Fr. Robert Barron on Sex, Love and God

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Bruce Allen

We bring you a YouTube video featuring one of our favorite pastors, Fr. Robert Barron, who offers his counter-cultural thoughts on three of our favorite topics. Here is a little about Fr. Barron from his Word on Fire site, for those of you who have not experienced him:

Father Barron is the creator and host of CATHOLICISM, a groundbreaking, award winning documentary series about the Catholic Faith. The series has aired across the country on PBS and EWTN (and here at OLMC) and has been seen and broadcast in parishes, universities, schools and media outlets throughout the world. The documentary received a Christopher Award for excellence. Father Barron and Word on Fire will be releasing a highly anticipated new documentary “CATHOLICISM: The New Evangelization” in 2013.

Father Barron currently serves as the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary University of St. Mary of the Lake. He was appointed to the theological faculty of Mundelein Seminary in 1992, and has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame and at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. He was twice scholar in residence at the Pontifical North American College at the Vatican.

Take nine minutes out of your life to appreciate the video. And God bless you.

Do You Need God in Your Marriage?

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Posted by one of our favorite guest bloggers, Anne Johnson Slamkowski. Visit her blog when you have a chance, please.

I was sitting at a meeting the other night and several of the women were talking about how they were doing this “Husband Project” with their husbands (the book is “The Husband Project: 21 Days of Loving Your Man–on Purpose and with a Plan” by Kathi Lipp). It involved following steps and treating your husband with respect (at least that is what I heard them say). I liked the idea. It certainly sounded like it was working for the most part for each of them. It made me think about my own marriage relationship. I am not sure I need a book to do good things for my husband, but I am also not so sure that Pete wants me to follow a book. I think the premise is wise, but it might just miss the point of keeping your marriage alive. There are varying statistics on the divorce rate in the USA, but it is somewhere between 40-60% depending on the area that you live. That is HUGE – 40-60%. WOW!

Pete and I have spoken at marriage retreats (in fact we are due for a speaking engagement coming up at our own church). We have looked at our marriage from different viewpoints to see how we can make it better (which by the way, you always can improve upon your marriage). We recognize that we speak different Love Languages (“The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman). We also admit readily that children thrown in with marriage complicate your relationship in good and bad ways. In addition, let’s throw in your family of origin (the preconceived ideas that you bring with you into the marriage) and your communication skills, and let’s just say that marriage doesn’t seem to have much of a chance with all the baggage that we overload it with. BUT overall Pete and I both would agree that our marriage has been strengthened tremendously in the last six years because God has become the center of it. We finally realized that God must be part of our relationship in order for it to work. Without God, our love for each other will be nothing but physical. Mentally, we need God to make it all fall together. We need God in our individual lives and our married lives in order for this to work.

No books, no steps, no love languages will ever equal what God does for your marriage. Recognizing that God is part of the marriage will give you the mental and physical passion that is needed within the sacrament of marriage.

Colossians 3:12-19 So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.

If we are going to fight to keep our marriages together in this country, we must find a way to put God first in our own lives. We must find a way to put God in the midst of our marriage. No marriage can survive (at least with joy and happiness) without God as part of it. The Colossians verse above says, in order to be holy and beloved we must put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. How can we do any of that without God as part of our life? How on earth can we forgive our loved ones and not hold grudges if God is not part of our life? It goes on to say, “let the word of Christ RICHLY dwell within you.” Richly gives me the feeling of soil that is ready to farm. Once we let Christ dwell within us and get us ready for the seed of Marriage, then we are ready to produce a beautiful family that will survive anything. If we start with rocky or weedy soil, the marriage becomes a little more complicated. We have to somehow find a way to fertilize our life with God after the fact. When we complicate things with pre-marital sex, co-habitation and multiple partners, it is like starting with rocky soil. I am not saying that if you have made these choices that your marriage won’t last. What I am saying is it will be more difficult for your marriage unless you fertilize it with God in your life.

