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Document Details : Title: Interchurch Families: Ecclesial Gifts for the New Missionary Age Author(s): OLSEN, Daniel J. Journal: Marriage, Families & Spirituality Volume: 30 Issue: 1 Date: 2024 Pages: 50-66 DOI: 10.2143/INT.30.1.3293279 Abstract : Centered in the experience of American interchurch families, this essay finds that interchurch families have decisive contributions to make in the contemporary ecumenical movement but argues further that they embody a unique synodal expression of communion that remains unrecognized for its giftedness. A brief treatment of the increasingly secularized American context underscores the importance of reconceiving discipleship in a missionary and ecumenical key. Turning specifically to the growing incidence of interchurch marriage in the US, the essay shows a developing, but limited, pastoral outreach to mixed marriage families, particularly attentive to marriages in which one spouse is Roman Catholic. Investigating recent statements of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops reveals the ongoing challenge the Catholic church has in articulating its pastoral responsibility for the Christian spouse from another church due to ecclesial belonging. Hopefully, the current synodal process in the Catholic church has emphasized ecumenical dialogue as constitutive of synodality and thus opened the door for a reconsideration of significance of the imperfect, but real communion experienced in interchurch homes. This reconsideration should cause the US Catholic church to dedicate pastoral resources to minister to interchurch families. Of related concern, how will Christian churches continue to respond to interchurch families who express the need to be nourished together at the eucharistic table? Interchurch families present the Christian community with ways of envisioning a reconciled church of the future and provide rich testimony of communion in the US context in need of missionary disciples. To be fully impactful, these families require the accompaniment of their churches along with a renewed openness to a synodal way of being church which recognizes that the sensus fidei is shared by all baptized Christians. |
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