We need to re-evaluate the strategy in a different way, using new approaches that refrain from further judgment and condemnation.

During the Mass for this year's "Walk for Life" on Saturday, Advincula - who is the head of Manila's Catholic Church - spoke of the need for the Church to walk with the times.

The Church needs to explore "new pathways" to respond better to today's dominant values he said.

"We need to engage in more listening and dialogue. This is part of walking for life.

"Yes, we are clear about teachings on the different issues connected with life and family but we also need to rethink our approaches, methodologies and strategies" he said.

Diverse family life and ways of living

Finding better ways to deal with today's problems in today's world is of particular concern Advincula told the congregation.

We need to find better ways of dealing with, among other issues, the dilemmas and complexities of modern families, irregular situations in the home and what he termed "the diversity in understanding identity and personhood".

He said that accompanying families on this journey, especially the young people, is necessary.

"They don't need more judgments and condemnations.

"To lead people to the truth, we must do so in love, truth and charity, walking together for life, this is where the holy spirit is leading us today."

Life is sacred

One of the Mass concelebrants was Bishop Severo Caermare who chairs the CBCP Episcopal Commission on the Laity.

This year's Walk for Life has raised important family and life issues, he told the crowd. Pro-life includes opposing attempts to revive the death penalty, divorce and same-sex unions.

"Our participation, our presence today is a demonstration of how we value the sacredness of life" he said.

Advincula encouraged all the faithful to work together to defend the sacredness of life "in a rapidly changing world that is oftentimes more welcoming to a civilisation of death and so hostile to a civilisation of life and love.

"I encourage you to continue to be passionate in your ministry. Do not be disheartened if sometimes you feel if what you have been doing is not even noticed or ends up in an apparent failure. Take courage. You are not alone.

"Our society today needs teachers that can lead others to the right path and to the right choices. We must not abandon this mission of being teachers and catechists of the Gospel of life."

A united appeal

The Council of the Laity of the Philippines which organised the Walk for Life says the pro-life event brought together more than 3,000 people from various religious and lay organisations.

The Council says they were all united in one aim - to demonstrate solidarity in upholding the dignity of human life.

Source

• CBCP News

Older women want reform, but younger Catholic women are more conservative. They want the rules on sex, contraception and the priesthood to remain as they are.

About the study

The study surveyed 17,200 Catholic women from 104 countries; 1769 came from Australia.

The authors say the generational differences in attitudes could come from life experience, migration, or the more conservative Church which younger people have experienced.

"There has been a push back towards conservatism [in Australian Catholicism]" says one of the authors.

"I think that's been impactful for young adults in the church."

She also notes that women of all ages expressed disappointment, frustration and challenge with the Church.

"[There was] a feeling that some women's voices weren't heard in the church. That was across age."

This comes as Pope Francis leads a discussion about whether women should have a greater role in church governance and ceremonies.

While women being ordained as priests seems out of the question, Francis has not ruled out the diaconate.

Study results

74 percent of Australian Catholic women want reform, while an average of 84 percent of Catholic women internationally want change.

The authors defined conservatism as adherence to Catholic doctrine and the embrace of traditionalism.

The desire for a more traditional approach was driven by younger women, the study found.

While 74 percent of respondents supported reform, only 44 percent were aged 18-40; 87 percent of 56-70 year olds want reform, as do 94 percent of over 70s.

Survey comments show differences in what reform means.

Older women want the Church and its teachings to change.

However, the authors noted "there was a smaller, younger cohort of respondents who rejected any modernisation of the church and understood reform as a return to orthodoxy and tradition, including the traditional Latin mass."

Fewer than a third of under 40s supported inclusion of women at all levels of the Church or the suggestion of female preachers and priests.

Sex, contraception, divorce

Allowing more freedom of choice on sex and contraception was rejected by two in three of those under 40; the 41 to 55s were about half-half, but the 56 pluses backed the idea enthusiastically.

Young Catholic women were less supportive of remarriage after divorce.

Older women talked about being shunned as divorcees, especially if there had been violence in their marriage.

All agree

All women agreed the misuse of power by male clerics was damaging the church.

They also agree leaders must do more to address abuse.

The Church institution was not doing enough to address the cover-up of sexual abuse.

The generational difference

One report author thinks life experience could influence older and younger women's views.

The survey may have attracted more young women who were highly engaged in the Church, rather than those who might be alienated from it, she suggests.

She also noted religious orders attracting young women seem to be those which continue to wear a habit, despite a ruling against them in Vatican II. Numbers are growing.

