Bishop Barron: Marriage ‘a source of hope’ and ‘antidote to loneliness’

Ahead of national and international celebrations of matrimony, Bishop Robert E. Barron said that marriage is “a source of hope for all generations.”

Bishop Barron, chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, shared his thoughts in a Feb. 6 statement released by the USCCB ahead of National Marriage Week USA (Feb. 7-14) and World Marriage Day (commemorated on the second Sunday in February, which falls this year on Feb. 9).

National Marriage Week was launched in 1996 in the United Kingdom by Richard Kane, then director of the national charity Marriage Resource, and his wife, Maria Kane. The observance was adopted in the U.S. in 2002, led by Brent Barlow and Diane Sollee of Smart Marriages, and expanded through the participation of faith communities and marriage advocates.

World Marriage Day was launched in 1981 in Baton Rouge, La., by couples participating in Worldwide Marriage Encounter, an international faith-based marriage enrichment ministry founded in 1968 and inspired by Spanish priest Father Gabriel Calvo.

This year’s theme for National Marriage Week is “Source of Hope, Spring of Renewal. Pursue a Lasting Love!” — a motif highlighting the Jubilee Year’s focus on the virtue of hope, said the USCCB statement.

The weeklong commemoration “reminds couples that their commitment is a sign and source of hope for the future and a spring of exemplary love that reverberates through generations,” said Bishop Barron.

“In today’s world, relationships are often viewed as disposable,” he said. But marriage — with its “commitment to fidelity and love,” Bishop Barron added, provides “an antidote to the loneliness and discouragement of many young people today and deserves our prioritization as a Church and society.”

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the church teaches that the marriage covenant, “by which a man and a woman form with each other an intimate communion of life and love,” has been established by God and ordered to the good of the couple, as well as to the generation and education of children. The church teaches that marriage among the baptized was made a sacrament by Jesus Christ, and the sacrament of matrimony also signifies the union between Christ and his church.

According to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center, the share of adults who were married increased from 50 percent to 51 percent from 2019 to 2023. During the same period, the share of adults cohabiting with an unmarried partner also rose from 6 percent to 7 percent. In 2023, 42 percent of U.S. adults were without a partner (married or unmarried), representing a slight decline in what had been a 20-year trend.

The USCCB has assembled a variety of resources for National Marriage Week and for ongoing marriage formation, available in English and in Spanish at ForYourMarriage.org, PorTuMatrimonio.org and LoveMeansMore.org.

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