From promoting churches as wedding venues to encouraging Catholic families to invite single people over to witness the goodness of marriage, the LoveIRL summit sponsored by the California Catholic Conference gave youth and young adult ministers information and ideas to revitalize marriage and family ministry.
Held at the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, it drew 280 lay and ordained ministers, including eight bishops from every California diocese to the Sept. 27 summit that capped the year-long Radiate Love initiative.
Resources are online at cacatholic.org/radiatelove, and every diocese should now have staff who are prepared to carry the work forward at a parish level.
“The bishops wanted to create a summit specifically for people who work with youth and young adults, helping them with the resources and language to talk about marriage as a vocation to young people today,” said Kathleen Domingo, executive director of the California Catholic Conference.
Registration was far larger than anticipated. The “IRL” in the summit’s name means “in real life.”
“There was just a great sense of joy and hope in the room that we were even having this conversation,” she said.
The California bishops were inspired to create Radiate Love after hearing a talk by sociologist Brad Wilcox, author of “Get Married: Why most Americans must defy the elites, forge strong families, and save civilization” (Broadside Books, $32).
“A lot of the social science [Wilcox] is doing around satisfaction in marriage is changing the secular narrative that says that women do better and are happier when they’re not married,” Domingo said.
“Actually, the social science is showing just the opposite — that married women with children are some of the happiest people in the world.”
The bishops have seen marriage rates plummet for years. They wanted to make a case that would connect with more young people.
“For people in their 50s working in parish ministry, it might be difficult for them to talk about marriage to Gen Z. A lot of the language isn’t the same anymore. It doesn’t resonate,” said Domingo.
There were presentations on how teens and younger adults view love with distrust and don’t have marriage on their radar — and ways to “heal that culture and bring them back to an understanding of who they are, what they’re made for, and what love means,” she said.
Topics included reclaiming the Christian understanding and purpose of both weddings and quinceañeras.
One bishop urged priests to encourage engaged couples to raise the spirituality and lower the cost of their wedding by getting married at a Sunday Mass. Another gave an example of one priest in his diocese who, during a Sunday Mass, publicly urged couples to get married. A panelist spoke of her potluck wedding reception, with parishioners helping out.
“She said it was so freeing and so beautiful for them to get married young and make that choice without going into debt or postpone because of financial difficulties,” Domingo said.
Another participant mentioned a parish that used to be a popular site for weddings, but had seen a tremendous drop-off. Couples still thought it was a beautiful place and still wanted to get married, but secular advertisers were pushing them to secular venues. The parish response was to set up a booth for wedding vendor shows.
15-year-old girl entering womanhood by committing to following Christ and honoring the Blessed Mother. Like weddings, they have become commercialized and secularized.
“The discussion was around bringing the quinceañera back to the church, and not having it be so expensive that people say, ‘I gave my daughter a quinceañera and now I can’t afford to give her a wedding,’ ” Domingo said.
Two well-known Catholic family advocates, Damon Owens and Cristina Barba Whalen, were the event’s featured speakers, along with San Jose Bishop Oscar Cantú. Owens told Angelus that the solidarity among such a diverse group of leaders was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before.
“It was just exhilarating to participate in,” said Owens. “We’re talking about leaders in family life offices and apostolates who are already dialed in to building marriage in their own particular way, now meeting to find a way to work together to accomplish what none of us can do on our own.”
Owens is the director of parish growth for Communio.org, a ministry that uses data-driven strategies to help churches strengthen marriages among parishioners. His strategy? “Parish renewal through marriage revival.”
“I genuinely believe this marks the beginning of a marriage revival in California and the nation,” Owens told Angelus. “Such a solidarity has the capacity to impact and transform millions of real marriages and families.”
Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Marc V. Trudeau attended the summit as a panelist. He told Angelus the gathering made it clear to him that “marriage and family life are vital components of any pastoral plan.”
“In an increasingly fractured society in which isolation and depression seem to be the norm, we look to the faithful witness of married couples and their families as models of communion and hope,” Trudeau said. “Our faith in Jesus is the remedy for the division, anger, and violence that we experience around us.”
In his remarks at the gathering, Trudeau stressed that young people today have a special need for stable marriages and families as models.
“The constant barrage of social media causes a disease in our ability to relate with others,” he said. “Young people, in particular, have not experienced what it means to be in communion with others.”
To that end, a theme that ran through many discussions was the need for accompaniment and for reclaiming the concept of the “domestic church” — the family that radiates the love of Christ from its home. That has become a lost experience for the many young people whose primary relationships are online.
“So how can those of us who are a little older help to restore their confidence in humanity?” Domingo asked. “How can we help young people reimagine friendship and reimagine the love that they have for their friends and reimagine dating? How can we help young couples starting their careers and preparing for marriage to really make interaction between the spouses the top priority?”
A key is for Catholic families to open their homes and let their light shine.
“I think the overwhelming takeaway that people had was ‘Don’t be afraid to share your story,’ ” she said. “If you hear that someone just got engaged or if you know of a couple that’s dating, or if you have young children or grandchildren or nephews or nieces at home — talk to them about love. Tell them about marriage. Tell them how great it is.”