Source

• Sydney Morning Herald

She said she had felt fantastic on her big day but was sad to receive hate comments from trolls. Continue reading

Rev Prof Michael Mullaney, President at Ireland's national seminary, St Patrick's College Maynooth and a leading Canon Lawyer said the couple party to such a marriage "must-have capacity (ie the requisite freedom and knowledge to give such matrimonial consent), be free from any impediment in canon law and marry according to canonical form."

This latter stipulation means they must marry before "the local Ordinary (usually refers to a bishop), priest, deacon and two witnesses" or a suitably Church-appointed layperson and two witnesses.

The "necessary pre-marriage preparations and catechesis are also required although not for validity," he said.

Impediments to valid marriage in canon law include age. Both parties must be old enough to marry and usually, this is in accord with the relevant civil law.

Another impediment would be a previous marriage, whether conducted in the Catholic Church, in another church, or by the State and not yet declared null and void.

Other impediments include where one of the parties is a priest or deacon; impotence; where there is a blood relationship between the parties, or where abduction/other crime is involved.

Fr Gary Dench, a canonist with Brentwood Cathedral in Essex, pointed out that marriages "in registry offices, hotels, non-Catholic Churches, beaches, (before) Elvis impersonators" and such, "do not require a formal annulment procedure" in the Catholic Church as such marriages involving baptised Catholics "are invalid" in the eyes of the Church.

In a Twitter thread, he said that under canon law once you are baptised Catholic you remain a Catholic and that defection from the Church was no longer recognised as possible "following ‘Omnium in Mentem' (For the Attention of All) in 2009, promulgated by (Pope) Benedict XVI."

On this issue, Rev Prof Mullaney said "the term ‘formal defection' from the Catholic Church was introduced in the Code (of Canon Law) in 1983 but it was removed from the Code by the motu proprio ‘Omnium in Mentem' (October 26th, 2009)."

This, he said was because experience "showed that this new (1983) law gave rise to numerous pastoral problems. Continue reading

It was a year after her divorce that Sue Boyce says she realised she would never own another home.

She was 51, had five children to care for including two foster children and wasn't able to get enough equity out of the family's farm when it was sold to get back on the ladder.

"I didn't have much savings, I didn't really have much of an income at all.

"It was life renting, really, and that's what I thought my future would be, which was pretty tough."

Boyce said she was lucky - a massage therapy course she had taken towards the end of her marriage proved the key to starting her own business. Even then close to half of her income went straight on rent, and she would consider herself lucky if she could save $50 per week.

Now 59, Boyce said she imagined many women stayed in unhappy marriages out of fear of how they would survive outside it.

Boyce is part of a growing number of divorcees who struggle to get back on the ladder.

Research suggests majority of older renters were once homeowners

Divorcees trying to buy homes are an understudied group in New Zealand but research suggests the majority of older renters owned at some point, and divorce and separation were among the leading causes for people falling out of homeownership.

A 2017 Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ) report by Karen Witten found among a random sampling of tenants in four cities, 70 per cent of renters aged 55 and over were former homeowners.

Australian research found half of renters aged 50 and over had been homeowners at some point. In New Zealand, interviews with 108 seniors in rentals aged 55 years or older found 61 per cent had moved from ownership to renting.

According to the research paper Pathways to Renting among Older Former Homeowners, produced by Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities and due for release in late March, the most common reasons for loss of homeownership was relationship breakdown, followed by financial hardship.

Of the 66 former home-owning tenants interviewed for the paper, 67 per cent were either widowed, separated or divorced. Divorce or separation was the primary reason for leaving owner-occupation for seventeen people, while eighteen seniors reported that financial crisis or shock triggered leaving owner-occupation.

The paper notes following divorce or separation, some respondents had not been able to liquidate their housing equity, while for others their share of sale proceeds was insufficient to buy another dwelling. Continue reading

Spending more time together — a common result of lockdowns, furloughs and layoffs — has been a blessing for some couples who gain a greater appreciation of one another. For other spouses, deprived of opportunities for individual pursuits, the increased time together "may seem more like a house arrest than a fantasy," suggested Steve Harris, a professor of marriage and family therapy at the University of Minnesota and associate director of a marriage counselling project, Minnesota Couples on the Brink.

Gregory Popcak, a psychotherapist in Steubenville, Ohio, who specializes in marriage counselling for Catholics, says the pandemic has been particularly troublesome for spouses whose coping strategies have been disrupted.

"For couples who had a tendency to use their business to avoid problems, the pandemic has made things infinitely worse," he said. "The lockdown has raised the emotional temperature a few notches. … Things that were provocative before are now catastrophic."

