The Pope is apparently concerned about a too high divorce rate among couples married in the church.
But I suspect he is not looking at the data, at least the data in the US. I imagine the divorce rate varies rather significantly in various parts of the world. In the US, the studies show a very strong correlation between age at marriage + education completed at the time of marriage and the success or failure of the marriage. Massachusetts consistently ranks #1 or close to it in the percentage of people who complete high school, and the percentage of population who hold college and advanced degrees. The average age at marriage is well above some of the other states - in the late 20s to early 30s. The divorce rate in Massachusetts is the lowest in the nation - it is also the most secular state, with the lowest percentage of people attending church or identified as religious. The highest rates of divorce are found in the conservative christian bible belt states, and a couple of other (red) states, like Nevada. Many people marry at young ages there, and fewer complete post-high school education, or even high school itself.
Sacramental marriage in the RCC is not necessarily a requirement for marital success. I live in a neighborhood with few Catholics, but there have been almost no divorces in marriages that have endured for anywhere from 10 - 60+ years during the 50 years we have lived here. It's a professional populace and a "move-up" neighborhood for couples who have achieved a certain income level along with 2 or more children and want more space. A majority of the people who live here are not christian, much less Catholic.
My impression is that this program will simply result in even more couples choosing to not marry in the church.
Also questionable - the negative understanding of sex again- The preparation should include encouraging couples to observe "premarital chastity" so that rather than "becoming fixed on the physical instrumentalization of the other. This is the same distorted understanding that he church has regarding homosexual sex and contraception. These celibate males don't seem to grasp the difference between sexual "instrumentalization" of another and making love to another person. Virtually every niece, nephew, child, and the children of friends and relatives that I know lived with their spouse before marriage. In fact, they say they can't even imagine marrying someone without living with them first. These marriages have endured for many years, and some for decades. They didn't marry so that they could have sex whenever they wanted. They married because they loved someone and believed they could make a good life together, and have a family together. These couples have had mostly successful marriages (including friends of mine who were pioneers in this trend - living together in the 1970s while attending med school and law school - before marrying. They have four adult kids, 8 grandchildren and have been married about 45 years)
This is to be a project of the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life. Are there many married couples working in this Dicastery? Somehow I doubt it, and I suspect they will be just as clueless about real life and real marriage as the early groups of priests and bishops who met multiple times as the Birth Control Commission in the 1960s. Once they actually allowed married people to talk to them, they ended up giving overwhelming support to recommending a change in the teaching on contraception. But the conservatives in the Vatican didn't want that, and so advised Paul VI to reject the recommendation. The result is a teaching that is ignored by 95% of Catholics.
We were married as non Catholics in a civil ceremony, no previous marriages for either of us. The Church recognizes it as valid, maybe sacramental, for reasons unclear to me. RCIA leaders obsessed about marital status, so I expected there would be some sort of examination. But all we had to do was show our marriage license.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that demanding longer discernment period is the answer to keeping people together, if that is the goal. My guess is that marriage candidates are poorly catechized and don't understand what a sacramental marriage is, so the PTB think they need to add more time to the process to fill gaps in understanding.
But I don't know what marriage prep entails. Our attorney said she and her fiance had to take a test and were very afraid their answers would be too different and disqualify them from marrying, but they passed.
Our archdiocese has a a questionnaire, a "premarital inventory". They say there aren't any right or wrong answers, it's supposed to help with discussion, and help to iron out differences or misunderstandings ahead of time. I don't know if it works. We got married in 1972, I was 21. All we had to do was have six sessions with the priest, " instructions ", as they were called. You only had to have six weeks lead time. Now it is 8 months. They used to publish the banns on Sunday for three weeks preceding the wedding. Only for some reason they didn't do it for a mixed marriage, which ours was at the time. I don't remember what was said in the six sessions of instructions. But I do remember some of what my mother said; she had little talks with me about the married state when we got engaged. One thing she said was that the grace of the sacrament would help you through the rough times. I don't think she was wrong about that.
DeleteWe had 3 sessions with a priest.Also a « mixed » marriage. At the end of the third session the priest told us we didn’t need more meetings. He said it was obvious that we knew what we were doing - « mature ». I was 25, my husband was 32. We got married three months after getting engaged. We were also married in 1972. And I also have no memory of what was discussed other than him asking my husband if he was agreeable to raising children Catholic. But he told him that he didn’t have that responsibility, only I did.
