The Hope of the Family

"Today, the family is in crisis, it is in crisis world wide," Pope Francis has said. "Young people don't want to get married, they don't get married, or they live together. Marriage is in crisis, and so the family is in crisis." The main problem with the family in the Church today, contends Cardinal Gerhard Muller, is not the small number of civilly remarried divorced Catholics who want to received Holy Communion. It is the large number of Catholics who live together before marriage, who marry civilly, or who do not even bother with marriage, as if these choices were sound options for Catholic living. It is also a failure of many who marry "in the Church" to understand marriage as part of their Christian discipleship. In this engaging conversation, Cardinal Muller, one of Pope Francis' top advisers in the Vatican, addresses the challenges facing marriage and family life today. The loss of faith in many traditionally Christian societies has led to a crisis. In turn, cohabitation, civil marriage, and divorce and civil remarriage, further undermine faith because they harm the family as the "domestic Church" and the place of initial evangelisation. The solution: the Church must undertake a robust new evangelisation of the family: sharing the fullness of truth about marriage and family in Christ, encouraging families to worship and pray together, and helping them witness by their lives to the joy of the gospel. Cardinal Muller stresses mercy and compassion in pastoral ministry with struggling Catholics, but he does so without contradicting the teaching of Jesus about divorce and remarriage and minimising the power of grace to transform lives. In this way he proclaims hope for the family rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

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