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How to Stop Gossiping

<div>How can saints hear our prayers when they’re not here on Earth? </div><div>We address your question in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/praying-to-the-saints">our Catholic Answers tract “Praying to the Saints.”</a>
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How Saints Hear Our Prayers

The gospel is vitally important to Christians. It’s at the core of the Christian faith. But what, specifically, is the gospel?
The word’s roots mean “good news.” That’s the meaning of the Hebrew term bsorah and the Greek equivalent euangelion. But people have been giving and receiving numerous kinds of good news all through history, so what kind is meant in the Bible?
Previously, I looked at how the word gospel <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/misunderstanding-the-gospel">is used</a> in different groups—particularly Protestant ones—and some of the problems with these uses.
You may have noticed that in our previous discussion, we didn’t look at how Scripture itself uses the term. So that’s what we’ll turn to now.
Is the gospel really all about sin and salvation, about being rescued from hell and brought to heaven through the death of Jesus on the cross? Or is the gospel about something else?
The concept of the gospel leaps to prominence in the New Testament, and one of the things that’s clear about it is that it’s not coming out of nowhere. St. Paul writes that he is
<blockquote>a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures (Rom. 1:1-2).</blockquote>
If we want to understand the New Testament’s gospel, it’s important to look back into the Old Testament to see what was prophesied.
When the Old Testament speaks of good news being announced, it frequently has in mind the announcement of a military victory (2 Sam. 4:10, 18:19-31; 2 Kings 7:9; etc.). In other words, God has given his people victory in battle, and this meaning needs to be borne in mind.
The term good news becomes particularly prominent in the book of Isaiah, which—together with the Psalms—is one of the books that Jesus quotes most frequently in the four Gospels. Since Isaiah is a prophetic work, it is here that we would be most likely to find material directly prophesying the emergence of the gospel in the New Testament.
It is thus no surprise when we consult Isaiah and discover that the end of the book—which frequently deals with the coming age of the Messiah—has multiple references to good news. For example, we read this:
<blockquote>Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; 
lift it up, fear not; 
say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” 
Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; 
behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him (40:9-10).</blockquote>
Here the good news that is announced to Israel is the arrival of God as king. He comes with mighty power, and his right arm is going to rule. This hooks into the theme of military victory that we have already seen associated with the idea of good news.
Next, we read this:
<blockquote>How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, 
who publishes peace, 
who brings good news of happiness, 
who publishes salvation, 
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isa. 52:7).</blockquote>
Here the good news being announced is that there will be a time in which Israel’s God reigns, resulting in a time of peace, happiness, and salvation—the last of these being a common Old Testament reference to salvation from one’s enemies in battle, again hooking into the theme of military victory.
Finally, we read this:
<blockquote>The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, 
because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; 
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, 
to proclaim liberty to the captives, 
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Isa. 61:1-2).</blockquote>
Here the good news being announced includes encouraging the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to those who are captive or in prison, and the reason for this is the arrival of the year of the Lord’s favor—so once again, God brings about a new and improved state of affairs for his people.
We thus see Isaiah building up a picture of a coming time when God will arrive with powerful might and a strong right arm; he will reign and bring peace, happiness, and salvation from their enemies to his people; and in this time of the Lord’s favor, he will encourage the brokenhearted and announce liberty to captives and those in prison.