Throughout my book, “Revealing Faith: Learning to Place God First in Your Life,” I continually stress that my choices were not good ones in my twenties. Pete and I started with rocky soil. Although God was present in my life by the time we married, He wasn’t the main focus of my life. It would take years for Pete and me to build and fertilize our soil so that it would withstand tough struggles that lay ahead. We even added children into our marriage before we had fully fertilized our life with God. It was a struggle. Once we both refocused our life toward God (which we did after a wonderful marriage retreat at our church in Champaign, Illinois), we realized that we were missing a very important person in our marriage: God. As our individual faith lives grew (over many years), our soil became more and more fertile. When we finally gave birth to our third child, Katie, we were faced with a tremendous struggle. Katie suffered from multiple medical problems at the age of one (she suffers from complex partial seizures). Later we would find behavioral issues and anxiety laced with depression to be part of Katie’s life. If Pete and I had not fertilized our life with God, I could see where this would have made our marriage very complicated and difficult (and trust me it still is a struggle), but with God in the center of our marriage it all seems doable. We rely on His strength. Our kids rely on His strength. We thank God to this day that He entered our marriage and let us re-fertilize our family with his Wisdom.

My favorite part of the Colossians verse is that we admonish one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Well, Pete and I don’t go around singing to each other (thank goodness), but we do listen to praise and worship songs together, we sing psalms at church together, and we find ways to love each other by sacrificing our selfish desires in order to place God’s Will first.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz on Love

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Bruce Allen

“Couples, like individuals, acquire virtues through the repetition of particular practices and behaviors. They make the virtue their own by freely choosing to act in certain ways, every day.”

Introduction to the “Marital Virtue of the Month” Series By Archbishop Joseph Kurtz (An initiative of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.)

Archbishop Kurtz continues, “Love, of course, is the more excellent way that includes all the virtues. As a couple grows in virtue they also grow in love. Hand in hand they walk the journey to holiness. I pray that you may persevere in this journey, knowing the love of God, the encouragement of the Church, and the support of the many couples who are walking this journey with you.”

This up-to-date piece continues the conversation we’ve been having on this site, i.e., the responsibility of spouses not to simply strive for perfection on their own, but to bring their spouse closer to God as well. We do that not by encouragement/arguing, active evangelization or subtle pressure, but by prayer, by living a committed Christian life, and by creating a wake with the power of our spirit that eventually overtakes our less-committed spouse and becomes irresistible, a wave that can help him along the road to faith. As usual, we must allow The Holy Spirit to work in our lives and those we love. And acknowledge that these things take place in God’s time. Amen.

Get Connected – Turn Toward Your Partner to Create Intimacy

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Here’s another nugget from John Gottman, courtesy of the Alabama Healthy Marriage Initiative. This piece discusses the specific types of connections we make with our spouses, how some are positive and some are negative. Mastering the art of opening positive connections–leaning in versus leaning away–with your spouse invites a warm, open relationship in which conflicts heal quickly and intimacy is part of everyday life.

Get Connected – Turn Toward Your Partner to Create Intimacy

The story many of us tell ourselves is that our marriages are imperfect, that they are what they are, and there’s no point in trying to re-build them. But what we also see are research reports, by Gottman and others, that suggest practical techniques for improving our relationships. That yours, and mine, is imperfect is due to the fact that each of us is imperfect. We are all sinners. And, therefore, it’s not so much about finding the right person as it is being the right person. If our marriage appears to be failing, we will be taking some of the reason for that with us in the pursuit of a new, improved marriage. Logic dictates that even in the unlikely event that Spouse #2 were, in fact, perfect, it would bode poorly for the success of the relationship.

Marriage literature suggests that most marriages go through three distinct stages. Euphoria, that unmatched feeling early in the relationship when it seems the sun, the moon and the stars rotate around your intended spouse. Disillusionment, when you realize the natural order of the universe and where exactly you and your spouse, and probably children, fit in it. And, finally, That Third Stage, in which the partners either don’t work it out, manage some kind of peaceful coexistence, or, at best, feed and maintain a relationship built upon respect, trust and intimacy, both emotional and physical, and thank God for that person, for the loaning of your partner’s spirit, if only for a short time, that is at the core of sacramental marriage.

