Mystery and Sacrament of Love

A Theology of Marriage and the Family for the New Evangelization

By Cardinal Marc Ouellet
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2015
346 pages, $35
To order: Eerdmans.com, (800) 253-7521

 

 

Marriage today is in crisis: A majority in the Western world does not even know what marriage truly is.  

If the Pope wants the October synod to boldly engage with and renew the Church’s theology of marriage, he’ll make sure a copy of this book is put an the bedside of every bishop checking into Rome.

This book is rich and radical. What is most radical is Cardinal Marc Ouellet’s unblinking focus on challenging today’s Catholics to be what they are in the Church: a real sign of Christ’s nuptial union to his Church.  

“The love between man and woman that is the Creator’s gift does not remain external to the sacramental sign. It is assumed from within by Christ and healed, conformed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, precisely in order to signify both the invisible reality of the life of the Triune God and of the love between Christ and the Church,” the cardinal writes.

This theology poses a tall order, for it means that marriage is and ought to be a living, acting sacrament. Indeed, it becomes a lifelong vocation: “A new sacramental gift of the Holy Spirit springs up from the fountain of baptism and draws the couple as such into the process of ‘intra-divine fruitfulness.’” They are “consecrated” to an “ecclesial mission,” which, like true love itself, can only ceaselessly radiate outwards in its “spousal, paternal and maternal, filial and fraternal” expression, reinforced by the Spirit to express, in both Church and world, the Trinitarian love of God.

If we really want to be bold, we would start talking — openly, loudly and constantly — about what being “married in the Lord” means. We would begin in catechism, since most Catholics will enter the consecrated vocation of marriage. We would rewrite our “check the box” marriage preparation. We would begin, first in the Church and then in the world, to rebuild an awareness that the man/woman relationship is God’s own design, not the product of evolution, sociology or “prejudice.” We would stop tinkering on the margins and, as St. John Paul II did, call Christian couples to be what they are.

Cardinal Ouellet (who used to be archbishop of Quebec and is now prefect of the Congregation for Bishops) is clearly aware that indissolubility and its pastoral implications are “by far the most contested question concerning marriage from the beginning of the apostolic Church to our own day.” But like Algerian Bishop Jean Paul Vesco, who made this observation, Ouellet insists on doing what Jesus did in Matthew 19: They asked about divorce, while he talked about marriage.

This book is not easy. It is cutting-edge, heavy-duty theology. That said, every priest should read it; every seminarian study it. With a leader having adequate theological background, it could be a truly enriching text for a parish study group. And, if I were the Holy Father, I’d put in a bulk “rush” order to Rome.

 

John M. Grondelski writes from Shanghai, China.