Preaching the Gospel with their Lives: A Call and Responsibility of Catholic Married Couples

Karen Eileen Seaborn

Etd

Preaching the Gospel with their Lives: A Call and Responsibility of Catholic Married Couples

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MLA citation style (9th ed.)

Karen Eileen Seaborn. Preaching the Gospel with Their Lives: A Call and Responsibility of Catholic Married Couples. Aquinas Institute of Theology. rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/fd46f9b5-ca35-4527-92b7-e95c18a82ed2.

APA citation style (7th ed.)

K. E. Seaborn. Preaching the Gospel with their Lives: A Call and Responsibility of Catholic Married Couples. https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/fd46f9b5-ca35-4527-92b7-e95c18a82ed2

Chicago citation style (CMOS 17, author-date)

Karen Eileen Seaborn. Preaching the Gospel with Their Lives: A Call and Responsibility of Catholic Married Couples. Aquinas Institute of Theology. https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/fd46f9b5-ca35-4527-92b7-e95c18a82ed2.

Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.

Creator

Karen Eileen Seaborn

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In Copyright

Abstract

Vatican Council II expands the theology of marriage beyond that of procreation and education of children to include bearing witness to Christ in the world. In professing and living their marriage vows, Christian married couples proclaim Christ’s love in word and action—for each other and the church and the world. This study provides the theological foundation for marriage as one of the seven ritualized sacraments in the Catholic Church. It draws on the Christ/church/sacrament model espoused by Vatican II theologians showing Christian husbands and wives to be the efficacious word of God spoken to each other and the church and world. It explores the church's evolving theology of marriage by surveying civil and liturgical rites of marriage from the church’s beginning to present time. This thesis connects the married couple’s call to bear witness with the church’s preaching mission by attending to Scripture, church teaching, and preachers to show that husbands and wives who faithfully live their marriage vows through the entirety of their lives together, preach the kingdom of God in word and action from the pulpit of their everyday lives. It gathers wisdom from the discipline of marriage and family counseling, attends to practices that assist married couples to be more efficacious preachers of Christ’s love and notes destructive communication patterns that cause them to be countersign of Christ’s love. A description of the ministerial intervention is provided: a day of reflection, formation, and conversation for newly married couples based on the Rite of Marriage. It includes a compilation and analysis of data from three participant questionnaires: pre-workshop, end-of-workshop-day, and thirty days later. The thesis concludes by establishing why this study matters to the church and offers possible next steps for the future of this study.

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