts to uphold the Christian tradition’s consensus against artificial contraception—stretching from the Didache in the first century, through such documents as Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis in the sixteenth century, to at least the Anglican bishops’ notorious decision in 1930—is legalistic, unrealistic, and demonic.

But on this topic, as on others, Greeley does not reconcile his polling data with what he knows the sociological data says about the consequences of widespread contraception in the United States. What does this data tell us? Well, scholars from Robert Michael at Greeley’s own University of Chicago to George Akerlof at the University of California at Berkeley argue that contraception played a central role in launching the sexual and divorce revolutions of the late twentieth century.

Contraceptive Losers

Michael has argued that about half of the increase in divorce from 1965 to 1976 can be attributed to the “unexpected nature of the contraceptive revolution”—especially in the way that it made marriages less child-centered. [1] Akerlof argues that the availability first of contraception and then of abortion in the 1960s and 1970s was one of the crucial factors fueling the sexual revolution and the collapse of marriage among the working class and the poor.

I will focus on Akerlof’s scholarship. George Akerlof is a Nobel prize-winning economist, a professor at Berkeley, and a former fellow at the Brookings Institution; he is not a conservative. In two articles in leading economic journals, Akerlof details findings and advances arguments that vindicate Paul VI’s prophetic warnings about the social consequences of contraception for morality and men. [2] 

In his first article, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1996, Akerlof began by asking why the United States witnessed such a dramatic increase in illegitimacy from 1965 to 1990—from 24 percent to 64 percent among African-Americans, and from 3 percent to 18 percent among whites. He noted that public health advocates had predicted that the widespread availability of contraception and abortion would reduce illegitimacy, not increase it. So what happened?

Using the language of economics, Akerlof pointed out that “technological innovation creates both winners and losers.” In this case the introduction of widespread effective contraception—especially the pill—put traditional women with an interest in marriage and children at “competitive disadvantage” in the relationship “market” compared to modern women who took a more hedonistic approach to sex and relationships. The contraceptive revolution also reduced the costs of sex for women and men, insofar as the threat of childbearing was taken off the table, especially as abortion became widely available in the 1970s.

The consequence? Traditional women could no longer hold the threat of pregnancy over their male partners, either to avoid sex or to elicit a promise of marriage in the event their partner made them pregnant. And modern women no longer worried about getting pregnant. Accordingly, more and more women (traditional as well as modern) gave in to their boyfriends’ entreaties for sex.

In Akerlof’s words, “the norm of premarital sexual abstinence all but vanished in the wake of the technology shock.” Women felt free or obligated to have sex before marriage. For instance, Akerlof finds that the percentage of girls 16 and under reporting sexual activity surged in 1970 and 1971 as contraception and abortion became common in many states throughout the country.

Immiserating Sex

Thus, the sexual revolution left traditional or moderate women who wanted to avoid premarital sex or contraception “immiserated” because they could not compete with women who had no serious objection to premarital sex, and they could no longer elicit a promise of marriage from boyfriends in the event they got pregnant. Boyfriends, of course, could say that pregnancy was their girlfriends’ choice. So men were less likely to agree to a shotgun marriage in the event of a pregnancy than they would have been before the arrival of the pill and abortion.

Thus, many traditional women ended up having sex and having children out of wedlock, while many of the permissive women ended up having sex and contracepting or aborting so as to avoid childbearing. This explains in large part why the contraceptive revolution was associated with an increase in both abortion and illegitimacy.

In his second article, published in The Economic Journal in 1998, Akerlof argues that another key outworking of the contraceptive revolution was the disappearance of marriage—shotgun and otherwise—for men. Contraception and abortion allowed men to put off marriage, even in cases where they had fathered a child. Consequently, the fraction of young men who were married in the United States dropped precipitously. Between 1968 and 1993 the percentage of men 25 to 34 who were married with children fell from 66 percent to 40 percent. Accordingly, young men did not benefit from the domesticating influence of wives and children.

Instead, they could continue to hang out with their young male friends, and were thus more vulnerable to the drinking, partying, tomcatting, and worse that is associated with unsupervised groups of young men. Absent the domesticating influence of marriage and children, young men—especially men from working-class and poor families—were more likely to respond to the lure of the street. Akerlof noted, for instance, that substance abuse and incarceration more than doubled from 1968 to 1998. Moreover, his statistical models indicate that the growth in single men in this period was indeed linked to higher rates of substance abuse, arrests for violent crimes, and drinking.

From this research, Akerlof concluded by arguing that the contraceptive revolution played a key, albeit indirect, role in the dramatic increase in social pathology and poverty this country witnessed in the 1970s; it did so by fostering sexual license, poisoning the relations between men and women, and weakening the marital vow. In Akerlof’s words:

Just at the time, about 1970, that the permanent cure to poverty seemed to be on the horizon and just at the time that women had obtained the tools to control the number and the timing of their children, single motherhood and the feminization of poverty began their long and steady rise.

