Statistics are notoriously manipulable. Given the right question you can make the numbers tell you whatever you want them to say. It would be hard, however, to find a silver lining in the numbers above. While the focus is on non-traditional folks and non-traditional relationships, the reality is that society is suffering because marriage is in such bleak shape as a whole. The value of marriage is hard to deny. Healthy marriages remain the bedrock of a flourishing society and healthy community. On average, women and men who are married are healthier, live longer, and are better off economically than those not marriage. Children raised within stable marriages fare significantly better across the whole range of sociological categories. We not only need marriage; we need healthy and stable marriages.
Instead of keeping the attention on same sex couples or other versions of marriage which make up a very small percentage of the whole, the situation today is crying out for a renewed emphasis upon marriage and a profound encouragement of our children and youth to marry. The role of the home in promoting the very institution of marriage cannot be denied. The churches also contribute to the norming of this relationship in the face of a culture which seems preoccupied with exceptions over the rule. Together we need both to model for and to enlist the desire for marriage among our youth who are being discouraged both by the struggles of marriage and a culture which diminishes its value in the first place.
One of the subtle changes we have made is to pray for those married and pray for the family and the home more often and more deliberately than in the past. I would encourage our people to do so explicitly within the family prayers of the home and individually. As important as this is, it is essential that we raise up marriage and its place within our Creator's purpose and plan. Man was made for woman every bit as much as woman for man because this is the primary shape, the most basic level, of community. When our Lord said "It is not good for man to be alone," He was not suggesting that what He had made was not good but that the fullness of that creation required a helpmeet for the man, someone comparable to him. Adam's task of naming all that God had made was literally an exercise in self-awareness -- the solemn realization that there was no one like him. From this observation came the ripe moment for God to do what He knew He would do -- to create from man the woman who was always intended to complete him.
In addition, we also need to emphasize the gift of forgiveness to husband and wife as the godly provision of a glue which binds up sinful men and woman and restores the relationships broken by sin. Forgiveness is not simply the gift of a clear conscience for the individual but the very blessing by which a husband becomes Christ to his wife and she to her husband. While the culture insists that marriage is too costly to enter and requires too much of a sacrifice to justify its cost, forgiveness answers the charge with most urgent and central relationship in which to ask forgiveness and be forgiven.
The secular culture should be expected to support and partner with churches in the encouragement of those married and those not to marry. The problem here is not the value of marriage to the society at every level. The problem is ideological. It may have begun formally with feminism but it has been present throughout the ages. The ideology that conflicts with marriage is he aggrandizement of the individual, the glorification of the autonomous self, and the pursuit of amusement, entertainment, and pleasure as the highest good. Ideology will not allow the culture to admit what we all know. Without marriage everything else within the human community will be weak, fragile, or broken.
Now is the time not to talk up marriage but to talk about it, to present marriage and family as the normative pattern of our human existence, and to help the single realize the essential value of this relationship to them and to their future as well as the whole community. It may seem old fashioned but it is the most cutting edge position of all to make the case for marriage and to prepare our children for their own lives as husbands to their wives and wives to their husbands. A nation is only as strong as its weakest marriages and families. What is true for the country is also true of the city. It is also the bedrock truth for the Church. If marriage is in trouble, everything is in trouble.
By the way, check your calendar. On this day we commemorate St. Joseph, Guardian of our Lord and Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In other words, on this day we remember how God invested in marriage and family His only-begotten Son and the well-being of all humanity.
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