Families - The Domestic Church
Our pilgrimage to the Kingdom is a journey of learning how to become love so that we can become one with God, who is love.
Family should be where we first experience unconditional love and learn to love those who love us. Having learnt the basics of love, the Church is where we learn to love those who do not know us, let alone love us.
Sadly, the concept of unconditional love in families is under ever greater threat.
Easy divorce has undermined the concept of a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman to create and raise children to love and be loved. The word marriage has become a romantic word to describe a fancy wedding and a contract of rights. The rights of children to love and be loved and the responsibilities of parents are no longer relevant in this new contract of marriage.
Easy abortion as a means of contraception creates a mindset where children are commodities only to be allowed when they suit us and meet our requirements for personal fulfilment. Ever more tests are becoming available to give us the opportunity to reject and abort any child that does not meet the exacting criteria set by society and its parents. More and more children are being aborted because they are the wrong sex and recently conversations have started suggesting that babies can be murdered at birth if they don’t live up to expectations. Of course the meaning of the word abortion is changed in these conversations to include murder after birth, so that we can deny the reality of our behaviour. What is next? If a serious illness is discovered a year or two after birth, will the word abortion also be allowed to include the murder of pre-school children.
If a person has no experience of unconditional love in families, what relevance will they find in a Church that calls us to learn how to love unconditionally? If families are weak, the Church will be weak. To build up Church we have to build up families.
It is unfortunate that many people assume that when we talk about family, we are talking about Mum, Dad and 2.4 children. This is an inaccurate exclusive image that does not reflect the reality of families as we live in them today. Family is where they take you in and love you despite all your faults, weaknesses and failures.
“If the symbol of domestic church appears to be exclusive and to absolutize the nuclear family…it is not because the concept itself is limiting, but rather because Anglo culture has too restricted an appreciation of family. When faith and culture are more intertwined, and when family is understood to have more extended, flexible boundaries, the church and home need not be antithetical.” (Bourg - Where Two or Three are Gathered. 2004)