Furthermore, the decline in marriage caused in part by the contraceptive revolution “intensified . . . the crime shock and the substance abuse shock” that marked the 1970s and 1980s.

Falling on the Poor

One pair of statistical trends illustrates the way in which the social pathologies of the late twentieth century fell disproportionately on the poor. About 5 percent of college-educated women now have a child outside marriage (little change since the 1960s), but about 20 percent of women with a high-school education or less now have a child outside marriage (up from 7 percent in the 1960s).

Why were family decline and attendant social pathologies concentrated among poor and working class Americans? Think of marriage as dependent upon two pillars: socioeconomic status and normative commitment. The poor have less of an economic stake in marriage, so they are more dependent on religious and moral norms regarding marriage. Middle-class and upper-class Americans remain committed to marriage in practice because they continue to have an economic and social stake in marriage. They recognize that their lifestyle, and the lifestyle of their children, will be markedly better if they combine their economic and social resources with one spouse.

So the bottom line is this: The research of Nobel-prize-winning economist George Akerlof suggests that the tragic outworkings of the contraceptive revolution were sexual license, family dissolution, crime, and poisoned relations between the sexes—and that the poor have paid the heaviest price for this revolution. This research suggests that the Catholic Church’s firm commitment to the moral law in the face of dramatic and widespread dissent from within and without is being vindicated in precincts that are not normally seen as sympathetic to Catholic teaching.

This research also suggests that the dissenting agenda advanced by people like Andrew Greeley amounts to a false compassion. Greeley is right to claim that the Holy Spirit speaks through people’s experiences; but a sober look at our experience with contraception reveals that the Catholic Church’s magisterium, and the Christian tradition it conveys, best advances the earthly happiness of men, women, and children, not contraception.

Disordering Divorce

We have considered one of traditional Christianity’s most controversial moral teachings. I now turn to the issue of divorce and remarriage, where once again the church offers a sign of contradiction to the modern world. The Catechism of the Catholic Church aptly summarizes the church’s teaching on divorce and remarriage:

Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. Divorce is immoral . . . because it introduces disorder into the family and into society. This disorder brings grave harm to the deserted spouse, to children traumatized by the separation of their parents and often torn between them, and because of its contagious effect, which makes it truly a plague on society.

The Catechism is making two central points: (1) divorce harms children, and (2) divorce is an infectious social plague that hurts the commonweal. For these reasons, among others, the church condemns divorce and prohibits remarriage.

The church’s seemingly inflexible position on divorce also comes in for serious criticism from the dissenters. Notre Dame theology professor Richard McBrien, for instance, argues that the church’s position makes no allowance for individuals whose marriage falls apart “despite the best efforts of all concerned.” He further argues that this pope does not encourage “the way of compassion” in dealing with Catholics who have divorced and remarried, and does not acknowledge the “traditional Roman principle that laws are ideals to strive for and not standards one can realistically expect to achieve on a day-to-day basis.”

So McBrien’s argument, which echoes the arguments of mainline Protestants in the early twentieth century, boils down to this: The church should dispense with the moral law in an effort to be more compassionate to people in difficult situations. But what we have, once again, is false compassion.

This becomes clear when we take a careful look, once again, at the data. Numerous scholars—from Leora Friedberg at the University of Virginia to Nicholas Wolfinger at the University of Utah—have shown that divorce does in fact function as a social plague. Friedberg showed that passage of no-fault divorce laws in the 1970s accelerated the pace of divorce by about 17 percent between 1968 and 1988. [3] Wolfinger showed that a parental divorce increases the children’s chance of later being divorced themselves by more than 50 percent, and is by far one of the most potent predictors of divorce.

We can see that Pope John Paul II is right when he says that divorce “has devastating consequences that spread in society like the plague.” And we can see that McBrien’s attempt to help people in difficult situations greatly increases the chance that their children will wind up in the same difficult situations, which in turn greatly increases their children’s chances, and so on.

But I would like to focus on the other aspect of the church’s teaching, namely, that divorce brings grave harm to children. I am going to focus on the research of Sara McLanahan, a professor of sociology at Princeton (and one of my advisors for my doctoral work there). Like Akerlof, McLanahan is no conservative. In the 1970s, as a divorced, single mother, she set out to show that the negative effects of divorce on children could be attributed solely to the economic dislocation it caused.

But after spending 20 years researching the subject, she came to the conclusion that the social and emotional consequences of divorce also played a key role in explaining the negative outcomes of divorce. She also found that remarriage was, on average, no help to children affected by divorce.

