“The family is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love.”
These are words that St. John Paul II wrote in his 1994 Letter to Families (Gratissimam Sane, n. 23). They sum up remarkably well the current crisis of culture.
Two related areas needing particular attention in this crisis, issues that are fundamental to who we are as human persons made in the image and likeness of God, are life and marriage. The U.S. Bishops Conference has wisely turned the attention of Catholics to these issues in recent years through their special Call to Prayer initiative, creating a focused opportunity of prayer, education, and action to help all of us take seriously our call to transform the culture and foster the restoration of reverence for life and love that, if lived, can truly change the world.
While many factors point to the erosion of central fundamental goods necessary for human flourishing, there are several that stand out as major causes: the legalization of abortion, a disturbingly pervasive contraceptive mentality, attempts to “re-define” marriage, and the assaults on our religious freedom. These issues are certainly intertwined and they all have far-reaching destructive consequences. They are all violations of love. At the heart of all this we find the desolation of a world that doesn’t know God.
In his Theology of the Body, St. John Paul II, poses two basic questions: who am I? and how am I supposed to live my life in a way that brings true happiness? Just a few generations ago we knew how to answer those questions. We lived in a Judeo-Christian culture where the family was seen as the cornerstone of society. Family was clearly understood as a married father and mother and any children with whom God blessed them. Fidelity and life-long commitment were a given. Today, this reality has been deeply wounded by the sin and brokenness of a culture of death, made manifest in 50% of marriages ending in divorce, the incidence of premarital sex, cohabitation, and contraception growing to epidemic proportions, 41% of births occurring out of wedlock, and 1.3 million lives lost to abortion each year.
The disintegration of a fundamental understanding of marriage as a life-long, indissoluble union of one man and one woman, for the dual purpose of the mutual good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children, has turned our world upside down.
There is a reason why the Church upholds marriage as something to be revered. Marriage is an essential part of God’s plan for human flourishing, and understanding and living the reality of this sacred bond is vital for the health of society. It is in this one-flesh union of man and woman where the love of our Triune God can explode into new life. This life and love can transform the world, if we let it.
When our lives are rightly ordered, a whole new picture begins to emerge. When freedom is understood as the freedom to choose the good, the notion of mere consequence-free pleasure becomes unthinkable. All our actions have consequences – for good or for bad. It is not lack of access to contraception that causes out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion. It is lack of self-mastery, and a lack of reverence for our own and another’s true dignity. The failure to see another as a unique and unrepeatable human person who is meant to be loved rightly has created a foothold for evil’s insidious attacks on the family at its very foundations.
Nevertheless, the human heart is hungry for true, authentic love. But now we must ask the question, how do we know what true love is? It’s especially hard in today’s world when notions of love are so deeply distorted. But there is a way, and that Way is Jesus Christ. There is a beautiful depiction of the truth of love that says: “I asked Jesus how much He loved me, and He said, ‘This much’: and He stretched out His arms and died for me.” If we want to know what true love is, all we need to do is to spend some time meditating on the Crucifix.
“Faith and Reason are like two wings”
The opening paragraph of St. John Paul II’s Fides et ratio states: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know Himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
So how can we help to heal the rupture of faith and reason that has wreaked havoc in our world?
The piercing truth in Gaudium et spes, n. 36, enlightens us: “Without the Creator the creature will disappear. When God is forgotten, the creature itself grows unintelligible.” If we take to heart the call of the New Evangelization, we know there is a great deal of work to be done to help our world return to God. And we mustn’t be afraid.
Let us help to heal the wounded hearts in the “field hospital”, to use Pope Francis’s analogy, and bring the love and mercy of God to those who are hurting from the deception of false promises and help them to turn their lives back to their Creator whose love never gives up on us.
Let us re-claim the gift of our sexuality, as the gift God made it to be, and teach others the truth about life and love.
Let us give courageous witness to self-giving love, that “love unto death” which Christ Himself taught us, and thereby counter the self-serving, contraceptive mentality in our society.
Let us never tire of upholding the truth that life and marriage are sacred gifts to be cherished.
And let us remember what St. John Paul II taught us in The Gospel of Life (n. 91):
As an expression of the new life made possible by the Risen Christ, Christian marriage always expresses the truth about married love and is like a prophecy that clearly proclaims a human being’s real needs: that man and woman are called upon from the beginning to live in a communion of life and love and that this complementarity will lead to strengthening the human dignity of the spouses, the good of the children and of society itself, through the defense and promotion of life…everyone’s task and responsibility.
Author’s Note: To learn more about defending life and love, visit: www.marriagemarch.org and www.marriageuniqueforareason.org.
Allison LeDoux is the director of the Respect Life Office and the Office of Marriage and Family for the Diocese of Worcester, MA. Her pro-life work in the diocese involves implementing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities in which the Church is called to uphold the dignity of the human person from conception to natural death, and to proclaim the Gospel of Life through prayer, education, pastoral care, and public policy. She also oversees diocesan programs and policy related to Marriage Preparation with a particular focus on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, and teaches a class on the Theology of Marriage in the diaconate formation program.
Mrs. LeDoux serves as coordinator for the New England region of Diocesan Pro-Life Directors and is a member of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference’s Pro-Life/Pro-Family and Health Care Subcommittees. She received her certification in Catholic Health Care Ethics from the National Catholic Bioethics Center in 2007 and has had articles published in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, Ethics & Medics and The Catholic Free Press.
Mrs. LeDoux and her husband, John, a permanent deacon, are the parents of eight children.