Overall, people have become more cautious amid the pandemic, said sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

"This caution is making them less likely to get divorced, less likely to get married, less likely to have a child," he said.

Comprehensive national statistics on marriage and divorce during the pandemic won't be compiled for many months, but the numbers available thus far from a few states suggest there's a notable decline in each category.

In Oregon, divorces in the pandemic months of March through December were down about 24% from those months in 2019; marriages were down 16%. In Florida, for the same months, divorces were down 20% and marriages were down 27%. There also were decreases, though smaller, in Arizona.

One reason for fewer divorces: In many states, access to courts for civil cases was severely curtailed during the pandemic's early stages. Another reason, according to marriage counsellors, is that many couples backed off from a possibly imminent divorce for fear it would only worsen pandemic-fueled financial insecurity.

The Rev. Russ Berg, who runs a faith-based marriage counselling ministry in Minneapolis, tries to encourage that kind of hesitancy among the couples he advises.

"Some come in saying they're overwhelmed, fighting over finances, their kids' education," Berg said. "Without going to work, they don't have that buffer of being physically gone. They feel they're on top of each other."

"I try to put it in perspective, that everyone is stressed out right now and it's not a good time to make decisions about the future of your marriage," he said. "I say, ‘Let's work on it for six months and make sure you don't add the pain of regret to the pain of divorce. Explore all your options before you decide."

For countless couples on the brink of marriage, the pandemic plunged fine-tuned wedding plans into disarray due to restrictions on large gatherings and wariness about long-distance travel.

In San Diego, Kayleigh and Cody Cousins initially planned an April wedding, postponed it after the pandemic took hold, rescheduled it for December, then had to shift gears again when a new lockdown was imposed.

"That was devastating," said Kayleigh. "We said, ‘Let's just do it on Zoom.'"

So they set up an altar at home, recruited a friend to officiate virtually, and had a wedding ceremony Dec. 27 watched remotely by about 40 of their friends and family.

Professionally, Kayleigh helps her husband run a tree-cutting service, so they understand each other's work demands. For many couples, there's work-related friction.

Danielle Campoamor, a freelance writer in New York City, says she and her partner of seven years find themselves arguing frequently as the pandemic complicates the challenges of raising their two children and earning needed income. She works from home; he commutes to an Amazon fulfilment centre.

"He goes to work for 12-hour shifts," said Campoamor, 34. "I'm left alone helping my 6-year-old with online learning, potty-training my 2-year-old, cooking and cleaning.

"There are days when I think, ‘Yes, we can do this,' and other days I say, ‘No way that I can do this,'" she said. "We don't have time to discuss our relationship, to work on improving it, or on separating. Sometimes I don't have the capacity to remember what day it is."

Atlanta-based attorney Elizabeth Lindsey, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, says she and other divorce lawyers generally have kept busy, in some cases grappling with pandemic-related complications regarding child visitation rights.

She expects there will be pent-up demand for divorces once the COVID-19 threat eases.

"Plenty of people I've consulted with were not ready to pull the trigger during the pandemic," she said.

Recent months have been busier than usual for Louise Livesay, a lawyer in St. Paul, Minnesota, who specializes in collaborative divorce — a process in which the spouses are represented by attorneys seeking to negotiate outcomes fair to both parties.

Livesay said the stresses of the pandemic exacerbated existing strains in some marriages, pushing couples toward divorce. But she said many of her clients were eager to avoid contentious litigation and were open to equitable financial arrangements.

"I found people to be a bit more willing to work toward solutions when things are difficult," she said.

For some couples, a jarring consequence of the pandemic has been the discovery by one spouse that the other was cheating on them.

"It has brought to light a lot of extramarital affairs that people couldn't hide anymore," said Harris, at the University of Minnesota. "Maybe they would meet on the way to or from work.

Now they're texting, and the other spouse asks: ‘Who are you texting?'"

For other couples, a key problem is the loss of their pre-pandemic routines.

Harris described one troubled couple who entered marriage counselling a year ago, just before the pandemic took hold.

Now, the wife feels pressure to keep working, Harris said, while the husband tries to help their children with online schoolwork even though his teaching skills aren't great. His beloved adult hockey league has shut down.

"They're in this relationship that's struggling, and all their coping mechanisms are stripped away," Harris said. "My heart breaks for them."

In the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, psychologist Michael Horne, who counsels couples on behalf of Catholic Charities, has observed one heart-warming development that he attributes partly to the pandemic. There are now 20 couples enrolled in the agency's adoption program, up from seven a year ago.

