Once we knew it simply as “Confession.” In post-conciliar years, it’s been referenced as the Sacrament of “Reconciliation” or of “Peace.” Now we are back (officially) to Penance. All these descriptors reveal aspects of a great healing sacrament. Whatever name we call it by, it remains the same sacrament with the same four elements: contrition, confession, absolution and satisfaction (penance). The desirable outcomes of reconciliation and peace, however, do not come when any of the essentials are omitted.
“Extreme Unction” now has the more generous title of the “Anointing of the Sick,” so as to extend its availability in our lives to any time our health is at risk – not only when death seems imminent.
We have never had a problem speaking univocally of the Mass, Communion and Eucharist – all called “Holy” – and with respect for the nuances each term casts on this ineffable mystery of God’s redeeming presence. A Baptism is still called a Christening at times, and no one questions its meaning or that it is something ordinarily to be celebrated in a church.
So then, what is it with Matrimony? Instead of delving deeper into its mystery, we seem hell-bent today on ripping it apart. Even among Catholics, we see a certain conformism, often in the name of tolerance. God forbid we should seem uncool! Ask anyone who recently attended a wedding where it was celebrated. Chances are, you will hear the name of the catering hall, not the church. Ask the parent of a child about to be christened if he or she is married. The answer will likely be “no” – at least not in church but before a civil official only: not a sacramental union. Though we do not speak of parenthood as a sacrament, it belongs in marriage, a union between a couple who will parent children conceived through intimate actions that express their mutual love. Yet increasingly, that is not the relationship parents are willing to commit to.
Many of our contemporaries, however, deny marriage necessarily involves children or, for that matter, a lifelong union exclusive to the two persons who conceive and will raise them. Even for Catholics, unlike other sacraments whose richness invites different ways of describing them, the definition – and importance – of marriage is shrinking. Though regrettable, this should surprise no one. The legal deconstruction of marriage began long ago as grounds for divorce have swelled to the point that belief in a right to end a marriage is claimed as vehemently as the right to enter one. Easily accessible contraceptives divorce sexual intimacy from a committed, lasting relationship as a necessary condition, contributing to the conviction that even in marriage, an undesired pregnancy may be suppressed as a matter of right.
What we have is an assault on mature human sexuality as having anything necessarily to do with a permanent union of two people whose love is generous enough for their mutual sexual intimacy to make them parents. If ever there was an image of a Triune God – two divine Persons whose Love eternally generates a third Person – imaged in humanity, it is the Sacrament of Marriage. If ever there was a retreat from that ideal (“In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them,” Gn 1:17), it is in the evisceration of the human meaning of human sexuality we see today.
Our need to recognize the consequences of separating these components is urgent, and action should not be suppressed by a need to appear fair-minded and “open” to the plight of people who, for various reasons, may not be capable or willing to enter “traditional” marriage. Anecdotal documentation of “non-traditional” families – whether among single adults, same-sex couples, communes of multiple parents or any other conceivable partnership – is a false palliative against the structural collapse of traditional marriage. Pastoral concern for persons in such circumstances must include a willingness to love them, hear them and support all their good works but does not require the invention of different moral standards or deviating from sound moral teaching. Compassion should not be confused with compromise. No less urgent is it to support married couples and their families, encouraging them to bear witness to their sacrament. An era of reconstructing marriage is overdue.
