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Document Details : Title: The Association of Interchurch Families Subtitle: Looking Back and Looking Forward Author(s): REARDON, Ruth Journal: Marriage, Families & Spirituality Volume: 6 Issue: 2 Date: Autumn 2000 Pages: 183-191 DOI: 10.2143/INT.6.2.2004582 Abstract : One of the founder-members of the Association of Interchurch Families tells the story of interchurch marriages (where one partner is Roman Catholic and the other a member of another Christian tradition). The Association has existed in England for over thirty years, although groups of foyers mixtes in France had met together some years earlier. These are couples who are actively seeking unity - both in their marriages and between their churches. As Pope John Paul said to them when he visited England in 1982, "You live in your marriage the hopes and the difficulties of the path to Christian unity". They form a "domestic church" which is linked with both their churches, and they try to belong within both communities as couples and families so far as they can. A central question for them is their need for eucharistic sharing. Over the years they have come to feel much more positive about their own situation and about the contribution they can make to their churches as they converge on the ecumenical path. They hope that church communities will grow together as they themselves grow together in their marriages, so that they become such a "community of life and love" that sharing in the one eucharist of the Church of Christ is the only fitting way to celebrate that unity. |
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