Catholic Families Fight Challenges with Greater Faith

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This post will appear in the fall edition of St Joseph’s Reflections.

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“I was the Cuban Martha Stewart,” Lucia Fernandez chuckled. Then she paused, and her tone changed.

“But the devil knows our weaknesses.”

Fernandez, like most Catholics, believed “family” was defined as a mother and father, raising their kids, and eventually celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary. That’s the track her first marriage followed. She and her first husband were even referred to as “the perfect Catholic couple.” Fernandez believes their work in support of Natural Family Planning (NFP) and the sacrament of marriage put a diabolical target on their backs.

“The devil tries to wreak havoc on families,” she said, “because he doesn’t want the traditional family unit to be fruitful and successful.”

Robert Fernandez proposed to his wife Lucia as they kneeled
in prayer before the tabernacle at St. Joseph’s Church.

Fernandez didn’t expect to remarry. She moved from Central Florida to Jacksonville. Her focus was on rearing and supporting her children – five daughters and a son. For their sake, she wouldn’t want to change her name. She even told her spiritual advisor as much. But, after taking a dance class, she realized God had other plans.

Another student, a construction company executive born in Cuba, asked her to dance. After their dance, she noticed the monogram on his shirt and asked what his initials stood for.

“‘My first name is Robert,’” she recalled him saying. “‘The ‘I’ is for Ismael and my last name is Fernandez.’ I looked at him and said ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ And I just started laughing. What are the chances of me meeting a Cuban guy in Jacksonville with the same last name?”

They have much more in common than their surnames and homeland. Even more than a love of music and dancing. Robert and Lucia are deeply devout. Robert proposed to her after Mass at St. Joseph’s on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception while they were kneeling in prayer before the tabernacle. Robert later said he wanted to marry her because he believed she would help him get to heaven. Lucia was amazed.  

“I sure as heck didn’t think I was helping anyone get anywhere!” she laughed.

Divorce was a trauma that shook Lucia Fernandez’s entire foundation. As she recovered and began to rebuild her life with Robert, her definition of “family” changed.

“It’s the people who are in your life,” she said, “people that you have a loving relationship with, that you’ve made a commitment to, blood relation or not. And hopefully you’ve been brought together by God.”

Their devotion to their Catholic faith makes Robert and Lucia somewhat unique in today’s American culture. Demographically, however, the Fernandez family story is fairly common. The Pew Research Center reports that fewer than half (46%) of the children in America younger than 18 years of age live in households with two heterosexual parents in their first marriage. That’s down from 73 percent in 1960.

Fr. Thanh Nguyen believes divorce and secularism, including
intrusive technology, are undermining the traditional family unit.

The divorce rate is most often used as the barometer of the health of the traditional family unit. Government statistics show the divorce rate began falling in 1996 and is now just above 40 percent for first-time marriages. But that decrease may be misleading, as it corresponds to a similar rise in households with non-traditional families – singles, roommates, and unmarried co-habitating couples.

Fr. Thanh Nguyen, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church, believes divorce is the most visible evidence of the breakdown of the family.

“The children who grow up in those broken families are dysfunctional in some way,” Fr. Thanh said. “It’s only by the grace of God they can become whole again.”

But Fr. Thanh says there is also another threat that is undermining families today, a threat that may be even more insidious because it is interwoven throughout Western culture – secularism. He says secularism is the product of individualism, consumerism, excessive competition, and a dependence on technology.

Fr. Thanh recalled the story of a couple unable to make time for each other. They scheduled lunch in an attempt to reconnect.

“All of a sudden, the cell phone rings,” he said. “Two minutes later, an iPad comes out. And that’s the end of lunch together. There’s no doubt in my mind the Internet undermines family values.”

Pope Francis opened the Synod on the Family last October
by telling bishops, “The Lord is asking us to care for the family.”

“The pope has given us the three words that are very important in helping families,” Fr. Thanh continued. “Please, thank you, and sorry. Those three are very down to earth, but can bond the family together.”

Pope Francis has made the family an important focus of his papacy. He has initiated two major events designed to highlight the importance of family life while acknowledging the intense pressures on families from cultural and social challenges. As part of his U.S visit September 22-27, the Holy Father will attend the World Meeting of Families and celebrate its closing Mass.

A week later, the pope will convene the 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, for final debate on family life and the Church. The synod, scheduled for October 4-25, will make its highly-anticipated final recommendations to the pope on the difficult issues facing families today.

                       

To highlight the importance of the family in Catholic life, Pope Francis will canonize the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux on Oct. 18 during the synod. Louis (1823-1894) and Marie Zelie Guerin Martin (1831-1877) will be the first married couple with children to be canonized together, in the same ceremony. It is one more example of the family’s primary position in all creation. Fr. Thanh noted as much in quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Christ chose to be born and grow up in the bosom of the holy family of Joseph and Mary. The Church is nothing other than the family of God” (CCC 1655).

Louis and Marie Zelie Guerin Martin will be the first married
couple with children to be canonized as saints together,
in the same ceremony.

In short, the Church is a part of family and also an extension of the family, with ministries within parishes often assuming roles of “church families.” One example in St. Joseph’s parish is the music ministry. Music director Frank DeProspo says his primary focus is people, not perfection. That means rehearsals are structured to nurture relationships. When one section of singers is working on a part, others are free to socialize.

             

“It’s not bedlam, we get the job done,” DeProspo explains. “For example, a few sopranos will chat about their day, about what’s going on in their lives, so there’s a lot of sharing going on. That closeness helps people work together, like a family.”

DeProspo says the greatest key to nurturing that sense of family is prayer. When he became music director nearly 20 years ago, DeProspo continued the practice of previous director Joan Ahren of sharing prayer intentions at the end of each rehearsal.

“Everybody felt comfortable enough to share their pain, their joys, things they probably wouldn’t share with anyone else except family,” DeProspo recalled. “It was very moving to see that. Even as the group got larger, it really helps foster that atmosphere of comfort. They share enough that people cry during the prayers because they know the concept of family is there.

“Some of the darkest points in people’s lives,” DeProspo continued, “we’ve been privileged to pray them through it. But that’s what makes us a family.”

Conchita DeProspo, Barb Steffen Carmadelle, and Susie Huber
enjoying each other’s company at a Music Ministry party.

That family is not confined to church walls. Many members have built such strong friendships, some even take family vacations together. And because most members are from somewhere other than Jacksonville, they also spend holidays together. Two families – the Thomsons and the Willibys – have taken turns hosting pot luck Easter dinners, Russ and Carron Tooke invite choir members and their families to join their family for their annual New Year’s Day open house, and DeProspo and his wife Nicole host Christmas dinner.

“It’s really been wonderful,” DeProspo noted. “People who would otherwise be alone and missing their own families. And they’re all talking about things in their lives, they’re all sharing. That’s family.”

It’s also an example of how a Christian community cares for each other as instructed by the Church, “Where families cannot fulfill their responsibilities, other social bodies have the duty of helping them and of supporting the institution of the family” (CCC 2209).

           

Robert and Lucia Fernandez have relied on God’s strength and grace to fulfill their responsibility to their families – at home and within the St. Joseph’s community. Lucia Fernandez says her spiritual journey has caused her to think of “family” in a whole new way – bigger, more inclusive, and with much more love. And that, she says, has helped her faith to grow a hundredfold.

“We are Catholic,” she said. “We are people of hope. God has a plan for us that He just wants us to fulfill. We just have to believe that and trust Him.”