DeleteBut I don’t think that the “grace” of the sacrament really makes much difference. As I mentioned already, most of our neighbors and people we know in our community aren’t Catholic, and the majority aren’t even Christian. According to the church they don’t have sacramental marriages. But the success rate is just as high as in the Catholic marriages I know.
Every couple has to work through some challenges. Some are more serious than others. Whether you call it "grace", or something else, it seems that sometimes one does get help outside of oneself. I'm not going to say it's limited to Catholics or even Christians. But it makes a difference if one lets it make a difference.
DeleteI wouldn't say that we were a particularly mature couple. I know I wasn't. I hadn't ever lived away from home, except for college (which I hadn't finished) or been in any way self supporting. We had gone out together for three years prior. At first my parents were more worried about an 18 year old dating a 22 year old than they were the interfaith aspect.
From the Vatican Website:
ReplyDeleteThe Dicastery is presided over by a prefect and assisted by a secretary and two lay under-secretaries. The members and consultors of the Dicastery include men and women of the lay faithful, single and married, who are engaged in different fields of activity and come from various parts of the world. There is an ample staff of both lay people and clerics who are selected, as far as possible, from diverse regions of the world.
Wilton Cardinal Gregory is part of the group. They have plenty of laity. The problem is that all these people, clergy and laity, belong to families that have many successful marriages. They tend to put the blame on unsuccessful marriages on poor education, insufficient faith formation, etc. and see better education and better faith formation through processes similar to the RCIA as the solution to preventing divorce.
Unfortunately, all the education and faith formation programs that we have in Catholic schools and parishes about the Eucharist and Confirmation have not been very successful in keeping our children in the Church. Right now, the bishops have embarked on a three-year program to re-educate the faithful about the Eucharist. Somehow, they seem to think that if people just "understood" the Real Presence they would become attend Mass on Sunday, give better answers to sociologists who ask questions about the Real Presence and cease to be distracted by poor music and even worse homilies.
The reason the Mass and Sacraments were put into the language of the people and they were encouraged to full and active participation is that explaining the Latin liturgy was not helpful. Yet today we still have all these education programs attempting get people to appreciate the sacraments rather than better and better liturgies to help us experience the sacraments.
Anne,
ReplyDeleteYou have given us a good analysis. Basically, education and wealth are two of the greatest resources for stabilizing a marriage as well as life in general in our society.
Strong family relationships can be a great resource even in the absence of education and wealth. At one time those were exercised within the context of shared religious and ethnic values. I think some of this emphasis upon formation before marriage attempts to restore family and cultural resources. The assets of education and wealth tend to be ignored by church professionals as “secular.”
Financial difficulties are often at the center of marriage failures. Educated and relatively wealthy people don’t understand what it is like to live from paycheck to paycheck.
Unfortunately, strong family relationships and a shared community of religious and ethnic values are much weaker in our highly mobile society. Unlike education and wealth, they can do little to buffer the rapid changes that are taking place in our society.
Unfortunately, most people fail to make the distinction between human capital and cultural capital. Even many social scientists don’t. If I take a course in accounting (as I have) I can understand the culture of accountants, and how to read a balance sheet. I can even remember some general accounting principles that regulate what is going on. On the other hand, accounting has not become part of my human capital, i.e., my personal skills. I would find it difficult to set up a balance sheet, etc. I need the human capital of an experienced accountant to do that.
Religious professionals get misled into thinking religious formation is about religious culture capital. They think that if they give people a bunch of ideas and values (i.e., the equivalent of a basic accounting course) then people will be able to run their lives well (i.e., do the equivalent of keeping a business on a safe and sound financial footing). However, a whole bunch of other skills and life experiences are needed to do that.
I took four years of college physics et al. and was happy when it was over. I took nine months of an accelerated course to get my masters in optical engineering. I was happy when it was over. One year of preparation for marriage? The single life is looking better than ever.
ReplyDeleteMore preparation means more paperwork, meetings, workbooks, and videos. If I take Jack's point correctly, handing out info *about* something isn't the same as learning how to *do* it.
ReplyDeleteA post-Cana program makes more sense to me. Track people in the first five years of marriage, when the failure rate is highest.
Of course they won't come; they're only going thru pre-Cana so they can have a church wedding to make Mom happy.
Which means they aren't really serious about marriage as a sacrament.
All these comments are really good, as is the original post (one or two points of which I will, nevertheless, take issue with when I'm able :-)).
ReplyDeleteI think Jack characterized this new directory as RCIA for getting married. I agree.
