Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi INTAMS review | Volume 16 | Issue 2 | Autum 2010 | Pages 135 > 137 Editorial (Full-text) Reactions usually range from enthusiastic endorsement to categorical rejection – with a rich gamut of positions and perspectives in between – when it comes to the notion and concept of “domestic church”. While many welcome what they believe is an overdue recognition of families and their specific lay competences within widely clerical and hierarchical ecclesial structures, others suspect the idea to carry a normative blueprint for sexual and social relations, forcing families to be subject to and model themselves on the traditional church teaching on these matters. And whereas some gratefully align with the magisterium’s call to restore some spiritual dignity to the Christian household, others regard the idea of a domestic sanctuary as diametrically opposed to an ecclesial community to which Christ calls his disciples and which therefore cannot be built on individual choice or social preference and even less on blood or kinship relations. Both proponents and sceptics of the “domestic church” gathered in March 2010 at the Catholic University of Leuven for an INTAMS Conference under the title “The Household of God and Local Households: Revisiting the Domestic Church” and shared their hopes, expectations, and concerns with regard to families and the future of the Church. It was ultimately the broad variety of backgrounds, ecclesial and geographical, and of experience and competence, both practical and academic, that provided the adequate context for the topic under discussion, mirroring the Household of God in the diverse experiences of domestic ecclesial being. No one at the conference realistically expected that the tensions, ambiguities, and inconsistencies regarding different forms of ecclesial being and belonging would be overcome—either for the Church in general or for the family in particular. Yet, at the end of the gathering some kind of tacit agreement had emerged among most participants, both scholars and practitioners. It was based on the insight that the sheer persistence and the adaptability of a sense of family demonstrate that this fundamental aspect of human social being will endure and must continue to matter – especially for and in the Church. While the English versions of all major contributions to the conference have been edited and will soon be published in the conference proceedings (T. KNIEPS-PORT LE ROI/G. MANNION/P. DE MEY [eds.]: The Household of God and Local Households. Revisiting the Domestic Church, Leuven: Peeters, 2011, forthcoming), five of the key lectures of this conference are reproduced here already in the original languages in which the presenters conceived their papers. Bernd Jochen Hilberath from the University of Tübingen, Germany, recalled the theological principle of analogy when establishing connections between inner-trinitarian communion and human relations. As the recent discussion about communio-ecclesiology illustrates, concepts of ecclesial communion can be influenced by theological or other preferences rather than inspired by divine economy. Likewise, the metaphor of domestic church carries the risk of reducing ecclesial communion to family-like or friendship-based relationships. Still, asked what kind of relationship is needed in the Church today, Hilberath did not deny the relevance of close relationships such as family and friendship, which according to him present exemplary models of living unity in legitimate diversity. In line with the 1994 Bishops’ Synod for Africa, Ghanaian theologian Francis Appiah-Kubi seemed less concerned with methodological-theological caveats while conceiving of the inner-trinitarian relations as familial processions and suggesting the model of the “family of God” as the primary ecclesiological paradigm for the Church in Africa. He was well aware of tribalism and ethnocentrism as typical African malaises, but showed himself convinced that once its theological consistency, its rootedness in the cultural context, and its pastoral viability have been proved, the ecclesiological model of “God’s family” can mobilize self-correcting forces to do away with such abuses. An Orthodox perspective on the relationship between Church and family was presented by Antoine Arjakovsky, a historian and theologian teaching at the Catholic University of Lviv in Ukraine. In what he called a “fractal” perspective, Arjakovsky argued that in Orthodox thought the relationship between husband and wife has a structural similarity with Christ’s relationship to the Church and likewise with the relationship of the bishop to his local community. The “domestic church” is thus not so much a somewhat deficient part of the universal Church, but a specific degree of realization of the Church. From here, Arjakovsky concluded that the family, with its living the death of the ego, its bodily forms of love and the mutual surrender of the spouses, is a foretaste of God’s Kingdom. Stephanie Klein, a pastoral theologian from the University of Lucerne in Switzerland, critically reviewed the Roman Catholic Church’s attitude towards contemporary families. While Hilberath had asked what sort of human relations are needed in the church, Klein reversed the question and asked instead, what type of church families need today. She answered unambiguously: a church that respects and values the diversity of families, a church that regards families as proper subjects of faith and not as mere objects of pastoral care, and a church that connects families with the local congregation. Italian theologian and liturgist Andrea Grillo agreed that presently the Church has more to learn from families than the other way around. He attributed a high ritual competence to families and suggested readjusting the ecclesial liturgy following their example. Whereas ecclesial rites often remain abstract and attached to conceptual thinking, domestic rites immediately symbolize and make present the reality to which they refer. Grillo illustrated this by referring to the way in which the family deals with time and space and with regard to a number of practices that are characteristic of both family and Church. Certainly it is an unusual perspective for many to see families teach the Church in matters of initiation and tradition, forgiveness and healing, care and self-giving. Here, however, the idea of domestic church stepped out of the theological discourse and became a concrete and tangible reality. Three other contributions with diverse topics complete this issue of the INTAMS review. William Newton introduces into the 19th century’s theology of marriage and draws out some lines of thinking from German theologian Matthias Joseph Scheeben and Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Arcanum divinae sapientiae that have come to fruition more recently in Pope John Paul II’s vision of marriage. Machteld Reynaert overviews the more recent literature on the effects of divorce on children and focuses on issues that have received less attention so far, such as the worldview of these children, their view on other human persons, and their religious life. She also discusses possible paths for pastoral care of children of divorced parents. Also included in this issue is the English translation of an article by Italian moral theologian Basilio Petrà on the position and status of divorced and remarried people in the Roman Catholic Church. Petrà, who has published abundantly in Italian on the issue of divorce and remarriage, demonstrates that because of the Church’s invariant doctrinal position the divorced remarried couples have actually obtained a new “state of life” in the Church despite of what is officially regarded as their irregular situation. He concludes that, both on the side of the magisterium and of academic theology, more radical solutions are needed to come to terms with the reality of marital breakdown. One hopes that his argument will not only advance the issue of divorce and remarriage in the realm of doctrine and discipline, but that it will also breathe new life into a theological discussion that seems to have died of exhaustion in the last few years. Finally, Greek Orthodox theologian Christos Yannaras sings the “Praise of Marriage” – a modern version of the patristic “Praise of Virginity” – which sheds new light on both ways of Christian discipleship.