"Having more time together has afforded couples time to have those really important conversations," he said. "What does it mean to be a family?"

• David Crary is an author at Religion News Service.
• Republished with permission.

Some say they paid for the property while their spouse abused them and paid for little or nothing.

One woman said her ex-husband was laughing all the way to the bank.

She described the legal process as an abomination.

"He refused to contribute, but now he's using the court as his weapon of choice to force me to pay property division of 50-50," she said.

"They have set the ceiling so high and because domestic violence is so common in New Zealand, my circumstances, even though I'm badly injured - that doesn't constitute 'extraordinary circumstances repugnant to justice.'"

The way the law works at the moment, the woman says she's going to have to "pay twice over".

She says she "already paid during the relationship, but the way the court analyses everything I wasn't allowed to submit evidence of all of that violence and all that financial violence, because I should have sorted it out during the marriage".

"But how can you sort it out during the marriage when you're begging for your life at machete point?"

Her former husband would receive more than $400,000 if she loses an appeal against the ruling.

She would also be liable for his legal aid fees, as she represented herself because she could not afford a lawyer while paying her mortgage.

"I can't raise a loan to pay for the house a second time, because I'm not earning enough now so that this is another level of domestic violence for m"e.

"I'm going to have to pay him out and the house will have to be sold to get the money to pay him out."

A recent Law Commission report recommended the government consider the relevance of family violence to the division of property in the context of its wider response to family violence.

This would enable a court to decide if there were extraordinary circumstances that make 50-50 sharing 'repugnant to justice'. Indicators of this could include a partner's gross misconduct - when that misconduct had significantly affected the extent or value of relationship property.

Divorce lawyer Jeremy Sutton says this focus still views family violence's impact through a financial lens.

"The law is there's a no-fault principle that underpins the Property Relationships Act so there is no difference to a settlement whether there's been domestic violence or not," he says.

Sutton says the Property Relationships Act is "social legislation and people say it should reflect the increasing awareness of the damage of family violence and be consistent with other government initiatives to curtail violent behaviour."

Source

• NZ Herald
• Image: University of Canterbury

Hartman's path to the cloth is one he loosely calls his resurrection story.

It's not a resurrection of mortal death, but the ending of one path and beginning of another he'd always felt called to.

He married young.

After five years, he and his wife had two children and a change of heart.

Hartman speaks about that difficult time with love and respect for himself and his former spouse and with a clarity of hindsight only time can yield.

Their relationship began in the early 1990s, and he started working full-time at the family grocery store in Milbank. At that time it was called Bill's Super Value. It now goes by Hartman's Family Foods.

"I was just out of high school thinking I knew everything. I got married to the girlfriend, Becky Johnson. Five years later it ended in divorce," Hartman told the Aberdeen News by phone.

"In that time I realized I didn't know everything. I really just came back to my faith."

Now 48, Hartman is the priest for both St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Groton and St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Turton.

He will also be sacramental minister at the St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center at Northern State University.

The student center has moved away from having a full-time priest to having someone in a part-time ministerial role provide sacraments to the Catholic students.

Hartman, in his decision to divorce, never lost his faith.

He'd tell you the opposite happened - it was strengthened.

"There was just a moment in my life before the divorce that I felt it was better to suffer with God than to suffer without him. When the time came I knew I was going to cling to my faith," he said.

Hartman continued to contemplate romantic love as he worked at his family's grocery store.

"Basically through those years, as I was dating a little bit, I realized my heart wasn't called to be with one person, it was called to serve more," Hartman said. "My heart was a priestly heart."

So Hartman put his focus on raising his children, and he and his former wife had their marriage annulled in the Catholic faith.

It's a necessary process for a person to have the freedom to enter into another vocation in the eyes of the Catholic Church. For him, it meant the beginning of his path to the priesthood.

The annulment process looks at the beginning of a relationship and how two people came to be married.

In Hartman's case, he and his wife were "really pretty young and stupid," he said. Continue reading

While the number of marriages and civil unions among residents has been steady at around 21,000 per annum for the last 20 years, a rising population means that the number per capita has been on a steady decline.

"The general marriage rate is slowly declining due to the population increase in those who are eligible to marry," Stats NZ senior analyst Kirsten Nissen said.

The rate fell to 10.8 couples per 1000 people eligible to marry or form a civil union, less than half the rate in 1988 and followed a general decline since the peak in 1971 when it was 45.5 per 1000.

She said the latest statistics showed half of the people marrying were over 30 years old.

