Christian Family Dimensions

• Unit 1 explores the fundamental Christian dimensions of the family, viewing it and love from different perspectives.

Family as a Vocation

• Love involves committing oneself to another.

Perspectives on Love

• Psychological view: Love is a strong emotion that causes attraction.
• Sociological view: Love is a strong emotional bond where people satisfy needs to give and receive.
• Sociologists often focus on heterosexual, romantic, and marital relationships.
• Love is often categorized as emotion, sentiment, or passion, or from neurobiological and emotional factors.
• Humanistic view: Love is essential for self-actualization and human potential.
• Erich Fromm: Love solves existential problems by affirming aliveness and promoting self-actualization.
• Mature love consists of caring, respect, responsibility and knowledge, differentiating it from symbiotic love.
• Abraham Maslow: Love focuses on creating the "Good Person" and "Good Society" with collaboration.
• Christian view: Love is sacrificial, self-giving, reflecting Christ's love.

Vocation

• Vocation involves listening to determine one's calling.
• Vocation comes from the Latin "vocare" meaning "to call".
• God calls people each with a special purpose known before birth.
• St. John Paul II: Christian revelation recognizes marriage and virginity/celibacy as ways to fulfill love.
• Marriage is expressing God's faithful love, while virginity reminds of our destiny beyond marriage.
• Both marriage and virginity are complementary images that reflect aspects of divine love.

Marriage as a Vocation

• Marriage is a natural calling that echoes God's eternal love and it is a total, faithful, free, fruitful commitment.
• Pope Francis: Marriage, a gift, needs vocational discernment like priesthood/religious life.
• Christian families are the foundation, building the domestic Church that helps the Church understand itself.
• Spouses become ministers, promoting children's education, contributing to the Church's growth.

Commitment to Christ

• Christ's love exemplifies marital love as faithful, free, fruitful, sacrificial, and demands God's grace to remain committed.

Family as a Social Institution

• Unit 1 Lesson A emphasizes both positive aspects reflecting Christ and negative aspects indicating humanity's rejection of God's love in families.
• The positive aspects are the awareness of freedom, promotion of women's dignity, increased focus on children, and families ecclesial mission in society.
• The negative aspects are independence between spouses, distorted views on parental authority and values transmission, rising divorce rates, abortion and contraceptive mentality.
• Apostolicam Actuositatem, 11: Marriage is the foundation of society, established by God as the start of a conjugal partnership.
• The family is a first and vital cell for social structure and stability.

Functions of the Family

• Families are a unit of unconditional love and support with marriage uniting independent individuals
• Parents should ensure their children grow as Christians.

Socialization

• Practicing kindness, values, fosters a just society.
• The family provides members with a social identity, and a strong family benefits its members and society as a whole.

Families Regulate Sexuality

• The conjugal act is sacred, extramarital sex is sinful, and sexuality in marriage is physical and spiritual.
• Paul VI (Humanae Vitae): conjugal act should be unitive and procreative, aligning with God's plan, but procreation is a benefit, not its sole purpose.
• Responsible procreation requires prudence and unselfishness.
• Children are a gift, where parents cooperate with God and decide how many they can care for.

Socialization

• It is the original cell of social life, teaching children moral values, where children learn about society (CCC 2207).
• Families play a role by modeling love for children.

Economic Function

• Francis (Evangelii Gaudium, 220): citizenship and political participation are moral duties.

Positive Contributions of the Family

• The father should be patient/kind, the husband-wife relationship should echo Christ and the mother should provide refuge, for their children.
• Pope Benedict XVI: The love between couples reflects Christ on the cross, reflecting God’s, with God's being the measure for human.

Happiness

• Spouses must love each other as Christ: kind and nourishing each other.
• Conjugal love between spouses should reflect Christ: cherishing and nourishing.

Unit 1 Lesson B: Family as a Social Institution

• The Christian Family is a domestic Church from Familiaris Consortio.

Role of the domestic Church

• Parents are the first teachers of faith who should educate their children.
• Family life must be centered on Christ, with the couple's love mirroring Christ's, bearing Gospel and testifying domestic churches (AL, 200).
• The family is called to share the Threefold Mission of Jesus Christ
  • Prophetic: be believing/evangelizing.
  • Priestly: actively participate in liturgy/sacraments.
  • Kingly: express Christ in daily and be involved in the Mission.

Tasks of the family

• The family should be a communion, where parents are first teachers in faith, children should follow God.
• The family should be a sanctuary, where parents educate their children.
• The family should be an agent of social development and family reflect Christ, reinforced by prayer and attending Mass.
• Families provides communion, teach care and forgiveness.
• The duties of parents are to make the family primary teachers and where children follow God
• The family should be an Education in Virtues, FC, where parents teach spiritual over instinctual values with parents setting a good example

Duties of Children

• FC children must show gratitude to parents, with honoring parents, children can never repay parents who show filial respect
• Parents teach and protect.
• Parents should foster discipline, respect, and moral growth and obey God with all they do

Christian Perspectives on Marriage

• Unit 2 focuses on the Christian perspective of marriage, viewing it in the scriptures.
• Christian marriage is not just a human but a divine institution (CCC 1603).
• Marriage was established by God with established laws (GS48§1., CCC 1603), designed for unity/procreation.
• Marriage must be based on mutual love, which is a holy lifelong partnership, where the wife is flesh of flesh (Gen 2:23), symbolizing equality/oneness.
• Sin disrupts harmony, leading to blame and conflict (Gen 3:12, dominance and lust (Gen 3:16)
• Pain in childbirth (Gen 3:16-19).
• Marriage is helpful for self-centeredness, but God shows fidelity and tenderness in marriage.

Old Testament

• Nuptial between God/Israel foreshadows the everlasting in Christ, a marriage for Cana (CCC 1614), where Jesus emphasizes the importance of marriage
• Spouses must be faithful because Jesus says, "What God has joined, let no man separate" and must love the church (Ephesians 5:25-32)
• St. Paul says marriage is binding until death, demanding love, sacrifice, and faith
• A covenant reflects God, demanding people to unite

Theology

• Marriage helps to give grace and God helps them through
• Marriage:
  • must show unity between man and woman
  • couples can express their love without bounds
  • must provide for their family
  • is essential between spouses, which can continue to deepen

Morality

• The family should uphold ethical issues like
  • Marriage
    • It is what is expressed through love and commitment
    • Meant for raising a family
    • Chastity and fidelity

Marriage as a Vocation

• The call to holiness can come with forgiveness that requires love and family reflects love and reflects teachings
• Husband should have love and sacrifice, while the Wife supports the family
• Both couples must share dignity and can grow in a loving marriage unit.

Domestic Church

• Marriage serves as a sanctuary, where each couple accepts/follow God's laws.
• In marriage, the Old and New Testament both agree a reflection in God's plan
• The main goal of marriage is a grace that leads families together for life.
• These ethical issues must reflect Christ’s love and should be strengthened by reading biblical verses to help follow God.