If you're interested in reading a good book that's not directly about marriage, but is about the larger philosophical and cultural dimensions of this problem, I highly recommend a book by a man named Carl Truman, T-R-U-E-M-A-N, called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Carl Truman is an Englishman by birth that lives in the United States. He's a professor of theology at Grove City College in Pennsylvania and an ordained minister of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He's a brilliant writer and thinker.
He publishes often in the journal First Things, and he's done brilliant state work on what he calls the subtitle of the book Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution. Carl Truman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. This setup feels a little like a game show, but that's okay. So I guess we can do the results of the poll before that.
So for those that don't have the Slido app and were wondering what the poll was, it was who would you rather have over for dinner? And in fourth place was Pope Benedict XVI with 7% of the vote. Then St. Teresa of Calcutta made third place with 14%.
And then St. Pope John Paul II got 25% of the vote. And the winner by a long shot was Father Newman bearing bourbon and key lime pie. So, and we didn't even distinguish what kind of bourbon, so that's important.
Woodford Reserve. He's not that hard. He's around, you know. All right.
For the sake of time, we're going to go ahead and get started, because I know that there is football that starts at noon. It's okay. Notre Dame has a play until 7.30. All right.
That was a jab for Clemson Pants. But anyway, when family in a same-sex union comes to visit, should we allow them to stay in our home or insist that they stay elsewhere? How to be loving without condoning? Father Duncan?
No, you got the punt on the should I go questions. I'm going to hear your answer on this one. Remember that no one was ever bludgeoned into loving Jesus Christ. We cannot force anyone to love the living God, to believe the gospel, to walk the way of the cross.
All we can do is invite. And we do that best by walking the way of the cross ourselves. There are things that are intrinsically immoral and which none of us should ever do. All right.
But having dinner with them doesn't mean I'm complicit in their immorality. Sending Christmas gifts to them does not make me complicit in their immorality. The question is, what about when they come into my home? And I think the answer there is no.
It doesn't involve me directly in their immorality. So will I consent to allow them to share a bed in a private room in my home? As Father Duncan indicated, most of such decisions lie in the realm of what is prudential. And here, the first question to ask would be, who will be scandalized by it if I invite them into my home?
Are there minor children in the home? Or is everyone grown up? Who will know outside the immediate family? Do I live otherwise at peace with each of these people?
Is there any objective reason to fear that they will bring discord or harm into the home? When you consider all of these categories, if there's no scandal, if there's no real harm, if you want to keep the lines of communication open, it would not be intrinsically wrong to allow them to stay in your home even though you believe what they're doing is immoral. People do immoral things all the time. In fact, the only thing I know about all of us here today is that we're all sinners.
And that we do immoral things all the time. That's why we have the sacrament of repentance. The baptized remain sinners in need of repentance. The difference in this case is the declaration that my sin is not sin and that it's a public way of life.
I think when you have, in an appropriate way, explained to your family member, you know what I think you're doing is... And here, let me go off the direct answer with this. Never talk about what the church teaches to people who are living outside the church. The church is a provocation, a stumbling block.
The church is the bad cop. That the church teaches it will enrage them. You won't get a hearing. Instead of talking about what the church teaches, talk about what the gospel reveals.
So you can say, you know I believe the gospel reveals what you're doing is not part of God's plan. You know I believe what the gospel reveals is that what you're doing is not part of God's plan. But I love you. You remain my son or daughter.
And I want a relationship with you and with people who are important to you, which means your partner. Just don't expect me ever to introduce him as your husband or her as your wife. The same thing would be true, by the way, of a transgender family member who changes names and wants to use pronouns other than the ones appropriate to their proper biological sex. Speaking the truth in love does not require us to shut them out of our lives or even out of our homes.
There may be extenuating circumstances that require it for another reason. Chief among them, the presence of minor children who will be confused and misled by that. But use your best judgment. Always ask, what does the gospel require?
And the first thing the gospel requires of us is to speak the truth in love. I think too it's also helpful to remember that for these relatives or friends of yours, in many cases you will probably be one of the few, if not the only voice in their life that is offering a countersign. And I'm not trying to push you in the direction of literality. Just remember that you may be that one voice, that one presence that they know considers this to be disordered, considers this to be sinful, and that's an important place.
So it is not something to simply brush off, well, you know, I need to just have them out. You have a particular vocation that begins with that relationship. And it may be the only person, and everyone else in their life, in their circles, and certainly in their social circles, maybe in their religious circles, will be telling them everything is fine, what you are doing is completely acceptable in accordance with what God wants for you. But you being that particular voice is not unimportant.
I'll also offer this counsel. I can no longer write in cursive. My script was never beautiful, but it was serviceable. But I've been using a keyboard to write everything for so long.
I can't write in cursive. I can sign my name, and that's about it. So when I put something ink on paper, I have to use childlike lettering, or it's illegible. But write it down on paper with ink in your own hand.