The practice of leaning into your spouse when discussing important issues is what the Masters of Marriage do. It allows couples to resolve the inevitable conflicts that arise in marriage quickly and without any need for retribution. It is a skill, and can be developed by anyone ready and willing to try to improve their marriage. The story we need to be telling ourselves is that we can improve our marriage if we want to and if we enlist the help of The Holy Spirit. As Nancy constantly reminds me, “The door is open.”

Tammy Darling on Keeping your Marriage Fresh

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Bruce Allen

14 Ideas to Keep Your Marriage Fresh is the most recent post by Tammy Darling at Catholic Digest.com. Her tips are practical, simple and inexpensive, and are easy to fit into busy lives. The vocation of marriage, as we all know by now, requires care and attention if it is to keep blooming.

For more ideas like these, sign up for our April 20 marriage retreat. Love’s Sacred Embrace offers a wealth of ideas and concepts that will breathe new life into your marriage. Come join us for a day of reflection and sharing on April 20. Seating is limited, so please sign up early.

Faith and Our Families of Origin

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Bruce Allen

I recently shared a witness about conversion with our bible study group, reflecting on how my faith journey got off to such an inauspicious start. In Porta Fidei, Pope Benedict encourages us, in studying the word of God as it relates to conversion, to examine a person’s upbringing, in order to understand his faith or lack thereof.

What about our social context? The conditions of our birth and upbringing? Many believe that, for most people, the die is cast by the age of three. That how we relate to others as adults is determined early in our lives. Those others, presumably, include Jesus Christ.

I grew up in the DC area, the only child of a vaguely Protestant mother and a father who was, technically, a Jew but who had adopted Presbyterianism because he enjoyed the homilies of a Scottish minister in northeast Washington in the 1950’s. Dad’s mother was a Polish Jew, his father one of those guys who wore orange on St. Patrick’s Day. Probably due to the tenor of the times, dad’s parents decided against raising him a Jew, or perhaps his mother did not observe her own faith.

My mother felt I should have some religious training, much as she felt I should attend Cotillion, when I was 13. One had no more impact on my life than the other, although I recall being more traumatized by having to touch girls at Cotillion than I was about having to attend weekly confirmation classes or church. My best friend’s family was Lutheran, and Bobby would routinely pass out in church, being forced to sit in the front row, with its thin air and glowering ministers.

I never had any such angst. My parents were indifferent to religion, and therefore it was easy for me to blow it off. I felt a certain disdain during my confirmation in 1965 in that I knew nothing about my faith, couldn’t recite two lines of the Creed, and yet was welcomed into the fold as a full member. As soon as I was no longer forced to attend church, I stopped. Unwittingly, I had adopted Groucho Marx’s quip that I wouldn’t join a club that would have ME as a member. That club, for me, was the Presbyterian Church.

In a larger sense, that club was Christianity. It took the Holy Spirit most of 30 years to put me on the path to becoming a functioning Christian. It took 30 years of Nancy praying for me, as I was unwilling to pray for myself.

If we are at a different place on our spiritual journey than is our spouse, the strategy is to reach for a place in which each partner is free to observe his or her beliefs with the full support of the other, if not participation. For families with young children in which only one spouse attends church, it should be clear that the loving response of the spouse who chooses not to attend church is to take care of the children—all of the children if necessary—while the worshiping spouse prays for your soul and thanks God for the hour of peace, prayer and solitude that you gladly make possible.

But, as we’ve observed here before, we are called to help our spouses grow close to the Lord, not to grow perfect by ourselves.

I entered into marriage as a spiritual savage, while Nancy entered into it as a closet Catholic. We were products of our upbringing, but we did not think of these differences as issues that would threaten our marriage. I didn’t, anyway.

Nancy’s growth along her own journey has had the effect of lifting me up, without my having felt lifted, feeling instead as if I’ve lifted myself. Whether this was her intent, or whether she simply gave the entire mess up to The Holy Spirit, I don’t really know. But the bottom line is that she has helped me grow closer to the Lord.

