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Document Details : Title: Interchurch Families: Problem to be Solved, or Gift to be Received? Author(s): TEMMERMAN, Ray Journal: Marriage, Families & Spirituality Volume: 30 Issue: 1 Date: 2024 Pages: 96-108 DOI: 10.2143/INT.30.1.3293282 Abstract : Married couples in which spouses are from estranged Christian traditions (usually, but not always, with one of the spouses being Catholic) are now often called 'ecumenical' or 'interchurch' marriages. Once forbidden within the Catholic church, they happened and continue to happen, a practice greatly expanded in recent decades as a result of greater mobility and migration. An earlier research project surveyed the lived experience of interchurch families, seeking to determine whether the 'marks' of the church were found also in marriages in general, and interchurch marriages in particular. It demonstrated that interchurch marriages could, indeed, be seen as domestic churches. More recent statistical analysis in Canada and Australia, with additional information from other countries, shows clearly that these marriages now form a sizable cohort within the Catholic church. They are, therefore, significant within the life of the church. This paper draws on these earlier research projects by exploring the lived experience of such families, seeking to answer the question of whether such marriages are a growing problem to be solved within the churches, or a growing gift from God to be received for the healing of ecclesial estrangement. The evidence indicates that couples who, as much as possible, worship together in both their churches, come to love the other church while remaining faithful to their own. In the process they show that interchurch families constitute a gift to the church, modelling receptive ecumenism as a way of life and a vehicle for restoring to full unity the various estranged churches and ecclesial communities which form unique parts of the whole church, the Body of Christ. To develop that gift, help it bear fruit, such couples should be called forth, invited to tell their stories of receiving the gift of each other, of listening and discovering and growing in faith. In doing so, we may encourage them in their faith, while learning from them of the richness and goodness and mercy of a God who provides, then uses, all manner of gift so that all may be one. |
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