Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi, Editor INTAMS review | Volume 14 | Issue 2 | Autumn 2008 | Pages 1 > 2 Editorial (Full-text) As this year draws to a close, we are happy to offer to our readers a new number of the INTAMS review packed with the usual variety of perspectives on and inquiries about contemporary marriage and family life. The first and the last contribution of this issue commemorate the fortieth anniversary of two events which, both in their own way, have left their mark on the history of Christianity in the twentieth century. In 1968 Pope Paul VI published his encyclical Humanae vitae which, while a touchstone of orthodoxy for some, for many others has become the symbol for and the culmination of a growing discrepancy between the official church teaching and the lived experience of the Catholic faithful in the field of sexual ethics. According to our two authors, Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler, the papal document has not only incidentally failed to give due place to the experiences of married couples in this central aspect of their loving relationship, but more fundamentally misjudged the role of human experience in the formation of moral insight. In their article, the two American theologians, who have just co-authored a new book in which they sketch the contours of a “renewed Catholic anthropology” (The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology, Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2008), call for a revision of the Catholic condemnation of artificial contraception. Experiences – mainly troubling experiences with the church communities they belonged to – played a major role when interdemoninational, Christian spouses in the UK decided to found the Association of Interchurch Families forty years ago. While “in 1968 such couples were used to being regarded as oddities, second-class citizens” in their respective congregations (see R. Reardon, “The Association of Interchurch Families: Looking Back and Looking Forward”, in: INTAMS review 6 [2000], 183), today’s interchurch couples and families have gained a level of maturity and vitality which makes them indispensable, albeit often inconspicuous, builders of unity within the Christian ecumenical movement, as Melanie Finch shows in her report on a recent conference commemorating the origins of the Association. Two further articles in this issue deal with the changed position of the Christian faith and of the churches in Western societies over the past decades and consider theological arguments and pastoral strategies that could help Christian spouses and parents in particular to face the challenges. Both authors seem to concur in their analysis that in times of declining church influence and evaporating (knowledge of) faith, contemporary Christians may either opt for a strong religious identity that runs counter to cultural norms or call for changes in the church doctrine and practice in order to conform to the “wisdom” of the day. Writing from and for a US Catholic context, Robert J. Barry shows himself preoccupied with the fact that the first group will probably play a role disproportionate to their real numbers in the church while the second is likely to fall prey to religious indifference and thus to be further marginalised within the Catholic community. To avoid such a scenario, he argues that younger Catholics of the second category will be best supported by means of a marriage theology and ministry that regards and treats their unions as intrinsically sacramental even though they may not rest on an active and committed faith life. Richard M. Rymarz, however, is convinced that the vocation of active faithful Christians has to be given equal or even greater attention and support by the church and its ministers. Drawing on a study of committed Catholic parents in Australia, he illustrates how precarious their position is in a context of practical atheism and urges the church to recognise their role in transmitting the faith and to respond more specifically to their needs. What challenges specific family situations can present, for pastoral ministry on the one hand and family law on the other, is highlighted in two further contributions. Asian Americans have a strong sense of marriage and family life, but underneath the surface of family harmony often lurk tensions and problems such as gender strife, spousal abuse, domestic violence, as well as the younger generation’s rejection of socio-cultural traditions that seek to maintain ethnic identity, e.g. by means of endogamy and arranged marriages. Jonathan Y. Tan suggests that pastoral ministers should encourage and assist Asian American Catholics to move away from tradition-maintenance towards “traditioning” and to promote dialogue among all family members involved. Salome Adroher Biosca’s contribution shifts our perspective to Spain as one the European countries in which the individualisation and pluralisation of family forms has led to a profound and fast-moving transformation of family law. While this process is ongoing, the growing number of intercultural families due to migration movements, EU integration, and globalisation causes new and additional problems; but also here the main challenge for legislation and jurisdiction appear to lie in striking a balance between an overall protection of family relations through common regulations on the one hand and flexibility toward cultural particularities on the other. The practice of oikonomia in the Orthodox Churches is often referred to as an alternative for the intransigent position of the Roman Catholic tradition with regard to the remarriage of divorced persons. Italian theologian Andrea Palmieri, who has recently presented a study on the second marriage service in the Greek Orthodox Church (Il rito per le seconde nozze nella Chiesa greco-ortodossa, Bari: Ecumenica, 2007), argues in his article that the permission of a successive marriage rite after death of a partner or divorce “is not the outcome of a condescending lack of rigorous application of the norm against evil nor of an option for a minor evil”, but rather an expression of the Orthodox position that individuals should continue to pursue the ideal of lifelong marriage, even if they have failed to do so in the first instance. As the Catholic Church’s difficulty with remarriage appears to result from the inability to deal theologically with failure much more than from a mere lack of pastoral flexibility, Palmieri’s insights are a renewed invitation to reconsider the fundaments of Western marriage theology. Another chapter in the history and theology of marriage in the West is recalled by Sabine Demel who gives background information on an important amendment of the civil status law which has recently been voted on by the German parliament. Civil marriage was made obligatory in Germany in 1875 to ensure the state’s control over marriage; couples were still allowed to marry in churches, synagogues and other religious institutions, but only after first having had a civil ceremony in the registry. While this obligation was heavily criticised by the churches at the time of its introduction, its present abrogation has not been welcomed with the corresponding proportion of enthusiasm by today’s church leaders – possibly a sign that the Kulturkampf between church and state about marriage has come to an end. Less harmonic, however, is the relationship between contemporary cultural standards and the Christian idea of marriage. Drawing on his pastoral experience, Roy Dorey shows ways in which the prevailing mentality infiltrates into marriage and undermines its essential characteristics such as caring companionship, lifelong commitment, and sharing of a common trajectory towards personal fulfilment. Although the churches sometimes seem to be more affected by and complicit to such trends than actively developing the contrasting views, Dorey believes that they have important resources to share with contemporary couples. Gisbert Greshake concurs and argues that marriage exemplifies and symbolises in the most radical way the meaning of human existence. Sexual differentiation and marital union do not only respond to the human longing for communion, but are a reflection of the original vocation that is inscribed into the human flesh. Being images of the Trinitarian God who is communio, humans are called to participate in the Creator’s and Redeemer’s “communial” life-style. The usual book review section, in which international specialists in various fields of marriage and family life present a selection of the most recent publications, completes this new issue of the INTAMS review.