If differences like these are causing issues in your marriage, and you are the more spiritual one, it is up to you to pray for your spouse, to pray for your own unbelief, and to pray that God’s will, and The Holy Spirit’s design, is for the two of you to eventually travel on your spiritual path together. In God’s time.

Be clear that you cannot make your spouse more religious. The best you can do is to pray for him, and to help create space for The Holy Spirit to come into his or her life with an elbow or a shove. Providing help in taking the first step toward reconciliation, with you and with God.

Exploring the faith beliefs you and your spouse brought into your marriage is kind of a fun way to spend an evening over a bottle of Cab Sav. Understanding one another, at the most elemental level, is about understanding your spouse’s beliefs about God and Heaven and Hell and good works and tithing and raising kids Catholic and sacraments and religious freedom and right to life and about 100 other important subjects.

Luckily, you need not agree on these issues. It is in your interest, however, to understand your own values and those of your spouse. Unlike on Capitol Hill, where compromise has become a four letter word, in marriage the art of leaning into one another to effect compromise is a grace from God. In sales, the expression is “keeping score raises the score.” In our faith lives, the simple act of asking for God’s forgiveness raises us nearer to Him and brings us closer together as husband and wife.

Do it for the Kids

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Written by Christine Burrows

In this age of divorce, we hear lots of talk about staying together (or not) for the kids. I say we not only stay together, but work on making our marriages true sacraments for our kids’ sake. Each generation deserves an opportunity to be better at Christian living and growing in God’s favor.

So, why not use our own marriages to help our kids make it to heaven? Just as we try to advance a culture of marriage in the wake of a rising tide of divorce and casual sex, we owe it to our children to establish this culture at home so that they see strong marriage as the norm, aspire to enter into a holy marriage one day, and see such a blessed union as a step toward heaven.

How do we do this? While I’m certainly not a pro, I’ll throw out some ideas to ponder:

Make your faith part of your family identity. Go to mass as a family. Regularly receive the sacraments together. Pray together. Read about saints and discuss the mass readings. Make sure your children know what it means to be a Catholic Christian so that they can explain it. And, just as importantly, try to help them see the marriage and the family as the core unit of their faith, and part of the larger community of the Church. This will help them begin to see faith as a central characteristic of their future spouse.
Talk to your children about sex and the church’s teachings on sex. Do not leave this up to others – educators, friends, or the media. You will earn major points with your children even if you simply share with them the biology of their bodies BEFORE they learn it in health class. But, don’t stop there. Teach them about the beauty of marital sexuality so that they don’t become lured by extramarital sex and view birth control as normal. You don’t have to answer personal questions about your own sexuality, but do spin marital sex and the creation of babies as a true gift from God.
Be physically affectionate with one another in front of the children. I’m not suggesting groping in the kitchen and then running upstairs while the kids sit down to eat dinner. But, it’s certainly good for kids to see their parents hug, kiss, touch as a healthy way of being affectionate – versus witnessing on TV or in movies non-married people, sometimes even strangers, jumping into bed with one another and calling that affection or love.
Encourage your children to think about their calling. It’s important to think of marriage (or religious life) as a vocation–something God has a say in– not just an event they get to participate in. Speak openly with your children about why you got married to one another, and on what part of that decision you consulted God. If they think of marriage as a calling (not just a wedding day), they may begin to view dates and crushes as potential spouses who they might want to run by God before moving forward.
Surround yourselves with other married friends. Do this not only for yourselves, but for your children. Feed the culture of marriage so that you feel bolstered in being part of a community of people who believe in marriage and want to see marriages survive. As far as the kids go, they should see that there are plenty of married people whose marriage might look different from their parents, but are still clinging to one another. They also need to believe that marriage doesn’t put an end to friendship and fun.

I have great hope for my children and their generation. While statistics don’t favor their ability to get married and stay married, I see a beautiful trend among them as they seek to find more meaning in their lives. They crave true intimacy and are beginning to see that casual sex isn’t the way to get there. So, let’s all join forces and give them some real inspiration – some hope in marriage that can reflect God’s true love for us through the gift of our spouses.

Let’s do it for the kids!

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