Children’s Benefits

In Growing Up with a Single Parent, written with her colleague Gary Sandefur of the University of Wisconsin, McLanahan argued that the intact, two-parent family does four key things for children. [4] First, children benefit from the economic resources that mothers and particularly fathers bring to the household through work and sometimes family money. Second, children see their parents model appropriate male-female relations, including virtues like fidelity and self-sacrifice in the context of a marital relationship.

Third, because both parents are invested in the child, they spell one another in caring for their children, and they monitor one another’s parenting. This reduces stress, helps to insure that parents are not too strict or too permissive, and makes the intact family much more likely than other family arrangements to forestall abuse. Finally, fathers often serve as key guides to children seeking to negotiate the outside world as adolescents and young adults. Fathers introduce them to civic institutions and the world of work, and provide them with key contacts in these worlds.

McLanahan also argued that stepfathers do not have the history, the authority, and the trust of the children to function—on average—as well as biological fathers.

From the child’s point of view, having a new adult move into the household creates another disruption. Having adjusted to the father’s moving out, the child must now experience a second reorganization of household personnel. Stepfathers are less likely to be committed to the child’s welfare than biological fathers, and they are less likely to serve as a check on the mother’s behavior.

So what effects did she find? Children from divorced families are more likely to drop out of high school: Data from the National Survey of Families and Households showed that children in divorced families had a 17 percent risk of dropping out of school, compared to a 9 percent risk for children in married families, even after controlling for parents’ education and race. Other surveys found similar results.

Girls raised in divorced families are more likely to have a nonmarital birth while in their teens: The National Survey of Families and Households showed this risk to be 15 percent for girls with divorced parents, compared to 9 percent for those with married parents. Again this survey is typical. McLanahan also found that boys raised outside of an intact nuclear family are more than twice as likely as other boys to end up in prison, even controlling for a range of social and economic factors. [5]

McLanahan also explored whether children in stepfamilies did better than children in single-mother families. Bear in mind that by the time she was conducting this latest round of research, she had remarried. Here is what she found: “Remarriage neither reduces nor improves a child’s chances of graduating from high school or avoiding a teenage birth.” In other words, remarriage does not mitigate the devastating social effects of divorce.

More Falls on the Poor

The final point I would like to make about the divorce revolution is that it has fallen, once again, disproportionately on the shoulders of the most vulnerable members of our society. My own research with the National Survey of Families and Households indicates that married couples with a high-school diploma or less education have a 19 percent higher risk of divorce than married couples with a college degree. Other studies show that poor and working-class married couples are much more likely to divorce than are middle- and upper-class married couples.

So, after spending 20 years researching the effects of family structure on children, McLanahan came to this conclusion in Growing Up with a Single Parent:

If we were asked to design a system for making sure that children’s basic needs were met, we would probably come up with something quite similar to the two-parent ideal. Such a design, in theory, would not only ensure that children had access to the time and money of two adults, it also would provide a system of checks and balances that promoted quality parenting. The fact that both parents have a biological connection to the child would increase the likelihood that the parents would identify with the child and be willing to sacrifice for that child, and it would reduce the likelihood that either parent would abuse the child.

This, of course, sounds quite similar to the perennial wisdom of the Christian moral tradition, articulated by figures as various as John Paul II, Calvin, and St. Thomas Aquinas.

Hopeful Notes

The portrait I have painted is sobering. But I would like to conclude on two hopeful notes. We are beginning to see a new openness among intellectuals to the importance of marriage and to the perils of divorce. For a long time, intellectuals were not willing to acknowledge the importance of marriage for children. But the intellectual tide is now turning towards a refreshing willingness to grapple with our children’s toughest social problems in a probing and open-minded manner.

Besides Akerlof and McLanahan, scholars like Linda Waite at the University of Chicago, Robert Lerman at the Urban Institute, Isabel Sawhill at the Brookings Institution, and Norval Glenn at the University of Texas have all underlined the importance of marriage in recent years. Their willingness to speak up on behalf of the unvarnished truth—the truth written on our hearts, and the truth evident for all to see in our statistical models—suggests that the intellectual foundations of dissent are crumbling before our very eyes.

Second, there is a new openness among Evangelical Protestant scholars and leaders to the truth and wisdom of the ancient Christian teaching against contraception. Among others, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Seminary, Reformed Theological Seminary professor Harold O. J. Brown, and Evangelical theologian J. I. Packer have raised serious concerns about the moral permissibility and social consequences of contraception. For instance, in a recent symposium on contraception in First Things, Mohler wrote:

Thirty years of sad experience demonstrate that Humanae Vitae [correctly] sounded the alarm, warning of a contraceptive mentality that would set loose immeasurable evil as modern birth control methods allowed seemingly risk-free sex outside the integrity of the marital bond. At the same time, it allowed married couples to completely sever the sex act from procreation, and God’s design for the marital bond. . . . Standing against the spirit of the age, evangelicals and Roman Catholics must affirm that children are God’s good gifts and blessings to the marital bond. Further, we must affirm that marriage falls short of God’s design when husband and wife are not open to the gift and stewardship of children.