That is the essential content of the good news or gospel that Isaiah focuses on.
How well does Isaiah’s understanding correspond to the way the concept is handled in the four Gospels? The earliest reference we find to Jesus preaching the gospel is in Mark 1:
<blockquote>Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (vv. 14-15).</blockquote>
This fits very well with the understanding of the gospel in Isaiah. Here the gospel is presented as being “of God”—that is, it is good news from or about God—and it is announced that “the time is fulfilled”—meaning that what has been previously prophesied is now arriving. The thing that is now arriving is “the kingdom of God.” And the appropriate response is to repent or turn away from one’s sins and believe in the gospel, or good news, of God’s arriving kingdom.
All this fits with the vision of the gospel presented in Isaiah of a time when God would arrive with power and begin to rule in a new golden age, in which God’s people—those who have repented of sin and allied with God—will be blessed.
We also find a connection with Isaiah’s understanding of the good news in Luke, where we read this:
<blockquote>[Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:16-21).</blockquote>
Here Jesus quotes Isaiah 61—a passage we read earlier—and he announces that it was being fulfilled in his ministry. So Jesus was directly hooking into Isaiah’s understanding of the coming time of good news in which God would reign and bless his people.
This understanding of the gospel as the arrival of the kingdom of God is a common theme in the New Testament.
If you search the New Testament for references to “gospel of” or “good news of,” you’ll turn up more than thirty references where the concept is qualified to indicate where it comes from or what it is about. Of these places, seven passages speak of the gospel “of God” (Mark 1:14; Rom. 1:1, 15:16; 1 Thess. 2:2, 8-9; 1 Pet. 4:17), and six passages speak of the gospel “of the kingdom” of God (Matt. 4:23, 9:35, 24:14; Luke 4:43, 8:1, 16:16).
These references are consistent with Isaiah’s presentation of the gospel as the time when God arrives and begins to rule in a golden age, and they reveal a strong New Testament linkage between the idea of the gospel and God and his kingdom.
You may notice that something has been missing from the passages we’ve just covered. Starting with Isaiah and continuing in the New Testament passages just mentioned, there has been a focus on the gospel as being about God coming to rule and establishing his kingdom. But there has been no mention of his Son Jesus Christ, his death on the Cross, heaven or hell, or anything like that. All of those concepts have been missing.
We can’t chalk this up to the individual passages simply failing to mention them. That proposal won’t work for the passages referring to the gospel and the kingdom in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
The reason is that Jesus did not begin his ministry and immediately announce his death on the cross. He was preaching the gospel. Mark 1:14-15 and Luke 4:16-21 both portray him doing that early on. But he didn’t reveal his coming death until much later (Matt. 16:21, Mark 8:31, Luke 9:22), and even then, the disciples didn’t understand what he meant (Matt. 16:22-23, 17:23; Mark 8:32-33, 9:32; Luke 9:45, 18:34).
Also, it wasn’t just Jesus preaching the good news. Before him, John the Baptist had done the same thing (Luke 3:18).
We thus see that—early on—there was a proclamation of the gospel that did not focus on Jesus and his death on the cross. Instead, the focus was on the time arriving for God to come and inaugurate his kingdom. That’s why the gospel is so frequently referred to as the gospel of God and the gospel of the kingdom.
What role Jesus would play in these events had not yet been revealed.
This has important implications for how the New Testament understands the idea of the gospel.
It is true that Jesus died on a cross so that we could be forgiven our sins, saved from going to hell, and brought to be with God forever. However, sin and salvation are not what the gospel is about. That is a fundamental misframing of the concept as the New Testament understands it.
Instead, the New Testament initial understanding of the gospel is as the good news that the time has arrived for God to begin to reign and inaugurate his kingdom.
This is done through his Son’s death on the cross—so Jesus has the pivotal role in bringing God’s kingdom about—but it is the arrival of God’s kingdom that is the good news itself.
It’s to the relationship of the gospel and God’s Son that we’ll turn next.

