The Hope of the Family

"Today, the family is in crisis--it is in crisis worldwide", Pope Francis has said. "Young people don’t want to get married, they don’t get married, or they live together. Marriage is in crisis, and so the family is in crisis." The main problem with the family in the Church today, contends Cardinal Gerhard Müller, is not the small number of civilly remarried divorced Catholics who want to received Holy Communion. It is the large number of Catholics who live together before marriage, who marry civilly, or who do not even bother with marriage, as if these choices were sound options for Catholic living. It is also a failure of many who marry "in the Church" to understand marriage as part of their Christian discipleship.

In this engaging conversation, Cardinal Müller, one of Pope Francis' top advisers in the Vatican, addresses the challenges facing marriage and family life today. The loss of faith in many traditionally Christian societies has led to a crisis. In turn, cohabitation, civil marriage, and divorce and civil remarriage, further undermine faith because they harm the family as the "domestic Church" and the place of initial evangelization. The solution: the Church must undertake a robust new evangelization of the family: sharing the fullness of truth about marriage and family in Christ, encouraging families to worship and pray together, and helping them witness by their lives to the joy of the gospel.

Cardinal Müller stresses mercy and compassion in pastoral minstry with struggling Catholics, but he does so without contradicting the teaching of Jesus about divorce and remarriage and minimizing the power of grace to transform lives. In this way he proclaims hope for the family rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Gerhard Muller

Cardinal Gerhard Müller is the Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Formerly the bishop of Regensburg, Germany, and a professor of theology, he is president of both the Pontifical Biblical Commission and the International Theological Commission. He is also the author of many books, including The Hope of the Family and Priesthood and Diaconate.