This intellectual opening, itself a product of Evangelical Protestants’ growing appreciation of the ways in which the contraceptive mentality is connected to dramatic increases in sexual promiscuity, divorce, and abortion, represents an important opportunity for orthodox Protestants and Catholics to work together in recovering and rehabilitating Christian moral teaching about sex and the family.

Faithful Christian scholars need to seize this moment, and underline the intellectual power and coherence of Christian moral teaching to Christian colleges and universities, congregations, pastors, and the public square. Above all else, we need to drive home the point that social justice cannot be divorced from Christian moral teaching. More than anyone else, the poor have been devastated by the outworkings of the sexual revolution of the last forty years.

We must make it crystal clear that the church’s commitment to the poor requires nothing less than a vigorous proclamation of the church’s true and beautiful teaching about sex and marriage. In other words, we must make it clear that the preferential option for the poor begins in the home.

ENDNOTES:

[1] Talk given at an Emory University family conference in March 2003.

[2] George Akerlof, Janet L. Yellen, and Michael L. Katz, “An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics CXI (1996); George Akerlof, “Men Without Children,” The Economic Journal 108 (1998).

[3] See Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage (Broadway Books), p. 179; Margaret F. Brinig and F. H. Buckley, “No-Fault Laws and At-Fault People,” International Review of Law and Economics 18 (1998), pp. 325–340.

[4] Harvard University Press, 1994.

[5] Cynthia C. Harper and Sara S. McLanahan, “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration,” delivered at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in 1998. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

W. Bradford Wilcox is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and the author of Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (University of Chicago Press, 2004). 

“The Facts of Life & Marriage” is based on a paper he delivered to the 2004 meeting of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars [www.catholicscholars.org]

Prof. Wilcox is also a fellow at the Institute for Family Values. Please visit their blog, Family Scholars Blog, at www.familyscholars.org 

This article was reprinted with permission from the Jan/Feb 2005 issue of Touchstone Magazine. 

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Familiaris Consortio #85:Those Without a Family

85. I wish to add a further word for a category of people whom, as a result of the actual circumstances in which they are living, and this often not through their own deliberate wish, I consider particularly close to the Heart of Christ and deserving of the affection and active solicitude of the Church and of pastors.

There exist in the world countless people who unfortunately cannot in any sense claim membership of what could be called in the proper sense a family. Large sections of humanity live in conditions of extreme poverty, in which promiscuity, lack of housing, the irregular nature and instability of relationships and the extreme lack of education make it impossible in practice to speak of a true family. There are others who, for various reasons, have been left alone in the world. And yet for all of these people there exists a "good news of the family."

On behalf of those living in extreme poverty, I have already spoken of the urgent need to work courageously in order to find solutions, also at the political level, which will make it possible to help them and to overcome this inhuman condition of degradation.

It is a task that faces the whole of society but in a special way the authorities, by reason of their position and the responsibilities flowing therefrom, and also families, which must show great understanding and willingness to help.

For those who have no natural family the doors of the great family which is the Church-the Church which finds concrete expression in the diocesan and the parish family, in ecclesial basic communities and in movements of the apostolate-must be opened even wider. No one is without a family in this world: the Church is a home and family for everyone, especially those who "labor and are heavy laden."(181)

Familiaris Consortio #84:e) Divorced Persons Who Have Remarried

84. Daily experience unfortunately shows that people who have obtained a divorce usually intend to enter into a new union, obviously not with a Catholic religious ceremony. Since this is an evil that, like the others, is affecting more and more Catholics as well, the problem must be faced with resolution and without delay. The Synod Fathers studied it expressly. The Church, which was set up to lead to salvation all people and especially the baptized, cannot abandon to their own devices those who have been previously bound by sacramental marriage and who have attempted a second marriage. The Church will therefore make untiring efforts to put at their disposal her means of salvation.

Pastors must know that, for the sake of truth, they are obliged to exercise careful discernment of situations. There is in fact a difference between those who have sincerely tried to save their first marriage and have been unjustly abandoned, and those who through their own grave fault have destroyed a canonically valid marriage. Finally, there are those who have entered into a second union for the sake of the children's upbringing, and who are sometimes subjectively certain in conscience that their previous and irreparably destroyed marriage had never been valid.

Together with the Synod, I earnestly call upon pastors and the whole community of the faithful to help the divorced, and with solicitous care to make sure that they do not consider themselves as separated from the Church, for as baptized persons they can, and indeed must, share in her life. They should be encouraged to listen to the word of God, to attend the Sacrifice of the Mass, to persevere in prayer, to contribute to works of charity and to community efforts in favor of justice, to bring up their children in the Christian faith, to cultivate the spirit and practice of penance and thus implore, day by day, God's grace. Let the Church pray for them, encourage them and show herself a merciful mother, and thus sustain them in faith and hope.