What Does Scripture Say About the Gospel?

<div>When should Catholics put up their Christmas tree and decorations? Are there any rules about this?</div><div>There is no rule about when to put up <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/christmas">Christmas</a> decorations. You can put them up and take them down whenever you want. You can even leave them up all year long!
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Christmas Decorations

<div>What is the origin of evil?</div><div>God’s creatures—beginning with the devil and his demonic confrères, and then mankind, beginning with our first parents—not the creator, are responsible for the moral evil in the world. Moral evil results from the misuse of the God-given gift of free will, first with the fallen angels and then mankind, and associated general disorder results from that moral evil.
For more on this general subject, please see our responses on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/can-free-will-thwart-gods-plan">how the free will of creatures can’t thwart God’s plan</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/to-hell-with-heaven">the devil’s creation and related consequences</a>, and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/augustine-had-it-right-calvin-did-not">how St. Augustine had it right on free will and John Calvin didn’t</a>.
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How Did Evil Come to Be?

Is Salvation Possible for Non-Catholics?

Count the cost, take up your cross, and follow Christ. This is the basic invitation embedded in all the difficult language about hating family.
It is hard language, but the Church has always read this as rabbinical hyperbole. The Lord doesn’t actually want you to hate your family; he wants you to love your family. But he does want to make clear, as he does in other ways elsewhere, that love for our family is not the central purpose of life, and that the goods of family life should not be placed higher than the goods of divine life. Christ follows this example himself, according to St. Ambrose, when elsewhere he asks, “Who is my mother? Who are my brethren?” (Matt. 12:46). We know quite well that the Lord loves his Mother, but he emphasizes that this love’s stability depends not merely on a natural relationship, but on the mutual love that he and his mother share for the will of God.
Many martyrs of the early Church, as well as modern martyrs in other parts of the world, have faced this stark point of decision, where following Jesus means being rejected by family or friends. There is good reason that several commentators on this passage reference Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of “cheap grace.” Though Bonhoeffer is a Protestant, he criticizes the way that the idea of “salvation by faith alone” can allow “forgiveness without repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession” (The Cost of Discipleship).
Though Catholics do not believe in “salvation by faith alone,” multiple versions of this easy grace pervade in mainstream modern Catholicism. Sometimes it hides within a more “progressive” emphasis on Catholic social teaching and matters of justice, suggesting that we don’t need to offer focus on personal repentance, faith, and relationship with Jesus as much as we need to work for economic and political change. Sometimes it hides under a more “conservative” emphasis on Catholic doctrine, suggesting that if we offer reverent worship and orthodox teaching, we don’t need to worry about doing hard things out in the world. Both of those are caricatures to a certain extent, but they’re meant to say how hard it is to really live as disciples when so many forces, both within and without the Church, push us to take the easy way, the way of cheap grace, which is really no grace at all.
