In this episode, Father Robert Altier joins us to talk about his new book, God's Plan for Your Marriage, which goes deep into marriage and how to have a great one. This book is a book written by a priest from the Archdiocese of St. Paul, Minnesota, who has been a priest for 34 years and is the author of the book, "God's Plan For Your Marriage: How To Have A Great Marriage."
00:07:13.680And are we truly living marriage as a sacrament?
00:07:17.680And I think that's one of the areas where we've really slipped up.
00:07:22.840But part of that, you know, you stop and think about it and you say, okay, in the 2,000-year history of the church, marriage has always been solid.
00:07:32.400The church tends usually to address things when they get attacked, and that's when the theology gets deepened and so on.
00:07:42.020And I just look back and I say, during the reign of John Paul II, the church's magisterial teaching on marriage doubled during his reign because of the writings that he did.
00:07:54.500So that tells you how little was officially written about marriage because it never really needed to be.
00:08:13.140And so the beauty now, we have these lay theologians, which we have never really had very many of them before, but more than that, both male and female, considering that we approach things so differently as males and females, and they're writing about their sacrament.
00:08:32.000And so then my question, of course, you've got all these people with all this education that are living this sacrament.
00:08:41.400And it became fairly clear to me that sometimes what happens is somebody on the outside looking at it objectively can see some things a little differently.
00:08:52.280And since it's not a how-to book, you know, which obviously I couldn't write, but a spiritual point of view, that's something that I could present.
00:09:02.320And my hope is then some of these theologians can pick this up and run with it.
00:09:06.340Now, saying that in case any of the reader or the listeners might think, oh, if it's a heavy theology book, it's not.
00:09:14.220It's got some profound theology, but it's written at a level that the average person can understand.
00:09:20.440You don't need to have an advanced degree in theology to understand it.
00:09:23.640And my hope is that the theologians will be able to pick it up, but this is not written for theologians.
00:09:30.120This is written for the average person who is married or preparing for marriage.
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00:10:02.720If you wouldn't mind, share with us one of those inspirations, one of those ones where you were sitting down to pray and this thought occurred to you that you thought was just so beautiful, you had to write it down.
00:10:12.920Give us one that you think has helped more people, more married couples that you've worked with.
00:10:21.300The central point in the book, actually, is the one that everything else follows from.
00:10:28.420And that is the question, you know, when you look in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, you know, the Pharisees come to Jesus and they ask him, can a man divorce his wife for any reason, whatever?
00:10:42.140And, you know, he asked them about it and they say, well, Moses said we could.
00:10:48.940And then he says, but that was not God's intention from the beginning.
00:10:53.620So Pope John Paul had picked up on that and said, OK, that means you need to go back to Genesis.
00:10:58.440You know, this is where you need to go to understand what God wants with marriage.
00:11:02.500But then he explained it a little differently, because then he said, all right, this is our Lord saying, look, you know, from the beginning, God made the male and female.
00:11:12.460Therefore, man should leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, that you become one flesh.
00:11:16.860And then Jesus added a line that is nowhere else in sacred scripture.
00:11:24.080And it simply says, what God has joined, let no man put asunder.
00:11:29.520So the question is, what does God join in marriage?
00:14:21.800But the story in the scripture where the Pharisees or the Sadducees, I can't remember which, but they come to Jesus and they talk about the story about the woman who was married by seven husbands.
00:14:34.060And then in the afterlife, whose wife is she going to be?
00:14:37.200But then there's a new part of that because we know that marriage changed into a sacrament by Jesus.
00:14:44.140But then you come up with this concept of the two souls united in marriage.
00:14:50.580But then he told his apostles, or not his apostles, it was, again, disciples coming to ask questions about the afterlife.
00:14:57.500And he says, in the afterlife, there will be no giving in marriage and so on.
00:15:05.640And so it was always assumed, I guess, that, you know, there wouldn't be marriage in heaven, but that we would be sort of in relation with everybody there as close as we are here in our married lives.
00:15:14.860Well, actually, I've got a whole chapter dedicated to that.
00:15:18.560And that's because heaven is a marriage banquet.
00:15:22.760And so Jesus not only mentions that, but it's most clear in the book of Revelation, you know, blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
00:15:32.500And so it's for the Jewish people, they didn't have a wedding and then a reception like we tend to do today.
