March 14, 2019

Amoris Laetitia (the joy of love) was Pope Francis’ highly celebrated and timely post-synodal apostolic exhortation published on April 8, 2016.  This document was actually the conclusion of a two-year Synod of Bishops held at the Vatican in the years 2014 and 2015, devoted to the beauty and challenges of marriage and family life in the contemporary society, with all its vicissitudes.  In it, the Holy Father underlined the importance of family in the human society, but regretted that this vital and indispensable cell of the society has come under serious attack.  It must be noted that the Universal Church has often discussed serious issues bordering on marriage and family, prior to the publication of Amoris Laetitia. For instance, the first Plenary Meeting of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, held at St. Leo’s Catholic Church, Ikeja, Lagos, from February 22-25, 1994 deliberated on issues about the Christian family. In fact, its very theme was “Save the Family and Save the Nation”.  The third item of its communique was a comment on the growing pressures on the family.  The Bishops notice that “…the pressures on the Nigerian family get more intolerable daily. The most elastic sense of hospitality can be stretched to breaking point.  The problems of everyone leave little or no room for the needs of others.  Internal pressures easily dispose many to adopt foreign models of individualistic life as the only way to survive.  Within the family itself, moral norms and spiritual values are hard to maintain in the midst of a general climate of amorality and corruption. While we debate on national issues of politics, government and economy, we must not forget that the family, the basic cell of society, the nucleus of the Nation, is in serious danger.”

 

Amoris Laetitia is literally translated as “The Joy of Love”, but how authentic is this joy in contemporary Christian marriage and family? It was Don Odunze who remarked that “There can be no healthy Church without healthy Christian families”.  Unfortunately, however, there are myriads of factors militating against the healthy growth of Christian families, thereby detracting from this all-important joy of love.

 

On the fifth page of the June/July 2016 edition of The Catholic Ambassador Magazine, Very Rev. Fr. Victor Onwukeme (MSP) has enumerated some of the challenges confronting contemporary Christian marriage and family to include Secularism, Pornography, Homosexuality, Divorce, Childlessness and Violence against Women, among others.

 

What is secularism?  Other terms connected with secularism are materialism and consumerism—all three converge in a situation where the material is rated higher and above the spiritual.  As a result, traditional family values are being eroded on a daily basis.  Secularism has made permanent commitment in marriage nearly impossible.  It promotes a life of utility, which can be loosely explained as “for better for stay, for worse for go”.  It is like spouses telling each other: “I shall stay with you if things are better, but go away if things are worse”.  Secularism gives room to absolute freedom of the individual and abhors a life of sacrifice.

 

Pornography is another menace against the healthy growth of Christian marriage and family.  It is spreading like wild fire, particularly among the younger generation.  The spread of this negative phenomenon is further fuelled by the availability of and accessibility to various multimedia and internet facilities.  Nowadays, through the use of mobile phone, for instance, the youth can easily download from the internet films with violent and pornographic contents to satisfy their sensual and sexual cravings.  Closely associated with the above is human trafficking. This is a situation where youngsters are forced into prostitution, even at international level.  This situation, no doubt, causes a lot of damage to the moral psyche of the youth.

 

Same-sex marriage, which promotes homosexuality (male-to-male sex) and lesbianism (female-to-female sex) is a mockery of authentic Christian marriage which is naturally and characteristically heterosexual. In September 2015, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria made abundantly clear the stand of the Church on this issue.  The first page of their communiqué partly reads: “The recent rise in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender activism, the popular vote in the Republic of Ireland and the Supreme Court decision in the United States of America will tend to provoke a notable and rapid shift in public opinion about the nature and meaning of marriage and family as it has been known for millennia.  This…has inevitably led to powerful legislative and judicial manoeuvres to redefine marriage in order to include ‘same-sex marriage’. We wish to state that this is a sad, unjust and lamentable situation based largely upon a distorted perception of natural law, the will of God and human nature…”

 

Divorce has become rampant. This has made the problem of single parenthood more complex.  It is said that the female folk is the weaker sex.  This fact manifests itself in all forms of mistreatment of women, including violence, rape, sexual abuse, just to mention but few. The physical and, sometimes, sexual violence some women experience in their marriage obviously contradicts the very nature of conjugal love.  There are some cultural practices that are at variance with the gospel of Christ, like female circumcision which necessarily involves genital mutilation; barbing of widows to show they are mourning their deceased husbands; compelling widows to drink the water with which the corpses of their husbands are bathed; widows are being dispossessed of their family property and oftentimes are forced to cater for their children without the wherewithal to do so–these and several other nasty cultural practices must be avoided by Christians.

 

Childlessness is another major challenge being confronted by the family. The truth is that in most African cultures, childlessness is regarded as an abomination, a curse.  Couples who find themselves in this unfortunate situation for long have been given all sorts of names by fellow human beings.  Within this context, the female partners are usually called witches, or that “they have eaten their wombs” or have used their wombs for ritual sacrifices, while their male counterparts are referred to as wizards or that they are childless because they are impotent.

 

In all these, Pope Francis stresses the need for serious pastoral care for Christian couples and their families. The Roman Pontiff explains that there is urgent need for a pastoral plan for families through which the Church can express compassion and closeness to families particularly those facing one problem or the other.

 

In his apostolic exhortation, Marialis Cultus, no. 52, Paul VI notes that the Christian family is the domestic Church.  He elaborates that the family shows itself to be the domestic sanctuary of the Church through the mutual affection of its members and the common prayers they offer to God.  If common prayer were missing, the family would lack its very character as a domestic church.  He then recommends the recitation of the Holy Rosary as the best family prayer, saying, “…when the family gathering becomes a time of prayer, the Rosary is a frequent and favoured manner of praying” (Marialis Cultus, no. 54). Paul VI is not oblivious of the fact that present circumstances sometimes make it difficult for family members to pray in common.  He reminds us that the Christian is one who always makes frantic efforts to surmount difficulties through prayer.

 

It might be expedient at this juncture to remind ourselves of the fifteen promises of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Christians who recite the Rosary:  Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary shall receive signal graces; I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary; the Rosary shall be a powerful armour against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies; it will cause virtues and good works to flourish, it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God, it will withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh that souls would sanctify themselves by this means! The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary shall not perish; whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying himself to the consideration of its sacred mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune.  God will not chastise him in His Justice, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the sacraments of the Church; those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plenitude of His graces—at the moment of death, they shall participate in the merits of the Saints in Paradise; I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary; the faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in heaven; you shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary; all those who propagate the Holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities; I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death; all who recite the Rosary are my sons, and brothers of my only Son, Jesus Christ; and devotion to my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.

 

Permit me, therefore, to conclude by enjoining family members to pray the Rosary every day, especially in this month of October, the Month of Mary, the Month of the Rosary. It is worthy of note that through the recitation of the Holy Rosary as mandated by the Blessed Virgin Mary, Russia, an erstwhile pagan country, was converted.  Your family pressures and problems cannot be greater than those of a country! Pray the Rosary with devotion every day and you shall overcome the seemingly “mountainous” problems in your family.  I am convinced that if family members devote one-quarter of the time they spend watching films to praying the Rosary, no family problem will remain insoluble.

By: Fr. Mark Ajiga