Love and marriage

IT might do us real good to remember an old Frank Sinatra song that says love and marriage should go together like the horse and carriage. The lyrics hit bull’s eye how things ought to be with respect to these basic human affairs.

I think we now urgently need some advocacy work with regard to them. There seems to be a horrible sea change in this area, where many people, for one reason or another, are separating love from marriage, and vice-versa.

To me, the crisis is mainly because people are losing the real essence of love, and thus are distorting and corrupting also the nature of marriage, and the other related things, like family, education, etc.

At least for many Christians, love is now largely understood without any reference to the Cross of Christ. This is a real anomaly that we all know is reinforced by some ideological groups and by the media that, being a perennial fence-sitter in moral matters, appear now to be dominated by ideologues.

Without the Cross of Christ, forget it, love in any form, whether personal, family, social, patriotic, etc. can never prosper. That love will just be a façade without the substance, a rich foliage without the roots.

It’s going to be a quixotic kind of love, devoid of realism. It will not have the power to grow, let alone, last. It will end up completely helpless in the face of life’s many challenges. It will be prone to go into self-justifying positions.

And for married couples, they will be very vulnerable to fall into a contraceptive mentality that seems to prevail to many places these days. Love has to be genuine, it has to find its real foundations, for it to sustain and strengthen marriages and families.

If we now see many failed marriages and broken families, it’s actually not hard to ferret out the culprit. It’s the disappearance of the spiritual and moral outlook of life, and the madness just to look for shallow human solutions to our problems, that’s responsible for all this mess.

It does not mean that these human solutions are of no use. They do have tremendous importance, and we need them. But when not rooted on faith and religion, and for Christians, on Christ’s cross, no amount of brilliant human solutions would do. They will fail to touch the very core of the problems.

The advocacy work that we can suggest here is to clarify, widely and massively, the true meaning of love and marriage, and the many practical implications and consequences such clarification involves—chastity, openness to life, etc.

This will require a lot of manpower and other resources. But if the will is there, strong and vibrant, ready to do any battle if needed, then no amount of difficulties can stop this now deeply-felt crucial task.

We can already make use of the many structure in the different levels of the Church and society to pursue this advocacy work. Parochial groups, schools, some clubs can be made use of.

Volunteers willing to make sacrifices are most welcome, and are encouraged to recruit more minds and hands for this cause. They have to see to it that their very own life and example can be shown as a living witness to the truth and beauty of Christian love in marriage and family life.

A very tricky area is how to handle those who with good intentions are quite wrong in their teachings, as can be gleaned by their opposition to the official teaching of the Church.

We can refer to groups within the Church, already quite established and with a large network of schools and other centers of influence, who not only not follow Church teachings, but also openly defy these doctrines. This sad phenomenon is not anymore classified. It’s now quite public and undisguised.

Again, in this advocacy work, it’s very important to be reminded about the requirement of truth and charity. Its good and ardent intentions should not be allowed to deteriorate into bitter zeal and self-righteousness.

A lot of patience and understanding will be needed. The capacity to drown evil and error with an abundance of good and truth should always be cultivated. The ability to enter into meaningful and sustained dialogue, with tact and prudence, has to be developed.

Try to see if you can be part of this advocacy work!