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Creeds help us not only to understand what we believe, but also to profess it, strengthening our faith. One tenant of Catholic belief suffers attack more than any other right now: marriage and family life. Not only do people attack, both within and out of the Church, but many are just downright ignoring it. Fewer people than ever are getting married and having children. The natural and supernatural order of married love is central to God’s plan for our happiness.
Marriage is central to our faith and to the story of salvation history. God created marriage to reflect His own eternally faithful and fruitful love. His love for Israel and the Church reflects this same love. The sacrament of marriage mystically draws us into Christ’s sacrificial, self-offering love for His Body, the Church. Christian celibacy does not detract from the centrality of marriage, but actually bolsters it by witnessing to the direct marriage with God for which we all are preparing.
Therefore, any attempt to obscure or distort our belief on marriage attacks the heart of the faith and our eternal vocation. God is faithful; His love is complete; His love is necessarily fruitful. Marriage reflects this love at its natural and supernatural core. If married love turns away from this reality, it loses its heart and draws us away from God’s love, rather than toward it. As Catholics we need to strengthen our own faith in what God has taught us about marriage and what He has established through nature and the sacraments.
To bolster our own faith about marriage, I’m proposing the following creed about what we believe and how we can strengthen our resolve to defend these truths:
I believe in God, the Creator,
Who made man and woman in His image,
And drew them together in marriage,
To be fruitful and to multiply.God made man and woman
To become one flesh,
Together to exercise dominion
Over the world.I believe that sin has wounded
The union of man and woman
As misdirected desire and power
Mark our fallen relationships.I believe that God has a plan
To save humanity,
To form a new people
To be His bride forever.I believe that the Son of God
Became man to enact
This new union of God and His people,
To heal and elevate marriage.Jesus established marriage
As a sign of His unbreakable
Love for the Church to be
A source of grace and holiness.I believe that God has
Raised up holy men and women
Throughout history to serve
His Church and witness His love.Their witness to Christ’s
Unending, fruitful, faithful love
Offers a sign of contradiction
Against the darkness of the world.I believe that the Church teaches
The fullness of the truth,
And offers a beacon of hope
On the truth of married love.I profess my faith in all that
The Church teaches on how
Married love overcomes our
Selfish distortions of love.I promise to defend the truth
Of God’s plan for marriage
And the marital act, which
Leads us to our true happiness.I believe that the family
Forms the domestic church,
And its future will determine
The future of our society.I will resist any attempt
By the world and even some in
The Church to undermine
The life of the family.I believe in all that God
Teaches me through nature
And through the Church, and
Will hold fast to this until death.Amen!
__________________
Dr. Jared Staudt
R. Jared Staudt works in the Office of Evangelization and Family Life Ministries of the Archdiocese of Denver. He earned his BA and MA in Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN and his PhD in Systematic Theology from Ave Maria University in Florida. Staudt served previously as a director of religious education in two parishes, taught at the Augustine Institute and the University of Mary, and served as co-editor of the theological journal Nova et Vetera. He and his wife Anne have six children and he is a Benedictine oblate.