"People are marrying at later ages. An Independent marriage celebrant Sue Esterman says she has noticed couples have usually been together for a good while.

"They want to set their relationship in some sort of publicly acknowledged commitment that says 'Yes, we're in this for the long haul'".

Although experts believe that the average cost of a Kiwi wedding has dropped to around $20,000, that's still about $6,000,000 spent on weddings and civil unions in 2018.

More and more couples are opting for less extravagant options.

"With backyard weddings, you can get away $4,000 to $6,000, maybe $8,000. There's no point taking out a mortgage for one big beautiful day you can organise yourself," says Kapiti wedding celebrant Sarah Topliff.

While fewer New Zealanders are entering into partnerships, those who do are staying in them for longer.

The number of divorces in New Zealand dropped to 7,455 last year, the first time below 8,000 since 1980. A law change in 1981 saw an initial sharp increase in divorces in the early 1980s.

Source

• radionz.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• Image: radionz.co.nz

Since we came to the decision, I've been dreading Christmas — the decorations, the Santa visits, the holiday cards.

Christmas seemed all about perfect families and frameable moments, and this year I didn't want any part of it.

I grew up in a conservative, middle-class suburb, where in my mind family meant two parents, at least a couple of kids, and where divorce was rare.

I assumed that would be my future, too.

But life happened, and despite my partner and I both being fundamentally good people who tried our best, we simply didn't work together.

I spent the early part of the year stubbornly wishing my family looked like my perception of everyone else's and feeling like a failure because it didn't.

But a conversation with a Catholic priest helped me reframe my expectations.

He suggested that my family, however it looked, wasn't less than any other.

The Bible is full of nontraditional families, he said. Sarah is elderly with just one child. Jacob's crazy in-laws married him to the wrong woman, and he ended up with two wives who birthed a nation of kids.

Hagar raised a child alone in the wilderness, abused and forgotten by the people who caused her situation, but not forgotten by God.

She too birthed a nation.

And remember, the priest reminded me, the Holy Family wasn't exactly a traditional one: an unplanned pregnancy and a virgin birth.

Joseph was a foster father to Jesus.

It's not hard to imagine Mary and Joseph feeling ill-equipped to be good parents.

They, too, were figuring it out as they went along.

Equally importantly, the priest encouraged me to reach out to my community.

So I took a small step. I opened up to a friend about my loss.

As it turned out, she'd been struggling with depression but hadn't told me.

I reached out to another friend. As a single woman without kids, she, too, felt on the margins this season.

Thinking about my divorce and Christmas had so consumed me that I hadn't realized how reaching out might also bless others.

My own feelings of brokenness weren't as isolated as I'd believed.

So many people I know are also struggling with conceptions of how we thought our lives and families were supposed to look compared to how they are. Continue reading

• Lauren Kosa is a Northern Virginia-based writer. She tweets at @LaurenKosa
• Image: Kidspot

The label "divorced" does not define a person.

It's an event that happened—terrible as it is—but it in no way is the sum total of who a person is.

You may feel like you're walking around with a big "scarlet ‘D'" on your forehead for all to judge you by, but what you need to focus on is how God sees you.

He sees you as his beloved with all the gifts, talents and potential he gave you, especially the specific purpose in life you have to fulfill.

It's the love of God that will carry you through this difficult time.

Another extremely important lesson is that forgiving those who have hurt you is essential if you want to heal from divorce.

There are no shortcuts, no half-measures when it comes to this.

It can seem impossible to forgive someone for causing such devastation; however, you'll never move forward if you don't find a way to forgive.

You will always be a victim.

The key is to ask God for the grace to forgive because we cannot do it on our own.

Last but definitely not least, the cross of divorce can change a person for the better.

This cross is an immense opportunity to grow emotionally and spiritually and to become a stronger, wiser person in the end.

How do you explain the difference between divorce and annulment to people?

A civil divorce decree and a declaration of invalidity (annulment) are apples and oranges, to be certain.

A civil divorce decree means the government has terminated your marriage contract, which applies purely on a legal basis.

The annulment process, however, does not terminate, dissolve or invalidate anything contrary to what many people believe.

It determines whether or not a valid marriage was brought into being on the day of the wedding.

If it is determined there was not a valid marriage, the tribunal issues a decree of invalidity stating such.

What are some common misunderstandings Catholics have about divorce and annulment?

One misunderstanding I'd like to address right up front is the myth that receiving a decree of invalidity means your marriage never existed and your children are considered illegitimate.

If you want to get someone angry, tell him or her exactly that, but I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth.

