Archbishop says church must help people in marriage difficulty

[gilliam]

Presenting people with black-and-white answers is not the way to help with marriage difficulties, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said.

“No marriage is lived just in clear and abstract black-and-white realities. The Church has to understand the grey areas of success and failures, of joys and of disappointments. Jesus’s method was that of accompanying. His method was to show that,” he said.

The archbishop was speaking at a Mass for workers with Accord Dublin, the archdiocese’s marriage advisory service, at the Holy Cross pastoral centre.

“Marriages begin with a dream. Marriages hit difficult times. Marriages fail. Marriages begin anew,” he said.

Pope Francis “stresses the role of the church in accompanying men and women on the journey of married and family life, even when the initial dreams begin to fade or indeed fail”, he said.

irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/archbishop-says-church-must-help-people-in-marriage-difficulty-1.2902925#.WFAAWhzMzTY.twitter

 

[carn]

Presenting people with black-and-white answers is not the way to help with marriage difficulties, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said.

If he would mean with that, that presenting people with black-and-white answers NEVER helps with marriage difficulties, he is simply and without any doubt wrong. But probably its not meant that way.

Also:
irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/archbishop-says-church-must-help-people-in-marriage-difficulty-1.2902925#.WFAAWhzMzTY.twitter
“That does not mean that we do not propose an ideal for all to aim at.”

Pretty tricky without saying something is “white” and thereby also saying something else is “black” as ideals usually define “white” and if there there are any obvious opposites of an ideal, they are automatically declared “black” by declaring the ideal “white”.

So it will be pretty interesting to see how this proposing of an ideal is done while also avoiding thereby giving black-and-white answers.

 

[St_Francis]

I don’t know if it’s me, the article, or what, but there seems to be a sense of doom regarding marriage. Yes, some marriages can not be saved, but as married couples, each of whom is dedicated to keeping their marriage together, know, there are ups and downs and sometimes we have to endure through some messy downs.

 

[Thomas_White]

I don’t know if it’s me, the article, or what, but there seems to be a sense of doom regarding marriage. Yes, some marriages can not be saved, but as married couples, each of whom is dedicated to keeping their marriage together, know, there are ups and downs and sometimes we have to endure through some messy downs.

Amen.