By John Jalsevac
June 25, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Cardinal Sean O’Malley has announced that the Catholic Church in Massachusetts is launching a state-wide initiative to promote marriage in response to plummeting marriage numbers, as well as corrosion in the understanding of what true marriage is in the liberal state.
On the Cardinal’s personal blog, he writes, “We were very enthusiastic about the launching of a new statewide educational campaign on the meaning and importance of marriage and we were very glad that the bishops in the state’s other dioceses are collaborating with us in this effort. We hope this campaign will help people to refocus on the sacramental meaning of marriage.”
The campaign, said a representative from the Archdiocese, according to the Boston Globe, is not necessarily a response to the recent failure of the effort to put an amendment protecting the traditional definition of marriage on next year’s ballot, but has been in the works for some time.
“In our country,” writes the Cardinal on his blog, “more and more people are opting not to get married but instead to cohabitate. In Massachusetts, the government has redefined marriage away from its original purpose, which is so intimately connected with having and raising children. Certainly, the vocation to marriage, which is the way most people live out their discipleship, is something that is very, very important. And it certainly is being obscured in our modern and secular culture.”
According to statistics quoted in the Boston Globe, from 1986 to 2006, the number of Catholic marriages recorded in the Archdiocese of Boston fell from 12,274 to 4,519—a 60 percent decline. The same trend holds true for the state of Massachusetts on the whole, with the number of marriages falling from 47,696 in 1990 to 39,074 in 2005.
The year-long Catholic campaign for marriage will involve encouraging priests and bishops to regularly speak about marriage, posting information on bulletin boards, inviting speakers, including married couples, to speak on marriage, various other presentations, and encouraging frequent prayer for Christian marriage, in particular by the distribution of a million prayer cards with a prayer for marriage printed on them.
“I often tell people that part of transmitting the faith is instilling in our young people a sense of vocation,” said the Cardinal. “For most of our young people, their vocation is to marry and to have children…People often talk about the shortage of vocations to the priesthood, but just as grave for the Church is the situation with the vocation to marriage.”
“I am very grateful to all of those who have lent their talent and time to be a part of preparing this initiative, and I want to urge all of the Catholics of the archdiocese to help us to promote the sacrament of marriage. We need to rekindle a sense of vocation in all of our people, especially marriage as a call to holiness, a call to service, so that our Christian families will truly be sanctuaries of life where new generations of disciples are born and reborn in the faith.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Boston Archbishop O’Malley Says Gay ‘Marriage’ and Civil Unions Pose Grave Threat to Religious Liberty and Freedom of Conscience
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/mar/04031105.html
Boston Archbishop to Homosexuals: “Because we love you, we cannot accept your behavior.”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/nov/05112807.html
Boston Archbishop Calls on Politicians to Fight for Traditional Marriage with Passion
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/jan/04011204.html