Pope Francis has convened an extraordinary Synod meeting in Rome next year, on marriage and the family and has asked Bishops Conferences worldwide to undertake wide consultation with their people, in order to provide input to the discussion. The New Zealand Catholic Bishops have put the questions from the Extraordinary Synod document in an online Read more
The sacrament of marriage is “not just a pretty ceremony” — through it a couple receive from God the grace they will need to fulfill their mission in the world, Pope Francis has told a Pilgrimage for Families. The pilgrimage, organised for the Year of Faith, attracted more than 100,000 people to St Peter’s Square. Read more
The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has strongly affirmed the Catholic Church’s teaching that Communion for remarried divorcees is forbidden. But Archbishop Gerhard L. Muller acknowledged that many Catholics’ first marriages might be invalid, and thus eligible for annulment, if spouses had been influenced by prevailing contemporary conceptions of marriage Read more
The situation of remarried divorcees will be a major topic of discussion when Catholic bishops meet in October 2014 for an extraordinary Synod of Bishops called by Pope Francis on the pastoral needs of families. The Code of Canon Law says such a synod is held to “deal with matters which require a speedy solution”. Read more
The German archdiocese of Freiburg has indicated its willingness to allow some remarried divorcees to receive Communion — but the Vatican has signalled the move should be halted until next year’s Synod on the Family is held. Freiburg’s pastoral care office has published a 14-page guidebook for priests and deacons in the archdiocese with detailed Read more
A Ngai Tahu historian has published a book about what she calls an unspoken part of New Zealand history – inter-racial Maori and Pakeha unions and marriages. For the book, Matters of the Heart, the University of Otago’s Angela Wanhalla spent several years researching the unions spanning from when early settlers arrived. Dr Wanhalla says Read more
A husband and wife who eloped in 1942 and were married for more than seven decades died hours apart this week at a hospice in northern Illinois. Family members say Robert and Nora Viands were inseparable during their marriage, which included three separate wedding ceremonies. Together, they raised five children. “They were really never apart,” Read more
I’m not used to posting my woes and sorrows for all to see. I am however open to allowing my life to be opened up to the truth and allowing it to liberate me as I believe the truth should. With that said, I’m hoping that there are others who can gain or empathize with Read more
As a sociologist my life is all about creating, taking and interpreting surveys of attitudes and opinions. So I sometimes feel a bit depressed at how knuckle-headed the media can be when reporting about research on same-sex marriage. Let’s look at a slogan which is being repeated over and over: Same-sex parents are just as Read more
What’s your sign? Does it matter? A team from the University of Manchester did a study in 2007 called “Ten million marriages: A test of astrological ‘love signs’”. They analyzed 10 million marriages, using census data from the U.K. and inferring astrological signs from couples’ birth dates. This research shows that astrological sign has no impact Read more