This year, the Church’s celebration of the miraculous and timeless story of Jesus’ birth on Christmas Day coincided, just one day later, with our observation honoring the loving and powerful witness of the Holy Family of Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph.
At Masses throughout the Archdiocese that day after Christmas, our priests preached on the gift of marriage and the importance this holy sacrament holds for the most critical component of our society, today and always, the family.
In 2003, the Bishops of the United States said, “The family based on marriage is a fundamental and precious good for the whole society whose most solid fabric is built on the values that are developed in family relations and guaranteed by stable marriage.”
A belief in the integral importance of marriage is not ours alone. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, children raised by parents in healthy marriages are:
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