Jean said, of post-wedding-day formation, "They won't come". I agree.
Stanley suggested a year of marriage prep is way too much of a commitment. I agree.
Anne pointed out that the correlation between in-depth preparation and marital success seems rather weak. I agree.
Katherine noted that many marriages have succeeded with considerably less preparation. I agree.
Most fundamentally, I agree with Jack's point that the dicastery seems to be mistaking knowledge-transfer with what is actually needed. Now, a defender of the new program would quickly reply that what is being called for by the dicastery is much more than knowledge-transfer, which is a function of the intellect; it calls for formation, which is, or should be, multi-dimensional: intellectual, spiritual, relational, perhaps with other "-al"s tacked on.
FWIW, I come at this from a somewhat different point of view. One can be married with or without faith in the Triune God. And one can be married with or without a life-giving, vital connection with a church. The prescriptions I read about in the NCR article seem to assume that the faith and the connections already exist. But all of us know that can't be assumed. Therefore, what is needed, even before we can begin a program of formation, is a change of heart. Our Evangelical friends might call it a born-again experience or something similar. Catholic ministerial professionals would say, The couple needs to be evangelized. What all that really means is, The couple needs to have the desire for God's living, active presence awakened in their hearts.
Although I'm sceptical of marriage courses, I am sure that Catholic faith is a strong indicator for successful outcome. I've observed it in many of my friends and acquaintances who have stable, healthy until-death-do-you-part marriages. Both partners are strongly devout. Breakups occurred among those for whom the faith was held to superficially. I also have essentially non-religious friends who have stable marriages. Sometimes THAT seems to run in families.
DeleteOverall, I'd say that with two people who take their faith seriously, it makes a big difference.
"I'd say that with two people who take their faith seriously, it makes a big difference. " I think you're right about that, Stanley.
DeleteI will be interested in whether Jim can help clear up confusion.
ReplyDeleteIn the olden days, Catholics regularly told others they "were not married in the eyes of the Church." The Church ladies said in RCIA that that now only applies to Catholics who "know better."
They said it's possible people can be in a sacramental marriage outside of the Church. The assumption is that they are unless they are remarried after a divorce, which requires annulment prior to RCIA.
One of the women in my RCIA class was married in a civil ceremony to a man baptized as a Catholic as an infant, but that was the extent of his religious upbringing. She was cleared for RCIA, but her husband was under the obligation to have the marriage blessed. Before that could happen, the priest required him to go thru RCIA classes as a convenient way to "catch up," and then they were supposed to get some type of prep blessing instruction from the deacon.
It's a much longer and somewhat sad tale, but the rest is not germane to marriage prep other than that the hoops they had to jump thru led to them both leaving.
Let me just preface my response by noting that, among the thousands of Catholic priests and deacons in active ministry in the United States, I may be near the very back of the line of people to whom you should ask these questions. I do hardly any weddings (which has been a source of continual puzzlement on my part: honestly, I don't think I'm really that terrible at it; but most people who get married in our parish apparently want a priest and a "full mass". Deacons around here normally are given the Catholic/non-Catholic weddings, and for whatever reason, there aren't many of those in our parish.)
DeleteSo, with that caveat understood:
"Not married in the eyes of the church", to me, refers to the question of the marriage's *validity*. A marriage is valid when it is real - when it actually exists. Valid marriage = you're really married. Invalid marriage = you're not really married. What would make a marriage invalid? There are a few defined impediments: impotence; consanguinity; and (the most common reason); one or both parties are already married. I assume what the church ladies had in mind was the very common case in which a person gets validly married (so is married), and then gets a divorce and remarries (but without a declaration of nullity, so the previous marriage still is in effect and the new marriage would be invalid).
A valid marriage also is a sacramental marriage when the two parties are both baptized Christians. (To keep it simple, let's not get into the fraught topic of denominations whose baptisms the church doesn't recognize as valid). Thus, a baptized Presbyterian who validly marries a baptized Lutheran has, in the eyes of the Catholic church, entered a sacramental marriage.
