Parishes, schools urged to focus on centrality of lifelong marriage and real meaning of love.
By Anthony Barich
National Reporter
AUSTRALIA’S Bishops have launched a “bold initiative” to reclaim the sacred from the secular in St Valentine’s Day, urging every parish and school in the country to promote a new resource that strengthens life-long marriage and romantic love.
Bishop Eugene Hurley of Darwin, Chairman of the Bishops’ Commission for Pastoral Life, launched Celebrating St Valentine: Honouring life-long marriage and romantic love on November 19.
“In recent years, St Valentine’s Day has become increasingly secularised,” Bishop Hurley said.
“‘Saint’ has been dropped from the title and the emphasis has shifted from romantic love in the context of life-long marriage, to romantic relationships of any persuasion.
“This parish initiative is a bold attempt to reclaim the sacred from the secular and use the innate joyfulness of the feast to promote and affirm marriage and life-long romantic love.”
Few would question the gift that a loving, stable marriage brings to the family and wider community, he said, adding that research findings confirm that marriage provides benefits to both the couple and their children.
“And yet, loving, stable marriages don’t attract a lot of attention from church and community organisations until they become unstable,” the prelate said.
“It is thus vitally important that we make frequent use of opportunities to affirm marriage and highlight the value of a loving marriage to the community.”
Bishop Hurley told The Record that Australia’s Bishops are passionate about having happy marriages and good families, and “strive in every way to look for opportunities to support families and promote genuine life-giving love”.
The document, published on the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference website on November 19, was approved at their May Plenary meeting.
While Valentine’s Day is not until February 14, Bishop Hurley said the resource was released three months in advance so people understand how crucial the Church’s teachings are and are able to prepare and celebrate the feast.
“It’s important they don’t just celebrate it as a one-off event without taking full opportunity of it,” he told The Record.
The resource provides practical suggestions for parishes and schools to celebrate World Marriage Day on February 14, 2010 and contains a reproducible leaflet ‘Be My Valen-time!’ to be distributed to parishioners on or around St Valentine’s Day.
It also contains notes for the liturgies for around St Valentine’s Day, including prayers of the faithful, offertory prayers, readings, blessings for couples and homily notes for parish Masses and school paraliturgies; newsletter inserts and tips for building a marriage-friendly community.
“Catholic education is organically part of the Catholic Church, and the responsibility of the school is to work with families and enhance good health and happiness, and this is an excellent way of doing it,” he said.
It also lists websites of organisations that seek to strengthen marriage, including Retrouvaille, Focolare, Schoenstatt, Couples for Christ and For Your Marriage (www.foryourmarriage.org), a US Bishops’ initiative.
The resource can be downloaded from the Australian Catholic Bishops’ website, www.catholic.org.au.
Australia’s Bishops are seeking to reclaim the true dignity of marital love and marriage with their new initiative for St Valentine’s Day next year.