Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi INTAMS review | Volume 14 | Issue 1 | Spring 2008 | Pages 1 > 2 Editorial (Full-text) Organized by the Chair for the Study of Marriage & Spirituality at the Faculty of Theology at the Catholic University of Leuven, this year’s INTAMS colloquium took place in Leuven on 7-8 March 2008 and focused on the question: “What Future for Marriage in Postmodern Times?”. According to a common interpretation in social history, there are two main factors that have contributed to the massive transformation marriage has undergone in Western societies during the modern era. First, due to the processes of individualization and pluralization, marriage has lost its monopoly over the organization of major events in a person’s life. Other arrangements have replaced the institution that traditionally used to regulate sexual behaviour, legitimize children, and organize the division of labour between men and women as well as the transmission of property and resources to dependents. Second, since intimacy and romance have become its primary considerations and love has developed into its one and only prerequisite, marriage has become more optional and more fragile. Not only do spouses separate more easily once the ideal of the perfect soul mate evaporates from their unions, but people are also increasingly opting for alternative forms of loving relationships instead of marriage. Assuming that this development reached its apex at the close of the 20th century, one may wonder whether there is any significant role for marriage in postmodern times. Analysts still disagree about whether modernity’s dominant message about marriage has been one of inevitable decline and eventual total collapse, or whether marriage has adapted fairly well to the modernizing trends of the past three centuries after all. However, even the latter, more optimistic estimation does not give an answer to what, if any, the distinctive features and distinguishing characteristics of marriage are in the present spectrum of living arrangements that are all regarded as equivalent. If it is true that modern marriage has compensated for its loss of relevance by what it has gained in terms of fairness, gender equality, and partnership satisfaction, the troubling objection is that alternative forms of life score equally high on these scales. So, if marriage is to survive as a specific life choice, what are its strengths and what would be its apparent and/or hidden potential on which to rely in the future? The colloquium first undertook an analysis of the postmodern condition and explored its implications for marriage both as an interpersonal bonding and as a social institution. After an introduction to the colloquium’s theme by Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi, Stephanie Coontz placed marriage in a historical perspective, shattering a number of common assumptions both with regard to its past and to its actual contemporary achievements and losses. While she maintained that marriage has presently – probably for the better – forfeited its privileged position, she refused to pinpoint increasing individualism and consumerism as the primary wrongdoers. From the perspective of what he termed a “philosophical phenomenology of marriage”, Herman De Dijn objected that the present “age of lifestyle” values the fake above the real and sentimentalism above authenticity and therefore an enduring spousal commitment is no longer seen as an acceptable life choice. In their search for the causes of the present state of marriage, both speakers adopted different lenses and thus addressed the issue on different levels – scrutinizing economic and socio-cultural processes on the one hand and moral option on the other. Their divergent stances became more outspoken when asked what medicine should be given upon the diagnosis. De Dijn could not conceal his moral concern in view of the disestablishment of the marital institution, while Coontz recommended to value and strengthen all forms of commitment, whether within marriage or any alternative type of relationship. In the second part of the colloquium it was up to the theologians to situate Christian marriage in today’s context. Bernd Wannenwetsch and Ralf Miggelbrink both referred to the biblical tradition to help distinguish the distinctiveness of Christian marriage when confronted with postmodernity, but accentuated this in different ways. Viewing the modern concept of marriage as an antithesis of Judeo-Christian understanding, Wannenwetsch recommended a “marital counter-culture” to contemporary Christians, while Miggelbrink showed himself more optimistic about the chances of connecting the Christian view of marriage with postmodernity and its understanding of the individual who finds fulfilment only in intersubjectivity. It was the task of Enda McDonagh and Herwi Rikhof, who respectively responded to the two main presenters, to critically examine both the analysis of the postmodern situation and the theological conclusion both speakers had drawn from it. All the papers presented at the colloquium are documented in this issue of the INTAMS review. In addition, Giulia P. Di Nicola and Attilio Danese offer a philosophical-anthropological reflection about sexual difference and the relational complementarity of women and men. Augustine Kallely investigates the notion of love that can be traced in the practice of “assisted marriage” in South India, while Linus Effiong suggests a genuine process of Christian marriage preparation based on traditional African cultural education and marriage initiation. Finally, in the “Notices” section, Barbara Fiala presents the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe, an organization engaged in political lobbying for the promotion of families across Europe.