In some of these matters, the Catholic church holds its own members to higher standards than other Christians. Thus, for a Catholic to marry a non-Catholic, the bishop has to issue a piece of paper in order for the wedding to take place in a Catholic church. Similarly if a Catholic marries a Muslim, Jew or any other non-Christian (different piece of paper, though). So my guess regarding the woman in your RCIA class is: the church held its own member (the husband) to a higher standard; he should have asked for the requisite piece of paper from the bishop prior to their wedding, and should have either insisted on the wedding being in a Catholic church, or sought out special permission from the bishop to have the wedding in a Protestant church (I don't think the bishop has a piece of paper for civil ceremonies). For a Catholic's marriage to be valid, not only do all the requirements I already mentioned (not being previously married, not being closely related to the spouse, et al) apply, but also s/he must follow canonical form: get married in a Catholic church using the Catholic rite of matrimony in the presence of the church's minister, with all the paperwork filled out, etc. etc. If that stuff isn't done, the marriage isn't valid. The blessing from the deacon may well have been a convalidation to make their marriage valid (real).
Jim Thus, for a Catholic to marry a non-Catholic, the bishop has to issue a piece of paper in order for the wedding to take place in a Catholic church.
DeleteMy Protestant husband and I were married in a Catholic Church with a full nuptial mass. I never asked a bishop for a piece of paper authorizing this. I never heard anything about a requirement like this. Is it something that was imposed after 1972?
Thanks. The couple had been married for 15 years, two kids. Their situation was viewed as a series of headaches and legalistic obligations. (There was quite an inquisition when my Episcopal baptism record did not have my correct birthplace on it. It was mixed up with that of my sponsor. Fortunately, the Church Ladies were willing to accept it because I showed them on my drivers license that the birthdays matched.)
DeleteMy RCIA friend did not understand how she could be married and her husband not. Neither could he. Eventually, some kind of ultimatum was conveyed to her alone about the blessing, and after that he quit going to Mass.
It's my belief that had they been approached in a friendlier way--this is a chance to renew your vows, second chance, kids and family celebration, blah blah--things might have turned out better.
She continued to attend Mass without receiving and was one of Father's hospice volunteers until he died.
They live elsewhere now, so I lost touch with them.
I guess that story begs the question: If marriage prep is going to be longer, how well prepped are the preppers? Our Church Ladies are enthusiastic formation leaders. They are, I have come to believe, quite awful at it.
Delete"My Protestant husband and I were married in a Catholic Church with a full nuptial mass. I never asked a bishop for a piece of paper authorizing this. I never heard anything about a requirement like this. Is it something that was imposed after 1972?"
DeleteI am pretty sure it existed prior to 1972. But you wouldn't have been the one to request the permission. The priest would have taken care of it, perhaps even without mentioning it to you. It's kind of a routine transaction with the bishop's office. But presumably, if you were to get your hands on the folder in the parish office with your wedding records, a record of permission for your "mixed marriage" would be in the folder.
In the days of the immigrant church, permission of the bishop would have been a big thing. The bishops were mostly Irish for whom English Protestants were the enemy. They were acutely aware that many of the Catholic immigrants from other predominantly Catholic countries were cultural Catholics who rarely went to Church on Sundays although they may have celebrated all the local saints feast days.
DeleteEmphasizing the need for the bishop’s permission would have underlined that undesirability of “mixed marriages.” I haven’t looked at the recent statistics, but I would expect that Catholics who marry Catholics are still less likely to divorce, and more likely to raise their children as Catholic, send them to Catholic schools and colleges and end up with children who practice their faith as adults. All that is falling apart, but it is likely still there in a very weak state.
The rule is still on the books, but most priests have long given up on using it as red flag to discourage mixed marriages. My impression from the other comments is that we have clergy in all denominations who have a lot of rules on the books trying to promote ideal situations where the marriage partners are strongly practicing the same faith but are faced the reality of lukewarm people of little or no faith who want a marriage ceremony in a church.
Today a lot of those pastors are faced with the fact that they want that marriage ceremony on a cruise ship or similar venue. In the midst of a huge party oriented, money-spending wedding culture, they may well wonder if a church wedding signifies anything particularly religious.
Part 1:
ReplyDelete"Also questionable - the negative understanding of sex again- The preparation should include encouraging couples to observe "premarital chastity" so that rather than "becoming fixed on the physical instrumentalization of the other. This is the same distorted understanding that he church has regarding homosexual sex and contraception. These celibate males don't seem to grasp the difference between sexual "instrumentalization" of another and making love to another person. Virtually every niece, nephew, child, and the children of friends and relatives that I know lived with their spouse before marriage. In fact, they say they can't even imagine marrying someone without living with them first. These marriages have endured for many years, and some for decades. They didn't marry so that they could have sex whenever they wanted. They married because they loved someone and believed they could make a good life together, and have a family together."