How, after all, can we hear the call to “follow” Christ without equating this call with the invitation of the latest “influencer,” pop psychologist, fitness guru, or outrage farmer, to “follow” his channel? To follow someone now means a single click or tap, a sort of informal contract that allows his “content” to enter the algorithm more regularly. If we don’t like it, we can always unfollow him or instruct the algorithm to show his content less often. You can, in some cases, be “following” someone even while you have blocked everything he wants to share with you.
It seems that, in point of fact, the majority of American Catholics treat their relationship with Christ and his Church in this way. Sure, some of them will “unfollow” the Church by actively rejecting their baptism or joining some sect, but most people don’t feel any need to do anything so drastic. This widespread idea that you can continue to “follow” Jesus without actually doing anything has to be one of the devil’s favorite concepts.
So this is the landscape where Christ’s warnings about family can be translated. Following him is not just another thing you do alongside following your favorite football team, your favorite shoe brand, and your favorite podcaster. Following him has to mean you’re covered in the dust from his feet; it has to mean you’re so close that you start to love the things that he loves and hate the things that he hates, so close that his suffering starts to become part of you and your relationship with the world.
This is why St. Paul confronts his disciple Philemon about his runaway slave Onesimus. Following Jesus means that he can no longer hold this man as a slave. Yes, there is a cost to that, a cost that would have seemed unacceptable in mainstream Greco-Roman culture. But it is a necessary cost that comes from following Jesus.
There are some modern readers who get annoyed because Paul doesn’t come right out and condemn slavery in a general way, as modern Christians finally began to do in the nineteenth century. And it’s fine to be annoyed at the slow work of history, or in the way that Christians have often dragged their feet about things that seem obvious to us. Though I suspect that we often drag our feet about things that would have seemed rather obvious in a different age! Anyway, this letter was never a systematic moral treatise; it was a direct and personal directive. It would have cost nothing for Paul to speak in some abstract way about the evils of slavery. What was costly was the direct personal appeal, founded in relationship. You, he says, belong to Christ now, so your life must be different. That made much more of a difference to Onesimus than a general appeal to principles.
If we can just stick with that topic for a moment, it serves as a useful example. I don’t know any modern Christian who would think it okay to own slaves. This is good, I think, but it isn’t especially praiseworthy, because it is not as if you have to make great sacrifices to be against slaveholding in the twenty-first century. So we can pat ourselves on the back about our moral uprightness in things like this: the fact that we don’t own slaves, or the fact that we avoid murdering babies, or maybe even the fact that we avoid voting for politicians who are in favor of murdering babies. Great! And maybe sometimes these views may be unpopular, so we risk here and there some social alienation. Maybe it is even hard.
But some of us who hold to these standards may find it very hard to get to Mass every week, or to follow the Church’s discipline of fasting, or to boldly preach the gospel to our neighbors, or to truly support the needs of the Church from our substance and not just from our excess. These are the places where ordinary Catholics often fail to count the cost, the places where we have convinced ourselves that grace is easy, that we can follow Christ but ignore what he says when it seems convenient.
To be sure, the Lord has great mercy for our weakness, and we will often stumble and fall. But these falls should be while carrying our cross, attempting to follow our Lord. If we never even pick it up or move, because we don’t think we have to, or because somehow we think we are entitled to salvation, we will have chosen the way of death. Choose then the way of life, and the way of wisdom, which is the way of the cross.

