The #1 Threat to Catholic Marriage: And Why Freedom is the Key! (Ken & Janelle)

What’s the biggest threat to Catholic marriage today? Many think it’s external pressures—modern culture, legal changes, or even the devil. But in this episode, we reveal the real danger destroying Catholic marriages from the inside.

Transcript

welcome back we're so happy to have you with us today we're going to be talking about marriage so thanks for joining us on this journey and Janelle reminded me we maybe should talk about our marriage before we talk about marriage as in general well I just want thought it might be helpful to know that we've been married for almost 16 years and um we have eight children now yeah and I have a question for you do you feel like you always thought you were called to marriage uh it's a great no I don't think so no I think there was a a period in my life where I wasn't sure mhm yeah for a good my young adult life so did you feel like you were unsure like were you called to a single life or to yeah you know well you're catching me off guard with this question um yes I think I was thinking of single life for a while uh and then I recognized that I I was just too selfish and that a single life probably wouldn't be good for you well that was one thing yeah I think it would have just retrospect I think would have destroyed me because uh because God was calling me to marriage I think my my selfish Tendencies and habits just flourish well when what marriage does it it gives you Freedom it actually gives you freedom because when I realized that okay we we're fast forward when we got married I just experienced so much freedom because when I woke up in the morning for example I knew that I don't have to wonder what God's will was I knew that I got to love you that was my privilege and to love her children um and it made life very simple because as a single person you're like oh what's God's will for my life there's this choice and this choice and this choice and and then you start getting down that road of I think they they call it fomo fear of missing out because you have all these options and that's actually not Freedom like freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want with whoever you want it with if freedom is the ability to do what you ought and I think that's what really one thing that I discovered in our in our marriage it's like Freedom makes life simple just not easy and like to joke like like golf simple just not easy get the ball in the hole how simple that is but how difficult that is as well so there was a number of years ago came across a guy named Christopher West he's still out there he did some great work and does great work and he was reflecting upon John Paul II's Theology of the Body which I had not personally read so I was reading his commentary on it which was really helpful for me at the time because he broke it down into simple language and he was speaking of marriage with these four qualities which I think he withdrew from Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body and those qualities of marriage that make marriage Thrive is one needs to be free it's a total gift of self it's a fruitful gift of self and I I missed one but you're going to have to stick around to get that last one cuz I don't have my those free total faithful and fruitful there we go so today we are going to talk about freedom but first from the catechism of the Catholic church marriage and the family are ordered to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of children so one thing we have to remember is that marriage is not whatever we think it is uh we we can't redefine marriage because marriage has been given to us from God and it's first we find its origins in scripture in Genesis where you have Adam and Eve and God institutes marriage then Jesus raises it up to the level of a Sacrament but we live in a culture with modern man that thinks he's his own God and modern man can thinks he can create and recreate anything that he wants including the institution of marriage but marriage can not be redefined it's like trying to redefine what a circle is you can't redefine that or redefine what a square is a square is going to always have equal sides it's always going to have right angles at the corner you can't decide oh a square is something else and so from our Catholic perspective marriage is given to us from God and from the catechism of the Catholic church it's ordered to the good of the spouses so it's ordered to our good and it's ordered also for the procreation and education of children so like Ken mentioned there's these four pillars and if you can just imagine a chair with four legs if you were to remove one of those legs the chair would be unbalanced it would probably fall over the person sitting in it would get hurt and so it just goes to show that we need these four pillars in order to have a successful beautiful marriage the way that God has intended it to be just like we need four legs on a chair now when we talk about marriage then we have these four qualities that allow marriage to thrive and that that first one is one ought to be free and we think about entering into the sacrament of marriage when the couple stands before the priest the priest asks him them three questions the first question is this have you come here to enter into marriage without coercion freely and wholeheartedly and the appropriate response is I have yes because no one can can force you to enter into that marriage one cannot be manipulated uh coerced uh because marriage is a free gift of self to the other and so when we think about Freedom one freely enters into the sacrament you make a commitment I have freely come but then I think you also have to manage that decision within marriage because there's things that can take your freedom away if you think about what's the greatest threat to marriage and make a list you know some might say some of these crazy laws that are coming into society that try and redefine marriage or um I don't know different philosophies or the devil maybe the devil's on the list as well the biggest threat to marriage it's not and there's the the biggest threat to marriage is sin because what sin does does it causes us to be a slave a slave to our passions and when you are a slave you're actually not free so when I think about freedom in marriage there's another aspect uh that I don't know if you ever heard somebody talk about but I have a duty to be free from my disordered desires and passions out of love for Janelle because she deserves me she deserves my love and how can I give myself over to Janelle through my service through physical intimacy through just sacrifice if I'm a slave to selfishness to my passions so it's an act of justice as well for me to work at being free from sin for the sake of loving Janelle and and how do we do that by going to confession it's one way yeah just like acknowledging your sin so maybe share like how does that play the sment of confession in our marriage so um for ourselves like we really work hard at trying to get to convention at least once a month and so Ken and I will make a point of going on a little date and we'll go together and we go to um our Cathedral here go to adoration confession and then we have a little supper date yeah so just a nice time and we do that once a month um if NE necessary we we will go sooner but that's T typically our our flow um so as Ken was talking about you know it's an act of justice and because we love the other that we should work on becoming free from you know being enslaved by sin and I think that's that's a really good point because sometimes thinking like I should do this for my own personal Holiness sometimes it's harder to do things for ourselves I don't know why but if you think of offering up a sacrifice or trying to make yourself better for another I don't know why sometimes that seems a little bit easier and here we get to the phrase free from something to be free for something very important distinction uh I'm thinking of with this historical account where Pope John Paul II comes to the United States and he's greeted by President Reagan at the time and President Reagan says to John Paul II welcome to the land of the free and John Paul II says yes free but free for what and that's a great point freedom for the sake of freedom in [Music] itself is not the the true Godly Freedom that we're talking about freedom is the ability not to do what you want but freedom is the ability to do what you ought and so that's a really key Point here John Paul 2 from Love and responsibility Freedom exists for the sake of love if freedom is not used is not taken advantage of by love it becomes a negative thing and gives human beings a feeling of emptiness and unfulfillment love commits freedom and imbus it with that to which the will is naturally attracted goodness man Longs for love more than for freedom freedom is the means and love the end so we don't seek freedom for the sake of Freedom Even in our political systems you know like we all we speak for Freedom well freedom from what from tyranny okay from that but for for what and it's for that we love this is really the end of which what we are created for I think of also um our freedoms can be taken away but freedoms for something uh can remain intact now stay with me here uh the point will be clear a man by the name of Victor Frankle he is a holocaust Survivor and he wrote a book called The Man a man's search for meaning and this is what he said and pay attention to to our connection here between freedom from something and freedom for something we who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the Huts comforting others giving away their last piece of bread they may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's own way so when external circumstances things can be taken away from us but it's the internal the freedom for so in marriage what are we to be free for we to be free for love to gift ourself to the other and what destroys that Sin Sin destroys that so with that I think we're done sure yeah share with us below tun why and we'll see you soon