Right. This topic seems to intermix three things:
* Sex before marriage
* Living together before marriage
* Being married
My wife and I didn't live together before marriage. Did we have pre-marital sex? None of your beeswax :-). But I can report that, in our pre-Cana course in the 1980s, out of 22 couples, 21 were living together. We were the only exception, and really, by that time we were kinda-sorta-mostly living together, only we weren't financially astute enough to not keep paying for two separate apartments. Well, had we actually moved in together, our parents would have understood - none of them had been born yesterday - but I don't know that any of them would have fully approved. My own parents would hardly have approved of a single aspect of it. Now, some 34 or so years later, they still wouldn't approve :-).
I haven't done too many marriages as a deacon, but thinking about the dozen or so couples whom I've prepped and at whose weddings I've presided, I think all of them except one were living together. At least around here, living together is the rule, not the exception.
Morally speaking, pre-marital chastity (I think "continence" is the preferred term) is good, while pre-marital sex is sinful. Abstention can be recommended to engaged couples, whether or not the couple is living together. In my observation, "living together" encompasses many different aspects of a relationship: a certain level of mutual commitment ("we're a couple in a stable relationship, with a long-ish time horizon"); sex; and an economic arrangement (one dwelling is cheaper than two). Shared assets (cars, bank accounts, investments)? My understanding is: on the whole, not so much. Living together is a big commitment, but not a commitment without limit.
That last observation points to the aspect of living together that Anne mentioned in the post: a sort of risk mitigation: before we tie the knot in a way that is hard and expensive to untie, let's see how sharing the same household (and, one hopes, fidelity) works out.
Part 2:
ReplyDeleteAnne, the family-ministry folks I've heard from over the years would take issue with your claim that marriages among people living together works out just as well as marriages between couples who don't live together before the wedding. FWIW, I think the truth probably lies in some of the factors that you and Jack mention: when assessing the likelihood of a marriage succeeding, whether or not the couple lived together beforehand may not be very determinative. It may be that income, education and strength of family and social networks are more important considerations.
Of course, all of us can remember a time when a couple living together would have been frowned upon as a gross breach of propriety, and even today I don't think it has quite achieved the mainstream social/cultural acceptance which those who actually live together might wish for. But much of the cultural taboo seems to have drained away.
I'd like to think a pastoral minister wouldn't blink twice when a couple comes to him/her to prep for a wedding, and it becomes apparent the couple is living together. Of course, some ministers do blink; some priests, deacons et al live in a bubble. Personally, I think the radiating of disapproval does a lot of pastoral damage. We need to meet people where they live.
But meeting people where they live doesn't mean we compromise our moral standards. I don't put continence in the category of "living in a bubble". Unless there is a sort of social conspiracy to withhold the truth from our young people on a scale comparable to Santa Claus, we know that many millions of couples really did abstain from pre-marital sex. It's not some unachievable ideal. Not only is it not impossible, it's eminently possible.
And if the couple doesn't abstain, the church offers sacramental remedies.
There are some priests who are sticklers about insisting that couples not be living together as a condition of a church marriage. Which I think is unfortunate. Because that is one factor in couples choosing not to get married in the church. As a parent of a couple who were living together my take on it was that they were engaged, thus showing commitment, and that it was temporary (driven mainly by the fact that they couldn't afford rent living singly). So getting the marriage show on the road was the objective. I do think that once they've made up their minds that they want to get married they need to be working towards that goal, it's not necessary to have an expensive wedding.
DeleteFor what it's worth, I don't think it's necessary to live together to figure out if you're compatible. Hopefully you can observe how your your intended interacts with family, if they're responsible about doing their share, and aren't a spendthrift.
One thing that in retrospect would have done us more good than more catechesis was a course in household finance. Not that we were terrible at it. But it would have been helpful to be a bit more savvy about matters financial.
BTW Jim, don't feel too badly that you haven't been asked to do more weddings. My husband has only been involved with four, two of which were for our own kids. He's been involved with many more funerals and wake service than weddings. He said those are easier to do.
Raber and I were 30 when we got married. We lived together for two months before the wedding. It was not nearly enough time to discern that he had a very eccentric bill paying process and could not make decent pancakes. Somehow we managed to get through the last 38 years despite these things.