If you have something contentious to say, don't say it on the phone, and don't put it in an email. A phone call or an email invite almost demands an immediate reply. Who of us hasn't answered an angry email instantly and then regretted it instantly? If you put it on paper, if you have something difficult to say, first, you can take your time and choose every word to say only what you mean.
Second, it's an extension of yourself. It's your hand on this piece of paper. Third, when they receive it, they can't respond immediately. They have you in their hand, your words from your hand, and they can ponder it.
Even if they disagree profoundly, even if they hurt, they have the opportunity to ponder and keep it, and maybe go back to it. So if you find yourself in need of saying something difficult as a sign of contradiction, even to someone you love, think about doing it in handwriting on paper that you send through snail mail rather than digital communication. I also have found that most conflict is best handled over Facebook or Twitter. So let's go.
All right, in your opinion, what is the number one obstacle facing Catholic couples who are seeking to live out Christian marriage? I mean, for Catholic couples, I think contraception. I think as the statistics reflect, there are many for whom they have decided, either because of attempting practice or because they thought it was just too onerous, too difficult, that it is just too hard of a life to possibly live in terms of natural family planning. I don't believe that's true, but I think that is the belief of many Catholic couples.
And to contraception, I would add pornography, which is ubiquitous, available on every phone, on every flickering screen, everywhere all the time. By the way, contraception, as Father said, is not universally accepted. 90% of the people asked see no moral problem with contraception. This is entirely work of the 20th century.
Even Protestants, until the 20th century, understood contraceptive intercourse is not an act of meritable love. Imagine if I wrapped the host in cellophane and allowed you to hold it in your mouth for 15 seconds, expecting you to spit it back out so that we could unwrap it and put the host back in a box and bring it out next week. It would save all the money we spend on hosts, after all. It's not a gift to you.
Contraceptive intercourse is, I will give you everything except my fertility so that I can take from you what I want, which is sexual pleasure without the risk of your fertility getting in the way. It fundamentally alters the nature of meritable love. It's rooted in fear. The belief that the Lord is not for me and that if I submit to his plan, I will somehow lose out.
I will have more children than I can handle. Life will be... And it's a refusal of accepting providence, accepting our life as a gift and saying it's to be feared, it's to be controlled. Consider the language we use, natural family planning, birth control.
One of them is seeking to respond to nature and to, yes, make some prudential judgments. I think one of the questions has to do with natural family planning and can it be used for couples to kind of prudently plan? It's in the word, plan. Birth control is seeking to manipulate the whole process and the church invites you to not fear the future, not fear life because it's a gift.
The ideology at the root of contraception, of course, is anti-life. Children are a burden, particularly for women who are expected to give up their professional lives in order to stay home and raise the children. That was the worldview of Margaret Sanger who coined the term birth control and of Planned Parenthood, which she founded. And that was long before, of course, the development of the progesterone pill.
That was a later technical innovation. But since the innovation of the pill, every developed country in the world has reached a birth rate less than replacement of the current population, meaning the entire first world is shrinking in population everywhere. Some more steeply than the others, but all are now below the replacement rate of population. And the idea that children are an insufferable burden, so get two golden retrievers instead.
And when you want to travel to Europe, you board them. Once that ideology takes root, then you end up with what Japan has. Not only is marriage disappearing in Japan, but actual sexual friendship is disappearing in Japan and being replaced with pornography. Eros becomes a completely solitary act, untethered from everything else, including the human future.
One of the fascinating statistical trends in the last few years because of the pornography is that youth, teens, are having less sex. Which you may think, oh, that's a good thing. It is a good thing. But the reason is because they're just seeing each other less.
They're going out less. They'd rather stay home and look at a screen, look at a box, and they don't even have normal relationships, which would come with them temptations and pitfalls and vice. But it's rooted in this dehumanizing trend. Next question is, what should one say to their child who wants to get married outside the church?
So assuming the child is raised in the church too. Well, I would start with do you believe that marriage is an act of worship? Or is it just a private, personal matter of your own? In the cover letter to the wedding policies of our church, I say to the couple who are reading it, while preparing for your marriage and planning your wedding are deeply personal, they are not private actions because marriage is a public act of worship and a sacrament of Christ in the church.
There's the fundamental difference. Do you believe that the sacrament of holy matrimony is an act of worship? If so, where do you worship? You are a Catholic Christian, which means that the sacraments of Christ are the sacraments of the church and we should go to the church to receive those sacraments.
If you choose to marry outside the church, what you're saying is it is not an act of worship and I will do it however I want, not as part of the Christian community which is the body of Christ. And it may be that asking a question like that will help clarify in the mind of the one who's teetering what to do. But remember, everything else in the culture tells them that this is purely private. It's whatever they want.