However, the Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried. They are unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church which is signified and effected by the Eucharist. Besides this, there is another special pastoral reason: if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church's teaching about the indissolubility of marriage.

Reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage. This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for example the children's upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they "take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples."(180)

Similarly, the respect due to the sacrament of Matrimony, to the couples themselves and their families, and also to the community of the faithful, forbids any pastor, for whatever reason or pretext even of a pastoral nature, to perform ceremonies of any kind for divorced people who remarry. Such ceremonies would give the impression of the celebration of a new sacramentally valid marriage, and would thus lead people into error concerning the indissolubility of a validly contracted marriage.

By acting in this way, the Church professes her own fidelity to Christ and to His truth. At the same time she shows motherly concern for these children of hers, especially those who, through no fault of their own, have been abandoned by their legitimate partner.

With firm confidence she believes that those who have rejected the Lord's command and are still living in this state will be able to obtain from God the grace of conversion and salvation, provided that they have persevered in prayer, penance and charity.

Familiaris Consortio #69:Pastoral Care After Marriage

69. The pastoral care of the regularly established family signifies, in practice, the commitment of all the members of the local ecclesial community to helping the couple to discover and live their new vocation and mission. In order that the family may be ever more a true community of love, it is necessary that all its members should be helped and trained in their responsibilities as they face the new problems that arise, in mutual service, and in active sharing in family life.

This holds true especially for young families, which, finding themselves in a context of new values and responsibilities, are more vulnerable, especially in the first years of marriage, to possible difficulties, such as those created by adaptation to life together or by the birth of children. Young married couples should learn to accept willingly, and make good use of, the discreet, tactful and generous help offered by other couples that already have more experience of married and family life. Thus, within the ecclesial community-the great family made up of Christian families-there will take place a mutual exchange of presence and help among all the families, each one putting at the service of others its own experience of life, as well as the gifts of faith and grace. Animated by a true apostolic spirit, this assistance from family to family will constitute one of the simplest, most effective and most accessible means for transmitting from one to another those Christian values which are both the starting point and goal of all pastoral care. Thus young families will not limit themselves merely to receiving, but in their turn, having been helped in this way, will become a source of enrichment for other longer established families, through their witness of life and practical contribution.

In her pastoral care of young families, the Church must also pay special attention to helping them to live married love responsibly in relationship with its demands of communion and service to life. She must likewise help them to harmonize the intimacy of home life with the generous shared work of building up the Church and society. When children are born and the married couple becomes a family in the full and specific sense, the Church will still remain close to the parents in order that they may accept their children and love them as a gift received from the Lord of life, and joyfully accept the task of serving them in their human and Christian growth.

Familiaris Consortio #68:Celebration of Marriage and Evangelization of Non-believing Baptized Persons

Celebration of Marriage and Evangelization of Non-believing Baptized Persons

68. Precisely because in the celebration of the sacrament very special attention must be devoted to the moral and spiritual dispositions of those being married, in particular to their faith, we must here deal with a not infrequent difficulty in which the pastors of the Church can find themselves in the context of our secularized society.

In fact, the faith of the person asking the Church for marriage can exist in different degrees, and it is the primary duty of pastors to bring about a rediscovery of this faith and to nourish it and bring it to maturity. But pastors must also understand the reasons that lead the Church also to admit to the celebration of marriage those who are imperfectly disposed.

The sacrament of Matrimony has this specific element that distinguishes it from all the other sacraments: it is the sacrament of something that was part of the very economy of creation; it is the very conjugal covenant instituted by the Creator "in the beginning." Therefore the decision of a man and a woman to marry in accordance with this divine plan, that is to say, the decision to commit by their irrevocable conjugal consent their whole lives in indissoluble love and unconditional fidelity, really involves, even if not in a fully conscious way, an attitude of profound obedience to the will of God, an attitude which cannot exist without God's grace. They have thus already begun what is in a true and proper sense a journey towards salvation, a journey which the celebration of the sacrament and the immediate preparation for it can complement and bring to completion, given the uprightness of their intention.

On the other hand it is true that in some places engaged couples ask to be married in church for motives which are social rather than genuinely religious. This is not surprising. Marriage, in fact, is not an event that concerns only the persons actually getting married. By its very nature it is also a social matter, committing the couple being married in the eyes of society. And its celebration has always been an occasion of rejoicing that brings together families and friends. It therefore goes without saying that social as well as personal motives enter into the request to be married in church.

Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that these engaged couples, by virtue of their Baptism, are already really sharers in Christ's marriage Covenant with the Church, and that, by their right intention, they have accepted God's plan regarding marriage and therefore at least implicitly consent to what the Church intends to do when she celebrates marriage. Thus, the fact that motives of a social nature also enter into the request is not enough to justify refusal on the part of pastors. Moreover, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, the sacraments by words and ritual elements nourish and strengthen faith"(171): that faith towards which the married couple are already journeying by reason of the uprightness of their intention, which Christ's grace certainly does not fail to favor and support.

As for wishing to lay down further criteria for admission to the ecclesial celebration of marriage, criteria that would concern the level of faith of those to be married, this would above all involve grave risks. In the first place, the risk of making unfounded and discriminatory judgments; secondly, the risk of causing doubts about the validity of marriages already celebrated, with grave harm to Christian communities, and new and unjustified anxieties to the consciences of married couples; one would also fall into the danger of calling into question the sacramental nature of many marriages of brethren separated from full communion with the Catholic Church, thus contradicting ecclesial tradition.

However, when in spite of all efforts, engaged couples show that they reject explicitly and formally what the Church intends to do when the marriage of baptized persons is celebrated, the pastor of souls cannot admit them to the celebration of marriage. In spite of his reluctance to do so, he has the duty to take note of the situation and to make it clear to those concerned that, in these circumstances, it is not the Church that is placing an obstacle in the way of the celebration that they are asking for, but themselves.

Once more there appears in all its urgency the need for evangelization and catechesis before and after marriage, effected by the whole Christian-community, so that every man and woman that gets married celebrates the sacrament of Matrimony not only validly but also fruitfully.

Familiaris Consortio #67:The Celebration

67. Christian marriage normally requires a liturgical celebration expressing in social and community form the essentially ecclesial and sacramental nature of the conjugal covenant between baptized persons.

Inasmuch as it is a sacramental action of sanctification, the celebration of marriage-inserted into the liturgy, which is the summit of the Church's action and the source of her sanctifying power(166) must be per se valid, worthy and fruitful. This opens a wide field for pastoral solicitude, in order that the needs deriving from the nature of the conjugal convent, elevated into a sacrament, may be fully met, and also in order that the Church's discipline regarding free consent, impediments, the canonical form and the actual rite of the celebration may be faithfully observed. The celebration should be simple and dignified, according to the norms of the competent authorities of the Church. It is also for them-in accordance with concrete circumstances of time and place and in conformity with the norms issued by the Apostolic See(167)-to include in the liturgical celebration such elements proper to each culture which serve to express more clearly the profound human and religious significance of the marriage contract, provided that such elements contain nothing that is not in harmony with Christian faith and morality.

Inasmuch as it is a sign, the liturgical celebration should be conducted in such a way as to constitute, also in its external reality, a proclamation of the word of God and a profession of faith on the part of the community of believers. Pastoral commitment will be expressed here through the intelligent and careful preparation of the Liturgy of the Word and through the education to faith of those participating in the celebration and in the first place the couple being married.

Inasmuch as it is a sacramental action of the Church, the liturgical celebration of marriage should involve the Christian community, with the full, active and responsible participation of all those present, according to the place and task of each individual: the bride and bridegroom, the priest, the witnesses, the relatives, the friends, the other members of the faithful, all of them members of an assembly that manifests and lives the mystery of Christ and His Church. For the celebration of Christian marriage in the sphere of ancestral cultures or traditions, the principles laid down above should be followed.

Familiaris Consortio #66:Preparation for Marriage

66. More than ever necessary in our times is preparation of young people for marriage and family life. In some countries it is still the families themselves that, according to ancient customs, ensure the passing on to young people of the values concerning married and family life, and they do this through a gradual process of education or initiation. But the changes that have taken place within almost all modern societies demand that not only the family but also society and the Church should be involved in the effort of properly preparing young people for their future responsibilities. Many negative phenomena which are today noted with regret in family life derive from the fact that, in the new situations, young people not only lose sight of the correct hierarchy of values but, since they no longer have certain criteria of behavior, they do not know how to face and deal with the new difficulties. But experience teaches that young people who have been well prepared for family life generally succeed better than others.

This is even more applicable to Christian marriage, which influences the holiness of large numbers of men and women. The Church must therefore promote better and more intensive programs of marriage preparation, in order to eliminate as far as possible the difficulties that many married couples find themselves in, and even more in order to favor positively the establishing and maturing of successful marriages.

Marriage preparation has to be seen and put into practice as a gradual and continuous process. It includes three main stages: remote, proximate and immediate preparation.

Remote preparation begins in early childhood, in that wise family training which leads children to discover themselves as being endowed with a rich and complex psychology and with a particular personality with its own strengths and weaknesses. It is the period when esteem for all authentic human values is instilled, both in interpersonal and in social relationships, with all that this signifies for the formation of character, for the control and right use of one's inclinations, for the manner of regarding and meeting people of the opposite sex, and so on. Also necessary, especially for Christians, is solid spiritual and catechetical formation that will show that marriage is a true vocation and mission, without excluding the possibility of the total gift of self to God in the vocation to the priestly or religious life.