Being Catholic Can’t Be Easy

Many parents of young children get tired of hearing “they grow up so fast,” or worse, “treasure every moment”—those sentimental comments from well-meaning folks piling fuel onto the fires of parental anxiety. I know I hated hearing those things in the early years of our family. Maybe I’m just not a very nice person.
But this sentimentality has a certain truthfulness that takes on a harder edge as we all get older, which is less about savoring the moment—something almost always easier to say for someone on the outside viewing it from the lens of their own nostalgia—and more about remembering innocence from the standpoint of experience. There just are some things that are hard to appreciate until they’re lost.
This basic lesson is one way of thinking of human history after the Fall. I often think that Joni Mitchell singing “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” in 1970, whatever her exact intention at the time, contained a kind of accidental prophetic summary of that era, one of many eras in which humanity seemed content to throw aside its own nature and vocation. Since Adam we have been longing to return to Eden, longing to find our way back to Paradise, to immortality, to Communion. We remember this calling in our bones, and at times it will seem that civilization is moving in the direction of remembrance and restoration, only to achieve a yet more dramatic collapse. That longing that we have, to go back to childhood, to relive the happy days of our youth, or to relieve the happy days of our children’s youth, is much more than the idle discontent of age; it is a symptom of the human condition, which is locked in the cycle of its own failures.
Just last week, at Palm Sunday, we lived out that cycle in microcosm: waving the palm branches in praise at one moment, calling for the Lord’s unjust execution the next. By tradition, those palms are burned to make ashes for a future Lent, and so the cycle continues, not just ritually and liturgically, but in history, in relationships, in the human soul. We are stuck.
This is why, as Pope Benedict points out in a homily from 2010, the ongoing medical quest for immortality is doomed. All our science is focused on the prevention of suffering and death. Would it be good if we achieved that goal? No, he insists: we would only grow more old and more miserable, closed off from youth and innovation, stuck yet more permanently in the cycle of failure. “The true cure for death must be different,” the Holy Father says. “It cannot lead simply to an indefinite prolongation of this current life.”
In rising from the dead, our Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t just show us back to the Garden as if nothing had changed. Innocence cannot simply be restored. But something new is born: a humanity somehow both restored and changed, elevated, glorified, united with the light and life of God. This isn’t putting a bandage on the gaping wound of sin and death. It is allowing the whole organism to die so that it can be reconstituted.
This is hard because it seems to deny the longing to not die, to go back to what we have lost. Easter joy can come across as hollow if we think of the Resurrection as just the possibility of continuing this life as it is. But this is something better: the ability to move forward, not back, through the corruption and death of this life’s cross to the new day of resurrection.
Once again I have to quote Pope Benedict, who, in another Easter homily (from 2009), points to the “alleluia” as one of the great signs of the Resurrection. “When a person experiences great joy, he cannot keep it to himself. He has to express it, to pass it on. But what happens when a person is touched by the light of the resurrection, and thus comes into contact with Life itself, with Truth and Love? He cannot merely speak about it. Speech is no longer adequate. He has to sing.” Often writers of the tradition speak of the alleluia as a kind of heavenly song, extending beyond the syllabic limitations of ordinary human language to the wordless jubilation of the angels and saints.
But the Holy Father then recalls the crossing of the Red Sea, that great metaphor for baptism. He notes how we sing Moses’ great song of triumph, the Cantemus Domino, while still in the darkness of the Easter Vigil:
<blockquote>While, strictly speaking, she ought to be sinking, the Church sings the song of thanksgiving of the saved. She is standing on history’s waters of death and yet she has already risen. Singing, she grasps at the Lord’s hand, which holds her above the waters. And she knows that she is thereby raised outside the force of gravity of death and evil — a force from which otherwise there would be no way of escape — raised and drawn into the new gravitational force of God, of truth and of love.
At present, the Church and all of us are still between the two gravitational fields. But once Christ is risen, the gravitational pull of love is stronger than that of hatred; the force of gravity of life is stronger than that of death. . . .
Perhaps this is actually the situation of the Church in every age. . . . It always seems as if she ought to be sinking, and yet she is always already saved.</blockquote>
Here Israel at the Red Sea is a type of the Church, but the image also recalls St. Peter attempting to walk on water, sinking with lack of faith, calling out for the Lord’s hand.
Easter is that hand. Perhaps we are no longer like innocent children who can grab their father’s hand with absolute simple confidence. We rightly lament that loss, but we cannot go back in time. How wonderful, then, that the Lord has walked with us in time and history so that he can, in that resurrected humanity, reach out to us, whatever our age, or our maturity, or our strength, to pull us from the waters of this world toward the light of his eternity!

An Easter Reflection for Cynical Parents

<div>May a priest marry you at a hotel venue for a mixed marriage?</div><div>Yes, the Bishop can grant permission for a marriage to take place in another &#8220;suitable place&#8221; (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P40.HTM">can. 1118 §2</a>).
A marriage between a Catholic and a non-Catholic could be granted this permission to maintain family harmony for the ceremony. This usually arises if one of the families is anti-Catholic or if the other family is of a non-Christian faith. The non-church location for the wedding could be a hotel.
However, this is left to the prudential judgment of the local bishop, and if he does not believe the proposed location is appropriate or that the reasons presented justify the permission, then he is free to not grant permission. Priests also are not required to perform marriages outside of their parishes, and thus, even if there are valid reasons that justify a neutral and secular location for the wedding, the couple still needs to find a willing and able priest.
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Is a Hotel Wedding Permitted?