00:15:41.240Back at the time of Jesus, a marriage feast was a week-long thing, and the marriage kind of took place in the midst of it.
00:15:50.480So when he's talking about a marriage banquet, he's talking about the wedding, and it's the marriage banquet of the Lamb.
00:15:56.980So Jesus is the bridegroom, and the mystical body is the bride.
00:16:03.220So marriage in this world, even in the sacrament, ends at the moment of death, the death of the first spouse.
00:16:14.940So in that particular example you're talking about, even with this, you know, if somebody is married to seven different people because each one died,
00:16:24.280that woman in that case would have been free to be married to each of those guys because her husband died.
00:16:32.160So even if that happened today, she could still get married seven times if she wanted to, as long as the husband had died.
00:17:09.860You will be looking right in the essence of the person because you're looking at God who is looking into the essence of that person.
00:17:16.860And so you will know them to the degree of your ability.
00:17:20.700And so all of us together, whether we're male or female, we're a member of the bride.
00:17:25.880And so for married couples, they would be united not only with one another, assuming both go to heaven, but with every other person in the mystical body.
00:17:34.580And so there's not marrying and being given in marriage, but rather there is a union.
00:17:42.880And again, think of what we were talking about a minute ago, the souls being united.
00:17:47.980In heaven, our soul will be united to God.
00:17:51.660And we will be united with one another.
00:17:54.600It's an accidental union, not a substantial one.
00:17:57.200And, you know, so when the two become one, you don't become the other one.
00:18:04.660But even our union with God in heaven will be an accidental union, not a substantial one.
00:18:10.160Marriage is a prefiguration of heaven.
00:18:13.020So they won't be married per se in heaven, but they will actually be closer than what their marriage is because of the union that they will have with one another, with all the members of the body of Christ, and, of course, with Jesus, who is the bridegroom of our souls.
00:18:32.740Now, you said something extremely interesting there, Father.
00:18:35.020You said marriage in that sense is a prefigurement of heaven.
00:18:40.020I think a lot of couples might often think that their marriage might be a prefigurement of another place, sometimes, especially in the midst of difficulties in marriage.
00:18:59.740What has been for you the advice that you've given to married couples that you feel helps them most?
00:19:09.360Again, if you look at the book, the first chapter is about the dignity of the person who God made us to be in his own image and likeness.
00:19:18.760And our society has just destroyed people in their understanding of their own dignity, particularly women.
00:19:26.520We've made women into objects and just treat them sometimes like things.
00:19:30.840And so the first chapter is just simply dedicated to that.
00:19:35.160If we can see one another's dignity and treat one another with that, respect that dignity, then the second chapter goes into love.
00:19:43.840That married people should be the experts in love.
00:19:46.580After all, they're making a vow to love.
00:19:48.800And yet, we don't even know what love is in our society.
00:19:53.280Of course, we use the word love for just about everything.
00:19:57.200I love ice cream and I love this and I love that.
00:20:00.140And of course, it's all about now making love or whatever, which most of the time has a little or nothing to do with love.
00:20:08.360And so there's an explanation and discussion of love and what real love is.
00:20:16.880And if couples can understand that and begin to live that, that's, you know, but that can really, I mean, you can grasp with your mind, but you have to have a prayer life.
00:20:27.780That's the thing that's most important, because if you are beginning to develop that love for Jesus, you're going to love your spouse whom Jesus loves.
00:20:38.920And that's the greatest way of getting rid of sin, of changing your own life, of being able to bring greater healing to the marriage and to be able to build that marriage up.
00:20:52.580You know, one of the points that's made in the book is love never remains the same.
00:21:26.240But even with that, our dignity cannot even be reduced in the slightest because it is given by God.
00:21:31.840So that dignity is there no matter what.
00:21:34.600Then, for those who are baptized, now we have a supernatural dignity.
00:21:39.380We have been elevated to a supernatural level of acting and being, and we've been given sanctifying grace where we've been made sons and daughters of God.
00:21:48.620And so how can we accept that and live that if we can't even accept our natural dignity?
00:21:55.360And so that's the piece that I try to really work toward with people, to understand their own dignity so that they can understand their spouse's dignity so that they can truly love that person more.
00:22:11.080One of the books, I think it's by Dr. Dobson, he talks about the best thing a husband can do for his children is to love his wife.
00:22:19.320And there's a corollary to that, though.