Receiving a decree of invalidity does not mean your marriage relationship never existed. The church recognizes that you lived in society under the assumption that your marriage was valid.

The technical term for this in Canon Law is "putative" (from the Latin for "supposed") marriage.

You had a real relationship that was witnessed by society, and nothing can make that untrue.

The decree of invalidity declares that the bond was not valid, meaning that, although you lived together as husband and wife, your marriage was not an unbreakable covenant between you, your spouse and God.

The list of misunderstandings goes on, such as an annulment is just a "get-out-of-jail-free" card, or it's just a money maker for the church.

Many people believe the process places undue burdens on witnesses and that it takes years and years to get through.

I tackle all these and more in my book. But the important thing for anyone to remember is the annulment process is a tool.

It's a valid tool whose purpose is to determine the truth and set healing in motion. Continue reading

• Lisa Duffy is a Catholic lay writer and speaker with 24 years of personal and professional experience in healing from divorce. Ms. Duffy suffered through the pain of an unwanted divorce in the early 1990s. Her newest book is Mending the Heart: A Catholic Annulment Companion.
• Image: Amazon

It says in 1992 the marriage rate was 18.3 couples per 1000 people eligible to marry. That includes those who formed a civil union from 2005.

This rate dropped to 10.9 couples in 2017.

Statistics New Zealand says the highest number of marriages and civil unions in the last 25 years was in 2008.

In that year, 22,275 couples married.

It says the lowest number was in 2013, when 19,425 tied the knot.

Auckland marriage celebrant, Aaron Bloomfield, says there are two main types of people who marry in New Zealand.

The first is young ones intending to marry and have children by age 30. He says they are over 25 with their lives in order.

The second broad group comprises generation X and Y who live as married couples but without the paperwork.

Generations X and Y describe people born between 1960-1980 and 1980-1990 respectively.

Of the youngsters, he says, "They usually get married the same time as their peers and I often see the same faces at multiple weddings over the same wedding season."

The older ones from generations X and Y, he says, have already built their family.

"They date for about a year, move in together, purchase a home, trial raising a fur baby together, and one day they realise they've got it made and decided to go official."

Divorce rates fall

The divorce rate has also fallen, according to official statistics.

Statistics NZ measures the divorce rate as the number of divorces per 1,000 existing marriages.

In 2017, 8,001 couples divorced.

That gave a divorce rate of 8.4.

In 1992, 9,114 couples divorced, giving a rate of 11.9.

The decrease in the divorce rate coincides with a fall in the number of children affected by divorce.

The same lower marriage trend is also evident in Britain and Australia.

Source

• NZ Herald
• Statistics New Zealand
• Image: NZ Herald

A New Zealand Law Society and Grant Thornton survey of family law practitioners- the first of its kind in this country- reveal divorce trends and patterns, including the rise of the 'silver splitter', and the reasons why we divorce- simply falling out of love. Continue reading

One participant said afterwards Francis told them "the Church welcomes and embraces us."

"Pope Francis was well known in Buenos Aires for being among the people," said Dew in his post.

"He has found many ways to continue the encounter with people that is at the heart of his spirituality and his approach to being Pope."

"The people who might feel they are 'on the peripheries' of the Church are very dear to him and he actively creates opportunities to meet with them."

Isabel Díaz, who took part in the meeting, said Pope Francis told them that, with their experience, they can help others who are separated and divorced live through their suffering, and "above all, he underlined repeatedly that the Church welcomes and embraces us."

""It gave me the feeling that we were meeting with the "Santa Teresa" group, in the parish of San Juan de la Cruz in Toledo, all in a circle."

"The only difference was the pope was with us. A generous pope, humble and at the same time affectionate. A pope then that made you want to hug him. I have the desire to hug him." Díaz said.

The 95 minute private audience would likely have gone unnoticed, if it wasn't for the fact that the diocese sponsoring the trip wrote about it on its website.

Last April, the Archbishop of the Spanish diocese of Toledo, Braulio Rodríguez, handed Francis a letter.

It had been was written by women who participate in the "Santa Teresa" group, run by the Commission of Family and Life of the diocese.

After reading the letter, Francis invited them to Rome.

Source

• Facebook
• Rome Reports
• Crux
• Image: Crux

On one side, several members of the Council of German Bishops endorse Communion for the divorced and remarried.

On the other, German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the Vatican's doctrinal chief, says Communion for divorced and remarried people is impossible.

"For us marriage is the expression of participation in the unity between Christ the bridegroom and the Church his bride," he said.