What is the unforgivable sin? Fr. Matthew Spencer provides clarity on this complex biblical concept. Learn about the Church&#8217;s interpretation of the unforgivable sin and how it relates to despair and disbelief in God&#8217;s mercy. Discover the importance of trust in God&#8217;s forgiveness and how to overcome anxiety about committing this sin.
Transcript:
I&#8217;m going to go to Memphis, Tennessee. Charles is in Memphis. Thank you for the call. Charles, go ahead with your question for Father Matthew Spencer. Yes, sir. I just had a question regarding the unforgivable sound. Okay. You know, we see in the Bible, it&#8217;s in Scripture, and then the church fathers sort of deviate on have different interpretations. The didache, if I&#8217;m pronouncing that right, has an interpretation. And I was just wondering, how can we know and rest assured that we know what the sin is nowadays?
Oh, very good question. 
I worry about if I&#8217;ve committed it or not.
I see. I see. Well, first of all, I&#8217;m glad that you call Charles because it gives us the opportunity to ponder and consider what this is. But before I do, I just want to harken back to the last hour we had John Papino in the studio with Cy. And one of the observations he made, I felt was important, you know, that the church fathers recognized that there are many different ways to interpret Scripture. And not because Scripture itself is not clear, but because God&#8217;s teachings can come to us in multiform ways and God, the richness of God&#8217;s teaching can be expressed in Scripture in a beautiful variety of ways. So, for example, sometimes we hear a passage, and that passage resonates with us in one way and speaks, illuminates some part of our heart and our life at that point that we need. 
And then later in life, we hear that passage, and it gives us a different insight. And that&#8217;s certainly, of course, the Spirit helping us to connect with Scripture in that way. And I would say, therefore, that this particular Scripture passage you&#8217;re referring to, Mark 3, 28, or Matthew 12, 31, also found in Luke, generally has an interpretation that I&#8217;m going to give to you, but is not definitively defined by the church. The church doesn&#8217;t say dogmatically that there is only one interpretation of what Jesus is referring to in the one unforgivable sin. So generally, the way that we interpret this is that it is a form of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which also for us could be a failure, a despair of God&#8217;s mercy. 
These are two different ways of saying the same thing, that essentially, if I don&#8217;t believe that I can be forgiven, because I think that God&#8217;s mercy is limited or something like this, then of course, I&#8217;m not going to be able to be forgiven, because to be forgiven requires that I&#8217;m open to that particular forgiveness. So this is generally how we explain and understand this particular sin. And therefore, Charles, I would say, if you are going to God&#8217;s mercy, then you don&#8217;t need to worry at all that you are not repenting of this particular sin. 
Why? Because you are trusting, in fact, in God&#8217;s mercy, and you are wanting God&#8217;s forgiveness in your life. So I would say to you, Charles, don&#8217;t let that doubt that seems to sometimes trouble you about maybe there&#8217;s a sin there that you&#8217;re not aware of, and maybe that won&#8217;t be forgiven. No, that is not the way that God works. It&#8217;s not the way that forgiveness and mercy works. It&#8217;s not like a game we&#8217;re trying to play where God is hiding sins from us and not allowing us and maybe going to hold back forgiveness because we didn&#8217;t think about this. No, he wants us to be forgiven. He wants us to experience his mercy. The only time that he couldn&#8217;t give us his mercy is if we didn&#8217;t want it, and if we just despaired of that mercy and pushed it away. So as long as you&#8217;re open to God&#8217;s mercy, then you certainly wouldn&#8217;t be offending against some blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. 
Okay, Charles? 
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. 
Thank you. 
Hey, thanks for watching. If you like this Catholic Answer, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific, or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform, or our Catholic Answers app.

“I Worry I’ve Committed the Unforgivable Sin”

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One question that exposes every pro-choice argument 👇