00:22:21.100The best thing that a wife can do is respect her husband.
00:22:25.520It's funny that he doesn't use the same love back.
00:22:29.200Do you have any comment on that or thought about it?
00:22:30.680When you look at St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians in chapter 6, it's one of the most beautiful, in chapter 5 rather, one of the most beautiful passages in Scripture, and yet it's one of the most hated because people don't understand it.
00:22:44.220You know, husbands love your wives, wives be submissive to your husband.
00:22:48.620And, you know, then talking about how the wife must respect her husband.
00:22:53.640I'm assuming that that's where he's getting that from.
00:22:56.020But the problem is, and by the way, we go into that whole passage in the book and explain it, and people miss the fact that that begins a verse earlier.
00:23:46.840And so St. Paul is saying, okay, men, love your wives.
00:23:51.860Keep doing what you do well, but do what you don't do well.
00:23:55.420Ladies, you have to allow yourself to be loved.
00:23:58.600That's what that submission is, you know, to be able to allow yourself to be loved.
00:24:04.940And so keep loving, but allow yourself to be loved.
00:24:09.040So if that proper respect is there, which, again, goes both ways, man has to respect his wife, a woman has to respect her husband.
00:24:18.060If that proper sense of respect is there, then that love can be there.
00:24:22.960So I would agree with you that, you know, I think he should have used the same word, you know, but it may be that the way that a lot of women would look at it is, well, I love my husband, but I don't have a lot of respect for him, or I roll my eyes, or I sigh, or whatever.
00:24:40.340And kids pick that up, they watch their parents, and you can talk till you're blue in the face, but your kids will do what you do.
00:24:47.860And they'll pick up those cues, and they'll look at it and say, well, this is how dad treats mom, I can too.
00:24:53.860And if this is how mom thinks of dad, well, I can too.
00:24:56.920And so there has to be that proper respect.
00:24:59.480There has to be the proper charity, that kind of love that St. Paul talks about with regard to marriage.
00:25:06.000In fact, in that point, every single time in the New Testament, when love is spoken of with regard to marriage, the word that's used in Greek is agape.
00:25:16.400So there are four different Greek words for love, and agape is the highest kind of love.
00:25:53.020But, you know, you're not going to have necessarily that selfless kind of love.
00:25:58.560So that's what couples have to have for one another.
00:26:02.000The Church has experienced, especially over the last eight, nine years, a sort of internal falling apart with regard to what's going on, particularly around the age of marriage and family.
00:26:15.560You know, early on in his pontificate, Pope Francis made headlines everywhere, talking about cohabitation, being real marriage, having the grace of real marriage.
00:26:26.620He was talking about couples he saw in northern Argentina who were cohabiting.
00:26:30.400And he said because of their fidelity, he said that's a real marriage, not the grace of real marriage.
00:26:34.940You had this new, not new, actually, it's quite old, but his promotion of Father James Martin, who's known throughout the Church for wanting to change the Church's teaching regarding homosexuality, promotes homosexual unions, etc., etc.
00:26:50.400And yet this is going on in the Church.
00:26:55.940And, of course, as you might know, it's progressing.
00:26:58.580It's not only, you know, it wasn't a one-off.
00:27:00.880He was first invited to speak at the World Meeting of Families, which is a Vatican event, then asked to be a consultor on the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.
00:27:07.800He was then met with the Pope privately, not once, but twice now, and uses those endorsements from the Pope to back what he's doing, which is literally to change the Church with regard to homosexuality.
00:27:21.840If I can have your take on that, please.
00:27:23.480First of all, the Church's teaching cannot change.
00:27:46.100So you look at some of these things and you can say, well, if you just look at, you know, a natural marriage as opposed to a sacramental marriage.
00:27:56.100Yeah, so a couple goes to a judge and the state says that they're married.
00:28:00.280There's a natural marriage that's there, provided that they intend that this is going to be for life and so on.
00:28:10.020And so if you have two people living together and they're trying to play house, essentially, acting like they're married, but they're not, you can have goodwill toward one another.
00:28:22.960You can, you know, but you actually don't have true charity because charity seeks the best of the other.
00:28:56.320But then when you look at the point of the homosexuality, I remember when there was all these votes back a number of years ago in the United States about these marriage amendments.