Upon this basis there will subsequently and gradually be built up the proximate preparation, which-from the suitable age and with adequate catechesis, as in a catechumenal process-involves a more specific preparation for the sacraments, as it were, a rediscovery of them. This renewed catechesis of young people and others preparing for Christian marriage is absolutely necessary in order that the sacrament may be celebrated and lived with the right moral and spiritual dispositions. The religious formation of young people should be integrated, at the right moment and in accordance with the various concrete requirements, with a preparation for life as a couple. This preparation will present marriage as an interpersonal relationship of a man and a woman that has to be continually developed, and it will encourage those concerned to study the nature of conjugal sexuality and responsible parenthood, with the essential medical and biological knowledge connected with it. It will also acquaint those concerned with correct methods for the education of children, and will assist them in gaining the basic requisites for well-ordered family life, such as stable work, sufficient financial resources, sensible administration, notions of housekeeping.

Finally, one must not overlook preparation for the family apostolate, for fraternal solidarity and collaboration with other families, for active membership in groups, associations, movements and undertakings set up for the human and Christian benefit of the family.

The immediate preparation for the celebration of the sacrament of Matrimony should take place in the months and weeks immediately preceding the wedding, so as to give a new meaning, content and form to the so-called premarital enquiry required by Canon Law. This preparation is not only necessary in every case, but is also more urgently needed for engaged couples that still manifest shortcomings or difficulties in Christian doctrine and practice.

Among the elements to be instilled in this journey of faith, which is similar to the catechumenate, there must also be a deeper knowledge of the mystery of Christ and the Church, of the meaning of grace and of the responsibility of Christian marriage, as well as preparation for taking an active and conscious part in the rites of the marriage liturgy.

The Christian family and the whole of the ecclesial community should feel involved in the different phases of the preparation for marriage, which have been described only in their broad outlines. It is to be hoped that the Episcopal Conferences, just as they are concerned with appropriate initiatives to help engaged couples to be more aware of the seriousness of their choice and also to help pastors of souls to make sure of the couples' proper dispositions, so they will also take steps to see that there is issued a Directory for the Pastoral Care of the Family. In this they should lay down, in the first place, the minimum content, duration and method of the "Preparation Courses," balancing the different aspects-doctrinal, pedagogical, legal and medical-concerning marriage, and structuring them in such a way that those preparing for marriage will not only receive an intellectual training but will also feel a desire to enter actively into the ecclesial community.

Although one must not underestimate the necessity and obligation of the immediate preparation for marriage-which would happen if dispensations from it were easily given-nevertheless such preparation must always be set forth and put into practice in such a way that omitting it is not an impediment to the celebration of marriage.

Familiaris Consortio #63:The New Commandment of Love

63. The Church, a prophetic, priestly and kingly people, is endowed with the mission of bringing all human beings to accept the word of God in faith, to celebrate and profess it in the sacraments and in prayer, and to give expression to it in the concrete realities of life in accordance with the gift and new commandment of love.

The law of Christian life is to be found not in a written code, but in the personal action of the Holy Spirit who inspires and guides the Christian. It is the "law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus"(159) "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."(160)

This is true also for the Christian couple and family. Their guide and rule of life is the Spirit of Jesus poured into their hearts in the celebration of the sacrament of Matrimony. In continuity with Baptism in water and the Spirit, marriage sets forth anew the evangelical law of love, and with the gift of the Spirit engraves it more profoundly on the hearts of Christian husbands and wives. Their love, purified and saved, is a fruit of the Spirit acting in the hearts of believers and constituting, at the same time, the fundamental commandment of their moral life to be lived in responsible freedom.

Thus, the Christian family is inspired and guide by the new law of the Spirit and, in intimate communion with the Church, the kingly people, it is called to exercise its "service" of love towards God and towards its fellow human beings. Just as Christ exercises His royal power by serving us,(161) so also the Christian finds the authentic meaning of his participation in the kingship of his Lord in sharing His spirit and practice of service to man. "Christ has communicated this power to his disciples that they might be established in royal freedom and that by self-denial and a holy life they might conquer the reign of sin in themselves (cf. Rom. 6:12). Further, He has shared this power so that by serving Him in their fellow human beings they might through humility and patience lead their brothers and sisters to that King whom to serve is to reign. For the Lord wishes to spread His kingdom by means of the laity also, a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace. In this kingdom, creation itself will be delivered out of its slavery to corruption and into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (cf. Rom. 8:21). "(162)

Familiaris Consortio #58:The Sacrament of Conversion and Reconciliation

The Sacrament of Conversion and Reconciliation

58. An essential and permanent part of the Christian family's sanctifying role consists in accepting the call to conversion that the Gospel addresses to all Christians, who do not always remain faithful to the "newness" of the Baptism that constitutes them "saints." The Christian family too is sometimes unfaithful to the law of baptismal grace and holiness proclaimed anew in the sacrament of marriage.

