Dr. Richard Gaillardetz - Marriage 2010 Conference Review

The final address of the national marriage conference held in Saskatoon in March was given by professor, Dr. Richard Gaillardetz. Gaillardetz is the author of A Daring Promise, a book on marriage discipleship.

Gaillardetz's energetic and humourous presentation was given at the eighth annual Marriage Appreciation Banquet hosted by the Diocese of Saskatoon's Marriage Task Force and Worldwide Marriage Encounter. This keynote presentation was sponsored by Gene and Adele Dupuis.

Gaillardetz's talk was titled, "Why We Always Marry the Wrong Person: New Hope for Marriage in Tough Times".

"My wife is not a fan of the title of my talk," he began to much laughter.

Gaillardetz has written several books, including texts on ecclesiology, and he lamented that the language that the church uses in its theology is not fully grounded in the lived experience of most Christian couples.

"If you're married for twenty years, and you finally get the kids to bed, and you're feeling a little frisky, you don't say to your wife, "Would you like to go upstairs and become living icons of Christ's love for the Church?'" he argued.

"It's not the way we talk," he said.

Gaillardetz shared many personal experiences from his marriage to his wife of twenty years, Dianne, and about the difficulties they faced with children and the early years of studying with little money and less sleep.

"If they're married long enough, every couple looks into the abyss," Gaillardetz said. "We have to make a connection between the lofty teaching, theology, and the abyss...I don't think we do that well enough" .

Gaillardetz addressed the current cultural context of marriage and how we view marriage. Popular culture promotes the idea that love conquers all things and that as long as there is love there is no obstacle or difference too big to overcome.

"We live in a culture in which media, especially movies...encourages romance," said Gaillardetz.

"My students know these movies aren't realistic but when I ask them what they are looking for in a spouse...this is their narrative arc of romance and marriage; that love conquers everything...and it creates some very unrealistic expectations," stated Gaillardetz.

The idea of a "soul mate" or the "right" , even "God chosen" spouse is a relatively new idea and is a romantic influence that has crept into Christian theology.

Gaillardetz also explained the influence of a consumer culture on our modern marriage theology. From cell phones and computers to cameras and clothes, consumerism necessitates and nurtures the evolution of new needs.

"A marketing industry develops that says once you buy the thing you desire you are no longer happy with it...your desire needs to be nomadic," Gaillardetz noted.

Consumerism, as a cultural perspective, lends itself to being a society of people who compare and value people in the same way that we compare and value objects and services.

"Marital commitment has never been easy, but it is harder today and one of the reasons is that we have become habituated to comparison shopping...about upgrading what we have," Gaillardetz stated.

Gaillardetz believes that the Christian response is to better understand our tradition of conversion rather than consumption. To this end, Gaillardetz compared marriage to buying a car from a dealership where part of the deal is that at any time they can take away the car you bought and replace it with something much better or worse.

"The commitment we make to our spouse on our wedding day is not that difficult because we know what we're getting...but the difficulty is the radical decision to devote ourselves to the unknown future, the mystery of who our partner will be" .

Gaillardetz developed a wonderful concept that marriage is an ascetic vocation because it is about limits and discipline. This asceticism also includes loneliness.

"If...loneliness is pervasive then there is something wrong but [loneliness] appears in every faithful marriage," Gaillardetz said.

Another aspect of marriage's asceticism is the concept of conversion.

"Conversion in Christian marriage is the call for us to always look at our relationship...to see how God is changing us through this relationship," Gaillardetz said.

"My wife and I could have chosen other people to marry and those people could have been part of God's plan," Gaillardetz stated, "so we are all tempted to believe that maybe we married the wrong person" .

"The question we need to ask ourselves is not, "Did I marry the right person?' but "Do we share a vision in which we are able to love one another and put that love in service to the world?'

"Marriage is a crucible of grace in which God is the hammer and blow by blow throughout our marriage is forging each of us in our relationship with our spouse and children to become something new, something noble, something of God," Gaillardetz concluded.

====

Dr. Richard R. Gaillardetz currently holds the Margaret and Thomas Murray and James J. Bacik Endowed Chair in Catholic Studies at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio. After receiving both an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in Systematic Theology, from 1991 to 2001 Dr. Gaillardetz taught as an associate professor at the University of St. Thomas Graduate School of Theology in Houston, Texas. He has published numerous articles and authored seven books, including A Daring Promise: A Spirituality of Christian Marriage (2007).

Dr. Gaillardetz was a Catholic delegate on the U.S. Catholic - Methodist dialogue, 2000-2005. He is a past recipient of the Sophia Award (2000), offered annually by the faculty of the Washington Theological Union in Washington D.C. in recognition of a theologian's contributions to the life of the church. He has received numerous awards from the Catholic Press Association for articles he has written and is a popular speaker at theological and pastoral conferences. He is married to Diana Gaillardetz and they are the parents of four young boys: David, Andrew, Brian and Gregory. www.gaillardetz.com