00:29:07.560And there was a book that came out and it was written by a woman who was one of the leaders in the pro-family, pro-marriage and family movement.
00:29:17.440And the guy who was the leader in the pro-homosexual marriage, marriage idea.
00:29:24.760And the point that they made right at the beginning is whoever wins this battle goes to the center and whoever loses goes to the periphery.
00:29:34.060So this is a political game that they're playing and that we need to be clear about that.
00:29:39.480And so, again, when you when you look at it, you can, for instance, you can you can look at what they're trying to do with the priesthood and say that, well, we should have women be priests.
00:29:48.820Well, being male is part of the essence of the priesthood.
00:30:04.480It's not it's not of the essence of the marriage.
00:30:06.760But being male is part of part of the essence of the priesthood.
00:30:13.420Well, part of the essence of the sacrament of holy matrimony is a male and a female.
00:30:20.700And and so two males, two females or even two or three or four or five, as they're trying to do these days, that doesn't work.
00:30:28.480It cannot work because for a marriage to be valid, there also has to be the intention that not only would it be permanent, but that it will be faithful and that it is open to life.
00:32:35.120So, the church, the saints tell us, the fathers of the church tell us the church is going to be crucified at some point in history.
00:32:42.760I personally think we're going to see it, but nonetheless, that will be the church's consummation of her marriage to her spouse to show her fidelity, her charity, her love for her spouse, Jesus Christ.
00:32:57.880The church is going to be crucified as her spouse was.
00:33:06.820So, as heinous as these things are that are happening, if we can see it in that spiritual way, this is the attempt to be able to get the bride away from the bridegroom, to bring, to sully the bride, to try to do something to cause infidelity or whatever it is they're trying to cause to make sure that this doesn't happen.
00:33:34.640They're not going to be able to stop it.
00:33:36.040In fact, they're going to be the cause of it, because it's going to be just like what happened 2,000 years ago.
00:33:41.380Ask yourself, who was it, ultimately, who's responsible for the death of our Lord?
00:33:52.300They used secular people to do it, but it was the religious authorities that were behind it, and that's what we're going to see with the church, too.
00:33:59.920So, whatever their purpose is, I don't understand exactly.
00:34:05.800I'm looking at it from the other point of view.
00:34:07.880It's like they're the ones that are going to cause the very thing they're trying to keep from happening.
00:34:11.800And so, in their malice, just like 2,000 years ago, God's going to bring about great good from that.
00:34:19.400And so, again, to be very clear, the church's teaching on marriage cannot change.
00:34:25.500If somebody tries to change it or change any other basic teaching of the church, we must reject that.
00:34:32.700We must absolutely must remain faithful to Jesus.
00:34:36.700And we can see it from that spiritual perspective.
00:34:39.760This is the time where we have the opportunity to be able to say, I will be faithful to the bridegroom of my soul.
00:34:48.000That we have that chance now that nobody has had in 2,000 years to be able to do this.
00:34:54.160That's what this is about on the bigger picture.
00:34:57.400I mean, again, practically speaking, yeah, these are horrible things.
00:35:01.140But in that bigger picture, if we can understand that and say, all right, what is absolutely critical is that we absolutely must remain faithful to Jesus, no matter what.
00:35:14.780The way I always put it to people, I just say, look, I don't care what color cassock someone's wearing.
00:35:19.660It's the black of a priest, the purple of a bishop, the red of a cardinal, or the white of a pope.
00:35:23.680If someone says something different from what Jesus said and what different from what the church has taught, stick with Jesus in the church.
00:36:06.080The Eucharist and marriage are the two sacraments most closely aligned symbolically.
00:36:12.640People can't handle what the church teaches about marriage because they can't handle what the church teaches about the Eucharist.
00:36:18.920So we've got fewer than 25% of people who call themselves Catholics saying that they believe in the Holy Eucharist.
00:36:25.660Well, should we be surprised that they can't handle what the church teaches about marriage?
00:36:29.500So the question for every single person is, are we going to remain faithful?
00:36:35.280We know the church ultimately is going to remain faithful, but how many of her children, how many of us who are part of the Bride of Christ will remain faithful?
00:36:45.020Who is going to be willing to be crucified with him?
00:36:48.780Because that's what the church is going to have to endure at some point.
00:36:52.960And so are we willing to love him to the end?
00:36:57.000Because that's what St. John told us that Jesus did for us.