"This is the substance of the sacrament, and no power in heaven or on earth, neither an angel, nor the pope, nor a council, nor a law of the bishops, has the faculty to change it."

Of the 66 members of the German Council of Bishops, 27 say the remarried can receive Communion without resolving to live "as brother and sister".

They say this is possible through "Differentiated solutions which are appropriate to the individual case".

An accompanying statement says the solution will be found through "a decision-making process, accompanied by a priest".

The permanent council of German bishops proposed Communion for the remarried in 2014, saying that it was " a test of the Church's credibility".

Several German bishops distanced themselves from the 2014 statement.

At the subsequent Synod on the Family, not all bishops approved the proposal.

However, since the Pope released Amoris Laetitia, some have suggested Communion for the remarried is now possible.

Cardinal Müller says Amoris Laetitia must be read "in the light of the whole doctrine of the Church".

"I don't like it, it is not right that so many bishops are interpreting Amoris Laetitia according to their way of understanding the Pope's teaching," he said.

"This does not keep to the line of Catholic doctrine."

Source

• Catholic Herald
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Marriage Resource Centre

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia recently released pastoral guidelines in the wake of Pope Francis's post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

In the guidelines, one of the topics addressed was divorced and civilly remarried Catholics living as brother and sister, without having sexual intercourse.

"Undertaking to live as brother and sister is necessary for the divorced and civilly remarried to receive reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance, which could then open the way to the Eucharist," the new guidelines read.

The guidelines also emphasised the parts of Francis's document that essentially told clergy not to give up on people whose lives don't adhere strictly to Catholic teaching.

Philadelphia's mayor Jim Kenny reacted negatively to aspects of the guidelines.

The mayor tweeted: "Jesus gave us gift of Holy Communion because he so loved us. All of us. Chaput's actions are not Christian."

The Catholic League's Bill Donohue said the tweet was an abuse of the mayor's office.

Veteran Vatican journalist John Allen predicted that approaches on to how to put Amoris Laetitia into practice will take two paths.

"My suspicion is that those who are inclined to a more progressive reading [of Amoris Laetitia] are not going to put out documents to say so.

"It will quietly be made clear to priests that it is OK under certain circumstances, for example, to allow some people to quietly come back to Communion," Allen said.

"My suspicion is that the more traditional line [adopted by some bishops] will be more public."

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• The Guardian
• Washington Post
• Philadelphia guidelines
• Image: Philly Voice

What, if anything, does premarital sex have to do with marital stability?

This research brief shows that the relationship between divorce and the number of sexual partners women have prior to marriage is complex.

I explore this relationship using data from the three most recent waves of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) collected in 2002, 2006-2010, and 2011-2013. For women marrying since the start of the new millennium:

• Women with 10 or more partners were the most likely to divorce, but this only became true in recent years;
• Women with 3-9 partners were less likely to divorce than women with 2 partners; and,
• Women with 0-1 partners were the least likely to divorce.

Earlier research found that having multiple sex partners prior to marriage could lead to less happy marriages, and often increased the odds of divorce. But sexual attitudes and behaviors continue to change in America, and some of the strongest predictors of divorce in years gone by no longer matter as much as they once did.

In my 2005 book Understanding the Divorce Cycle, I showed that the transmission of divorce between generations became weaker as divorce grew more common. Could the same thing have happened with sexual behavior? Somewhat surprisingly, the answer appears to be no.

Even more noteworthy has been the decline in the proportion of women who get married having had only one sex partner (in most cases, their future husbands). Forty-three percent of women had just one premarital sex partner in the 1970s. By the aughts, this was down to 21 percent.

Neither of these two trends changed much after the first decade of the twenty-first century. Following in the wake of the sexual revolution, the 1970s have been characterized as a decade of carnal exploration. But this doesn't seem to have been the case for the vast majority of women who ultimately tied the knot in that decade: almost two-thirds of them had at most one sex partner prior to getting married.

Even in the 1980s, slightly over half of women had a maximum of one sex partner before walking down the aisle. Things looked very different at the start of the new millennium. Continue reading

Sources

• Family Studies, from an article by Nicholas H. Wolfinger.
• Image: Relate Institute

The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, told seminarians in Spain that the apostolic exhortation does not change the Church's discipline in this area.

John Paul II, Benedict XVI and the CDF have all said in the last 35 years that the divorced and civilly remarried should not receive Communion unless they live "in complete continence".

Cardinal Müller told the seminarians: "If Amoris Laetitia wanted to overturn such a deep-rooted and important discipline, it would have expressed this precisely and given reasons for it".

