The default and public position of many in diocesan family life offices is to assume that if one is divorced, he or she is in need of "healing" or "moving on" by way of an annulment. This is wrong.
"Unity, indissolubility, and openness to fertility are essential to marriage." (CCC 1664)
We should be doing everything in our power to protect and nourish the family.
When I published Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak several years ago, I asked Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of The Ruth Institute to write the Foreword.
St. John the Baptist, St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher gave their lives to uphold the indissolubility of marriage, but few Catholics dare to speak so boldly today.
Seeing our own weakness exemplified in someone else, including and perhaps especially in artistic representation, can be a great opportunity for us—if we recognize ourselves, and also see the weakness for what it is.
One of the most frequently quoted passages from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's many writings is his famous assertion that the "only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb."
As a teacher, I have met dozens of bright, beautiful, serious-minded young women keen on finding a husband, getting married, and starting a family.
Husbands and wives reflect on how 'Love ... bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things' (1 Cor 13:4; 7).