Is the institution of marriage facing the biggest challenge? It appears so if the situation in many countries is anything to go by.
The Economist says in an article, “as couples wait longer to marry, and fewer eventually do, the number of countries where more births are out of wedlock than in it has risen to more than 20.”
Rates across the OECD group of 34 mostly rich countries vary hugely, from 2 per cent in Japan to 70 per cent in Chile. But overall the average is 39 per cent — more than five times what it was in 1970, it says.
According to Roman Catholic norms, marriage is a sacrament. Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of "the wedding-feast of the Lamb." Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its "mystery," its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal "in the Lord" in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church, says the Catechism of Catholic Church (CCC).
But people care two hoots about the biblical proposal on marriage. Gay marriages have already become a challenge and now the number of births of wedlock is rising. Divorces, once unheard of in the Catholic Church, are also on the rise. Inter-caste marriage has become a big issue in many dioceses of India, leading to the possibility of a decline in faith in the next generations.
The Economist says unmarried parents are more likely to split up. Their children learn less in school and are more likely to be unhealthy or behave badly. It is hard to say how much of this difference is due to marriage itself, however, because unmarried parents differ a great deal from married ones. They are poorer, less well-educated and more likely to be teenagers, for example. But efforts to persuade people who otherwise would not marry to do so have generally failed, it says.
The Catholic Church teaches: "The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage." The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. What's happening around the world is against the teachings of Bible.
Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. “Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures,” The Economist says.
In Brazil, where two-thirds of children are born to unmarried parents, couples whose relationship is “public, permanent and intended to form a family unit” are regarded as being in a “stable union”. Some countries allow couples to opt out of some of the provisions of de facto marriage by signing a contract, for example if one partner wishes to exclude property, or money for offspring from a previous relationship.
CCC says that every man experiences evil around him and within himself. This experience makes itself felt in the relationships between man and woman. "Their union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy, and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation. This disorder can manifest itself more or less acutely, and can be more or less overcome according to the circumstances of cultures, eras, and individuals, but it does seem to have a universal character," it says.
Catholic Church teaches very clearly. According to faith, the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman. Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations; their mutual attraction, the Creator's own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust; and the beautiful vocation of man and woman to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth was burdened by the pain of childbirth and the toil of work.
Nevertheless, the order of creation persists, though seriously disturbed. To heal the wounds of sin, man and woman need the help of the grace that God in his infinite mercy never refuses them.99 Without his help man and woman cannot achieve the union of their lives for which God created them "in the beginning." This is the bottom line.
The Economist says in an article, “as couples wait longer to marry, and fewer eventually do, the number of countries where more births are out of wedlock than in it has risen to more than 20.”
Rates across the OECD group of 34 mostly rich countries vary hugely, from 2 per cent in Japan to 70 per cent in Chile. But overall the average is 39 per cent — more than five times what it was in 1970, it says.
According to Roman Catholic norms, marriage is a sacrament. Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of "the wedding-feast of the Lamb." Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its "mystery," its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal "in the Lord" in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church, says the Catechism of Catholic Church (CCC).
But people care two hoots about the biblical proposal on marriage. Gay marriages have already become a challenge and now the number of births of wedlock is rising. Divorces, once unheard of in the Catholic Church, are also on the rise. Inter-caste marriage has become a big issue in many dioceses of India, leading to the possibility of a decline in faith in the next generations.
The Economist says unmarried parents are more likely to split up. Their children learn less in school and are more likely to be unhealthy or behave badly. It is hard to say how much of this difference is due to marriage itself, however, because unmarried parents differ a great deal from married ones. They are poorer, less well-educated and more likely to be teenagers, for example. But efforts to persuade people who otherwise would not marry to do so have generally failed, it says.
The Catholic Church teaches: "The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage." The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. What's happening around the world is against the teachings of Bible.
Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. “Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures,” The Economist says.
In Brazil, where two-thirds of children are born to unmarried parents, couples whose relationship is “public, permanent and intended to form a family unit” are regarded as being in a “stable union”. Some countries allow couples to opt out of some of the provisions of de facto marriage by signing a contract, for example if one partner wishes to exclude property, or money for offspring from a previous relationship.
CCC says that every man experiences evil around him and within himself. This experience makes itself felt in the relationships between man and woman. "Their union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy, and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation. This disorder can manifest itself more or less acutely, and can be more or less overcome according to the circumstances of cultures, eras, and individuals, but it does seem to have a universal character," it says.
Catholic Church teaches very clearly. According to faith, the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman. Their relations were distorted by mutual recriminations; their mutual attraction, the Creator's own gift, changed into a relationship of domination and lust; and the beautiful vocation of man and woman to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth was burdened by the pain of childbirth and the toil of work.
Nevertheless, the order of creation persists, though seriously disturbed. To heal the wounds of sin, man and woman need the help of the grace that God in his infinite mercy never refuses them.99 Without his help man and woman cannot achieve the union of their lives for which God created them "in the beginning." This is the bottom line.