Footnote 351 of Amoris Laetitia was related to text in paragraph 305, concerning those in "irregular situations".

" . . . Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin - which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such - a person can be living in God's grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church's help to this end." AL(305)

The footnote went on to say: "In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. . . ."

It referenced previous statements by Pope Francis about priests not making the confessional into a torture chamber and the Eucharist being powerful medicine for the weak, not a prize for the perfect.

Cardinal Müller said the document's footnote 351 does not specify the divorced and remarried.

"Without going into details, it is enough to point out that this footnote refers to objective situations of sin in general, not to the specific case of civilly remarried divorcees," he said.

"The situation of the latter has peculiar features which distinguishes it from other situations," the cardinal added.

The footnote, the cardinal went on, "does not apply to the previous discipline".

Referring to the teaching of John Paul and Benedict, he added: "The standard of Familaris Consortio [84] and Sacramentum Caritatis [29] and their application in all cases is still valid."

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Catholic Herald
• Amoris Laetitia
• Image: Catholic Herald

This was stated in an article by major penitentiary at Milan Cathedral, Msgr Fausto Gilardi, a translation of which was published on the Crux website.

In the article, he mentioned the reaction to a chapter titled "Accompanying, Discerning and Integrating Weakness" in the Pope's apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

"In some cases, linked to partial information in the press, there's been a ‘demand' for absolution, and thus confession is seen as a sort of passport towards the Eucharist," Msgr Gilardi wrote.

"The phenomenon has a certain urgency, since the time of First Communion and Confirmation is drawing near, and parents want to participate fully in the sacraments of Christian initiation for their children."

Among priests themselves, the question immediately came up: "What do we say? How do we act?"

"The questions clearly show the need for a common discernment within the presbyterate," Msgr Gilardi continued.

"Some priests, perhaps in a slightly rushed and efficiency-oriented way, have opened a ‘teller's window' for consultation, giving the idea that "any priest can quickly grant ‘exceptions'."

But the Monsignor quickly noted that "this is certainly not the model proposed by the apostolic exhortation".

"On the contrary, the Pope's text says that with ‘a pastor capable of acknowledging the seriousness of the matter before him, there can be no risk that a specific discernment may lead people to think that the Church maintains a double standard." (AL300)

Msgr Gilardi noted the document's repeated use of the phrase "path of discernment".

"The phrase immediately gets across the idea that there's a journey to undertake, and the timing and modes of that journey will vary from situation to situation."

Among other points the article discussed was the importance of a correctly formed conscience.

Msgr Gilardi concluded by stating: "The faithful have experienced the eagerness of pastors who aren't called to impose a norm, but to lift up the value expressed through that norm, carrying in a real sense the ‘smell of the sheep'."

Sources

• Crux
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Layover Guide

On his flight back from the Greek island of Lesbos on Saturday, the Pope was asked about a much-commented-upon footnote in his recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

In a section of the document discussing pastoral discernment for divorced and remarried persons, a footnote (351) stated that "in certain cases [the Church's help to grow in the life of grace and charity] can include the help of the sacraments".

A journalist asked why the Pope had put that in a footnote, and if it meant he wanted to indicate the issue was not overwhelmingly important.

"One of the last Popes, speaking about the Council, said there were two Councils," Francis responded.

"The Second Vatican Council that met in St Peter's Basilica and the other was the Council of the media."

"When I convoked the first synod, the great worry of the majority of the media was will they give Communion to the divorced and remarried?" he continued.

"Not being a saint, this annoyed me a bit, but also made me a bit sad," said Francis.

"The media that say this . . . do not see that this is not the important problem of the Church.

"They do not see that the family in all the world is in crisis. And family is the base of society."

The Pope also lamented Europe's declining birth rates, youth not wanting to marry and a lack of jobs.

Francis was also asked if, after the exhortation, there are new concrete possibilities regarding the Church's pastoral practice for remarried Catholics

"I can say yes, many" responded Francis.

"But it would be an answer that is too small," he added.

Francis referred to the presentation of Amoris Laetitia by Cardinal Christoph Schonborn earlier this month.

"In that presentation, your question will find an answer," Francis said, noting that Cardinal Schonborn is a "great theologian".

Cardinal Schonborn had suggested that the footnote was part of a "via caritatis" proposed by the Pope, that did not offer case studies or recipes, but stressed mercy and help for the weak.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Catholic News Agency (text of Pope's in-flight press conference)
• Zenit (text of Cardinal Schonborn's presentation)
• Amoris Laetitia
• Image: Catholic Herald