This has been <a href="https://www.usccb.org/topics/marriage-and-family-life-ministries/national-marriage-week">National Marriage Week</a>, and of course today is St. Valentine’s. A double reason, then, to honor one of the primordial forces of human nature: the inner drive of man and woman to seek out and cling to one another in a permanent, exclusive embrace, for their mutual aid and the bearing and raising of children.
This force, however, once as constant as gravity and as powerful as the sun, seems to be… slipping.
Not only have marriage rates been tumbling for a generation; now young adults in the West aren’t <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/02/14/gen-z-love-instagram-tiktok-dating/78336999007/">even coupling and fornicating like they used to</a>, either. Everyone has a theory as to why:
<ul>
<li>Effortless access to pornography is sating or dulling the desire for sex that used to motivate a young man to pair with a young woman (and ideally to marry her).</li>
<li>The nonstop entertainments and virtual relationships afforded by devices are disincentivizing both men and women to socialize in person.</li>
<li>Economic factors, real or perceived, are making those virtual relationships, and casual group hangouts, easier to fit into the budget than traditional dating (and certainly marriage and children).</li>
<li>Some ambient cultural or environmental pollutant is messing with young people’s minds and bodies: the sexual confusion wrought by pervasive gay and trans activism; stunting of social skills during the Covid years; residual hormones from sixty years of artificial contraception leeching into in our water supply; vaccines or seed oils or chemtrails or whatever your public-health soapbox is.</li>
</ul>
Whatever the reason or reasons, the West is <a href="https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/lancet-dramatic-declines-global-fertility-rates-set-transform">staring smack at a crisis</a> unprecedented in history: a systemic loss of desire for one generation to court, mate, form families, and create another generation.
In this context, we might take a fresh look at recent discussion over the state of Catholic marriage preparation. (I spent several years as a diocesan marriage &amp; family minister, preparing thousands of couples for matrimony, and the subject is of special interest to me.) In recent years, Pope Francis and some bishops have advocated for much longer and more-stringent marriage-prep programs than most dioceses currently require.
This has <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/should-the-church-require-a-year-of-marriage-prep-catholic-formators-weigh-in">divided Catholic opinion</a> along unpredictable lines: some of the usual papal critics like it and some of the usual papal defenders are opposed—and everything in between.
Me? I see arguments for both sides, but I think I come down firmly on one of them.
The pro side for making marriage preparation longer and more involved boils down to one principle: more knowledge is better. Marriage is a “great mystery,” as St. Paul said, and great mysteries require deep and careful attention. How else are we going to reduce Catholic divorce rates and promote marital happiness, if not by a thorough and even demanding pre-marriage boot camp that gets couples truly ready for what lies ahead?
The con side says, yes, marriage is a deep and ineffable mystery. But it’s a mystery we slowly come to understand through living it. The basics of marriage are easy enough to teach and make people understand; after that, it’s on-the-job training.
You might have guessed that, since I put it second, I side with the con folks—and you’d be right. And I think today’s poll data about cratering attitudes toward dating and marrying throw the con arguments into sharp relief. How the heck are we going to encourage marriage by making it seem more complicated and making it harder to do?
Men and women have been marrying naturally for many millennia. Christian men and women have been uniting themselves to each other sacramentally for nearly two. Most of them have been illiterate, minimally catechized, without specialized resources. They had no problem forming exclusive unions, bearing and raising children, and usually staying together until death.
Sure, every age has its troubles, and the Church in every age should respond to them. Today, for instance, the best marriage and family ministry includes joyful apologetics for Catholic teaching on the marital goods of fecundity and indissolubility, because these two goods have been under special attack since the Sexual Revolution.
But, the basics of marriage are the same in every age. It doesn’t take a master’s degree or hundreds of hours of special seminars for couples to know what they’re signing up for and consent to it. You used to be two; now you are one. You can’t have anyone else. It can’t be undone. Now go make babies if you can.
All the rest—“getting to know each other” and improving communication and setting goals and managing finances and changing diapers and learning to say sorry and everything else—this is the work of a lifetime. The theological and spiritual mysteries of the sacrament and its saving graces are likewise the stuff of lifelong growth and reflection. Let’s not overwhelm our already-anxious younger generations by making them think they need to work out all of it before they say, “I do.”
Or, indeed, before they say, “Will you?” Or even, “Want to grab some coffee?”
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