Love Endures All Things with a Little Help: How the Church Must Accompany the Next Generation of Newlyweds

The current state of marriage inside and outside the Church can be disheartening. The present divorce rate has increased burdens on the family, the Church, and society as a whole. Current studies on marriage point to the reason for this elevated rate by identifying common problems that most couples experience: communication, presence, intimacy, forgiveness, finances, and house management. For many couples, these issues begin to form during their first five years of marriage, but due to a lack of support and a reluctance to seek help, the concerns go unaddressed developing further tension throughout the marriage potentially setting the stage for divorce. In order to more adequately support newly married couples, parishes must enhance how they accompany newlyweds throughout the first five years of marriage. Parishes today significantly struggle with supporting individuals beyond the marriage ceremony. Although there is a great deal of effort put into the preparation and execution of the sacrament, insufficient focus is given to what happens as these new couples begin to live out their marital lives.

I intend to show that for the Church to address the disheartening reality of the current state of marriage she must enhance the practical formation she provides newlyweds at the parish level, especially during their first five years of marriage. I will do this by first summarizing the current state of marriage and present the lack of post-marriage formation available for newlyweds; second, present the Millennials and iGen perspectives on religion and marriage; third, briefly unpack common issues couples face within their first five years of marriage that ordinarily lead to divorce; and finally, identify how the Church can enhance how she accompanies newly married couples in strengthening their marriages by providing them skills that strengthen their marital bond.

Current State of Marriage and Post-Marriage Formation

Even if not affected personally by the current marital crisis most individuals can point to a friend or relative who endured a significant separation or divorce, knows someone who continues to put off marriage until later in life or has chosen not to marry at all. An individual does not have to do much research to realize that the current state of marriage is discouraging, and that those entering into these new unions are left to adjust to this new life event on their own. In order for the Church to better support newly married individuals at the parish level, she must first comprehend two realities that affect the current state of marriage. Those being the growing acceptance of divorce and the willingness to put off marriage, and the disconnect between what the Church teaches and what is actually taking place within parishes for newly married couples.

For the Church to provide an effective accompaniment of newlyweds she must understand the reality of marriage and divorce in which couples have been raised. Unfortunately, these trends can be rather difficult to comprehend due to how the data is reported. All data collected by organizations such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the United States Census Bureau track marriage and divorce rates solely within a given year and calculates the divorce rate against the entire United States population over the age of fifteen.¹ The first issue with this reporting approach is that the data does not report the probability of divorce over the course of a particular time frame. For example, the data would not provide a percentage of the number of divorces that took place after five years of marriage or after twenty years of marriage. The second issue is that the data does not include all fifty states. Every year the divorce rate is calculated there are at least three or more different states not included in the calculation. Finally, the third issue is that the data does not calculate the number of divorces against the number of marriages, however the number of divorces is considered against the entire population over the age of 15. Calculating the data in this way does not consider the effects that population increase, and...