DeleteMy friend just told me his ex-wife just got her annulment. I think it's safe to say that the last gram of respect he had for the Church just went poof. He was fully committed to saving his marriage and jumped through every one of her hoops until she stabbed him in the back and tried to deprive him of any contact with his daughter. I would say that perhaps the marriage wasn't valid since SHE has proven to be a narcissist. However, she is STILL a narcissist and will be able to form another union in the Church which can result in the same outcome as the first marriage or quasi-marriage or whatever you want to call it.
ReplyDeleteI am remembering that I read that the Orthodox (or at least some of them) limit sacramental marriage to one per customer. If people divorce they can remarry , and can receive Communion, and not be in a state of sin. The marriage is considered valid but not sacramental. Which sounds fair enough. Any chance the Catholics could work out something like that? It seems like all the rules that are applied are pretty much man-made.
ReplyDeleteThe Anglicans and probably Lutherans have the same deal. You are supposed to go through a short counseling/examination period with the priest prior to remarriage. ECUSA is loosey-goosey about everything now, but I assume most Episcopal priests will at least inquire into the circumstances of a previous marriage. As a "lesser sacrament" (not commanded by Christ like Baptism and Communion), marriage "rules" may be mutable consistent with Anglican notions of Scripture, tradition, and reason.
DeleteI have never had much interest in catechesis. However, when I was a graduate student at ND, I discovered the National Directory for Catechesis which is the bishops interpretation of a similar Roman Document.
ReplyDeleteI bought it because I was interested to see if the bishops had anything to say about spirituality. Thankfully they did not, so I am free to say whatever I want about spirituality as a social scientist.
Then I decided to see if they had anything to say about the Holy Spirit. To my shock they had little to say about the Holy Spirit. No chapter heading and no subchapter heading until almost the end of the book, like about page 295 of 300 pages.
There they said something like. “Wait a minute before we end. Actually, this who thing is the work of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit it just doesn’t work.”
The Orthodox observers at Vatican II said that they would not write a document on the Church. Rather they would write about the Holy Spirit with perhaps an appendix on anthropology.
Congar in his three-volume work on the Holy Spirit said that Roman Catholics really have a problem with appreciating the Holy Spirit. For some the Trinity is really Father, Son and Mary. For others it is Father, Son and the Pope. I think for many it is Father, Son, and Catechesis.
The conservative head of the Holy Office at Vatican II famously said. “We have no need for the Holy Spirit since we have the Pope.” I think a lot of Catholic professionals think we have no need for the Holy Spirit because we have Catechesis.
Hopefully with Francis emphasis upon discernment we will begin to appreciate the role of the Holy Spirit not just in the Church but in out lives.
Maybe it's a good thing they don't try to say too much about the Holy Spirit. It might be heresy. I even get tangled up trying to figure out which pronoun to use (him, her, it, they?) None are really appropriate. So I don't use any. But we as a church can try to listen to the "strong, driving wind". And as individuals, to listen to the still, small voice.
Delete"I think a lot of Catholic professionals think we have no need for the Holy Spirit because we have Catechesis."
DeleteYou said a mouthful there!
Sadly there is nothing that drains the mystery and joy out of the faith quicker than Catholic faith formation programs as I have experienced them: Come to these meetings, read these materials, watch these videos, provide this documentation, stand/sit/kneel this way, confess these sins, go to the cathedral on these dates, find one sponsor in the parish for you, a married couple for your kid's sponsor, bring sponsors to these three meetings, do not wear anything black to the Easter Vigil, etc etc.
When people start leaving the Church, the Church doubles down on catechesis. What gets lost is that the Church is supposed to help you live a life of service to others through the example of Jesus Christ and all the saints. Catchesis is about as conducive to that as a course in auto maintenance.
Maybe it's a good thing they don't try to say too much about the Holy Spirit. It might be heresy.
ReplyDeleteThink of the Holy Spirit as breath, your breath. Mostly unconscious, always there. Supporting your thoughts, your feelings, your words, your deeds. Again mostly unconsciously. But sometimes coming into consciousness in both small and great ways. We do things WITH the Holy Spirit. Only rarely do we need to invoke the Holy Spirit.
Often, we become conscious of the Holy Spirit after events rather than during the events. That is a great part of discernment, to go back over experiences and understand them far more deeply.
I am far more worried about having mistaken ideas about the Father or Jesus than I am about the Holy Spirit. Those mistaken ideas often come from books, other people or culture, rather than from personal experience. Of course there are some Pentecostals who promote wrong ideas of the Spirit.
In thanksgiving after Communion, I always ask the Holy Spirit to help me to "pray as I ought".
Delete