Repentance and mutual pardon within the bosom of the Christian family, so much a part of daily life, receive their specific sacramental expression in Christian Penance. In the Encyclical Humanae vitae, Paul VI wrote of married couples: "And if sin should still keep its hold over them, let them not be discouraged, but rather have recourse with humble perseverance to the mercy of God, which is abundantly poured forth in the sacrament of Penance."(146)

The celebration of this sacrament acquires special significance for family life. While they discover in faith that sin contradicts not only the covenant with God, but also the covenant between husband and wife and the communion of the family, the married couple and the other members of the family are led to an encounter with God, who is "rich in mercy,"(147) who bestows on them His love which is more powerful than sin,(148) and who reconstructs and brings to perfection the marriage covenant and the family communion.

Familiaris Consortio #57:Marriage and Virginity or Celibacy

57. The Christian family's sanctifying role is grounded in Baptism and has its highest expression in the Eucharist, to which Christian marriage is intimately connected. The Second Vatican Council drew attention to the unique relationship between the Eucharist and marriage by requesting that "marriage normally be celebrated within the Mass."(144) To understand better and live more intensely the graces and responsibilities of Christian marriage and family life, it is altogether necessary to rediscover and strengthen this relationship.

The Eucharist is the very source of Christian marriage. The Eucharistic Sacrifice, in fact, represents Christ's covenant of love with the Church, sealed with His blood on the Cross.(145) In this sacrifice of the New and Eternal Covenant, Christian spouses encounter the source from which their own marriage covenant flows, is interiorly structured and continuously renewed. As a representation of Christ's sacrifice of love for the Church, the Eucharist is a fountain of charity. In the Eucharistic gift of charity the Christian family finds the foundation and soul of its "communion" and its "mission": by partaking in the Eucharistic bread, the different members of the Christian family become one body, which reveals and shares in the wider unity of the Church. Their sharing in the Body of Christ that is "given up" and in His Blood that is "shed" becomes a never-ending source of missionary and apostolic dynamism for the Christian family.

Familiaris Consortio #56:Marriage as a Sacrament of Mutual Sanctification and an Act of Worship

56. The sacrament of marriage is the specific source and original means of sanctification for Christian married couples and families. It takes up again and makes specific the sanctifying grace of Baptism. By virtue of the mystery of the death and Resurrection of Christ, of which the spouses are made part in a new way by marriage, conjugal love is purified and made holy: "This love the Lord has judged worthy of special gifts, healing, perfecting and exalting gifts of grace and of charity."(138)

The gift of Jesus Christ is not exhausted in the actual celebration of the sacrament of marriage, but rather accompanies the married couple throughout their lives. This fact is explicitly recalled by the Second Vatican Council when it says that Jesus Christ "abides with them so that, just as He loved the Church and handed Himself over on her behalf, the spouses may love each other with perpetual fidelity through mutual self-bestowal.... For this reason, Christian spouses have a special sacrament by which they are fortified and receive a kind of consecration in the duties and dignity of their state. By virtue of this sacrament, as spouses fulfill their conjugal and family obligations, they are penetrated with the Spirit of Christ, who fills their whole lives with faith, hope and charity. Thus they increasingly advance towards their own perfection, as well as towards their mutual sanctification, and hence contribute jointly to the glory of God."(139)

Christian spouses and parents are included in the universal call to sanctity. For them this call is specified by the sacrament they have celebrated and is carried out concretely in the realities proper to their conjugal and family life.(140) This gives rise to the grace and requirement of an authentic and profound conjugal and family spirituality that draws its inspiration from the themes of creation, covenant, cross, resurrection, and sign, which were stressed more than once by the Synod.

Christian marriage, like the other sacraments, "whose purpose is to sanctify people, to build up the body of Christ, and finally, to give worship to God,"(141) is in itself a liturgical action glorifying God in Jesus Christ and in the Church. By celebrating it, Christian spouses profess their gratitude to God for the sublime gift bestowed on them of being able to live in their married and family lives the very love of God for people and that of the Lord Jesus for the Church, His bride.

Just as husbands and wives receive from the sacrament the gift and responsibility of translating into daily living the sanctification bestowed on them, so the same sacrament confers on them the grace and moral obligation of transforming their whole lives into a "spiritual sacrifice."(142) What the Council says of the laity applies also to Christian spouses and parents, especially with regard to the earthly and temporal realities that characterize their lives: "As worshippers leading holy lives in every place, the laity consecrate the world itself to God."(143)