The whole industry of bridal shows and bridal magazines, I would like to nuke into cinders because it feeds this tendency to think of a wedding as a public spectacle of my own devising to begin a fantasy life that will fill me with supreme happiness every day for the rest of my life. And three days into the honeymoon when they figure out well, that's not going to happen, right? Why do so many marriages in a divorce? Because they enter it under false pretenses.
Maybe not deliberately but they've been deluded into thinking this is it. And of course I want it to begin with a great fanfare and they don't think anything of spending $30,000 on a wedding but if the church has a $700 fee they get a fanfare. but the starting point is do you consider holy matrimony to be an act of worship if the answer is no we don't want them to get married in the church because when it ends in divorce I can annul that marriage in 15 minutes I think it's essential to realize that when we see marriage in the beginning in Genesis the story begins with a husband and wife both who fail each other and that's meant to point forward that this longing we have as Father began with the gospel and his talk this longing we have ultimately finds its true fulfillment in the bridegroom and in our communion together as the bride and if all we see is this person is it they will fulfill my needs they will give meaning to my life they will give the answer to my deepest questions my deepest longings my deepest pain they can't carry that they can't carry that burden my best friend my boon companion my lover who could do that nobody remember that the entire Bible is a marriage proposal God wants to marry us we're the bride it begins with Adam and Eve's wedding it closes with the wedding feast of the Lamb heaven is a wedding party that never ends the wine never runs out it's the privileged image for what the union of divine and human is a wedding feast of unimaginable unbounded love the signs of that on earth are so small and can't possibly convey the whole mystery how long does it take to baptize a baby 30 seconds to baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit how can that signify eternal life how long does it take to say the words of institution this is my body this is my blood even when we insist on singing it it only takes a few seconds how can it possibly right but how long does it take to say I love you and yet what power is communicated in that instant well scripture is a marriage proposal but the groom is the Lord no human being can fill that void and so if that's the expectation of those who seek marriage of course they will be disappointed last question I'm going to combine two questions one nice easy one so the catechism of the catholic church talking about the final things speaks of an upcoming religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth in light of this what words of wisdom and encouragement can you offer us regarding the very real danger that the upcoming synod on synodality undermines the church's teachings on marriage Father Richard John Newhouse was a catholic priest and before that a lutheran pastor and a public intellectual meaning that he spoke and wrote in public fora all of his adult life about questions of theology and politics and culture he was the founding editor of First Things in 2002 when the Boston Globe spotlight series focused the attention of the whole nation on the scandal of the sexual abuse of children by catholic priests and the covering up of that sin and crime by catholic bishops the whole church was plunged into chaos the best book to emerge from the chaos in my judgment is by George Weigel called Courage to be Catholic but Newhouse in talking out loud and writing about this crisis grew fond of saying the answer to the sex abuse crisis is fidelity fidelity fidelity meaning celibacy no more causes child abuse than marriage causes adultery so celibacy for priests is not why some priests abuse children we don't change the discipline of the sacraments because people are sinners and if what happened in Germany during the years of their synodal path is any representation then yes the chaos to be unleashed in Rome in the coming month is going to show us that a great number of Catholics including many of them who are bishops and some of them who are cardinals no longer believe what the gospel reveals about the sacrament of holy matrimony but the answer to that crisis is not for all of us to run across the street and join downtown Presbyterian church in the search for a purer form of Christianity the answer is as Father Newhouse discovered 20 years ago fidelity fidelity fidelity fidelity believe the gospel live the gospel speak the gospel share the gospel with others go to mass send the divine office pray the rosary go to confession live the faith day in and day out in a quiet dignified way that bears witness to the truth to anyone you know to anyone as Peter says who asks for an account for the reason of our hope fidelity that's the answer there are there are people whose vocation is to publicly teach and witness and to contend for the faith I just got an email earlier this morning I imagine many of you did as well asking prayers for Bishop Barron as he goes over to Rome as a delegate to the Senate there are people whose vocation is to do that is to write and teach publicly to contend for the faith publicly for most of us that is not what we ought to be doing it will be for the betterment of your soul to whoever is asking that question to probably spend less time on the internet to say your prayers to seek to have ways to serve locally to attend mass to attend to divine worship to become more prayerful to read the scriptures more to serve the Lord more to practice mercy more the church has had these moments of uncertainty and fear all you have to do is study the history you see it so I would invite you take this as a moment as Father said to be more faithful to seek greater fidelity and to let what will happen happen and let others take up that vocation as teachers as champions as contenders and as pastors can we close this in a prayer well thank you for coming this morning I hope that it was worth your time and we look forward to having you at future events of the Center for Evangelical Catholicism let us pray God our Father you sent your Son into the world to be its true light pour out the Holy Spirit he promised us to sow the truth in his hearts and awaken in them the obedience of faith may all men be born again to new life in baptism and so enter the fellowship of your one holy church through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit God forever and ever amen in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit amen safe home