CBB Review: The Choice of the Family

Last updated on: August 30, 2015 at 5:30 pm by Pete Socks

CBB Review: The Choice of the Family 2015-08-28T06:25:10-05:00 Pete Socks

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The Choice of the Family: A Call to Wholeness, Abundant Life, and Enduring Happiness is a timely book leading up to The World Meeting of Families. The book is a collection of interviews with Bishop Jean Laffitte, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family. It is a wide ranging interview covering marriage, cohabitation, divorce and parenting and taken as a while is a true manifest on the importance of treating marriage as a genuine and beautiful sacrament of the Church.

“The sacrament is a work of God. Christ has raised human love to the dignity of a sacrament. It is not the norm of the Church that did so. The norm of the Church codified it and made it explicit, of course, and gave the sacrament it form and canonical rules, but she did not create it.”

One of the topics covered was what has become the new norm for society…cohabitation. This practice has left in its wake multiple broken relationships and fostered the practices of our throw-away society. Not only do we as a society dispose of material goods for the slightest reason when they are no longer of use to us but some have taken that mentality and applied it to their relationships. Bishop Lafitte made some strong points on co-habitation as follows.

“Therefore, there are a great number of young people who start living together without having the least project for the future. It is a kind of arrangement, an act without reflection. You are grateful by the others company, you achieve immediate and proximate satisfaction from living together, from living your own affectivity and exercising your sexuality. However, you face neither the future nor the past nor anything of the kind, and you do not truly establish yourself.” This modern day trend has led to broken relationships. Simply put, when the partner of cohabitation becomes boring or a nuisance the relationship is easily cut off and each go their seperate ways.

Bishop Laffitte points out that this experience is easier for the male to return to normal than the female. “The woman has given the man something of herself that is unique.” In cohabitation a woman “gives up” more of herself than the man does. She is than expected to move on to the next relationship doing the same thing.

As I mentioned the book is wide ranging on topics related to family life. One area of focus is marriage preparation, another on the discipline of children and yet another of divorce and the churches vie won the remarried. Throughout this book there we numerous points that I found encouraging and insightful. One on particular jumped out as me and was a sort of definition of what marriage ultimately is. “Marriage in effect is a possibility of making human love a privileged means of meeting God and of preparing oneself for eternal life without putting up obstacles against the love of God. On the other hand, choosing a human union while excluding God a priori is to deprive this relationship of its genuine compass. One must see that to the degree that sacramental conjugal love integrates the loving and acting presence of God and of Christ throughout life, it leads one necessarily to eternal friendship with God.

Heading into the World Meeting of Families there are a number of resources available to us to educate ourselves on the churches stance on family life. We also have a clear choice. One choice is sit idly by and allow today’s society to continue to diminish the value and sanctity of the family unit. The other is to uphold the God’s plan for family life and recognize the attack we are currently under from the secular world around us. When a book is published with the author being the secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family, it would of benefit to spend some time with it to gain an understanding of what we are up against. This book of pertinent interviews with Bishop Jean Laffitte is such a book and it’s ones I recommend anyone with an interest in maintaining a Catholic family identity reads.

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Review

Bishop Jean Latiffe

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The Choice of the Family

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