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SIMBAHAYAN DOCTRINAL COMPILATION
"DOMESTIC CHURCH"
in Marialis Cultus

Catholic teaching accepts the natural truth that the family is the basic human society. On top of its natural dignity, the family has been raised by Jesus Christ -- by virtue of the Sacrament of Matrimony -- to the nature of a "Domestic Church".
The wider community of believers more commonly known as "the Church" is best understood in turn to be the "Family of God", a communion of persons with God as Father, we as children (through, with and in Jesus Christ His Son), and with a divinely appointed mother, Mary the mother of Jesus.
The following is a choice excerpt from the papal document Marialis Cultus (Devotion to Mary) -- an apostolic exhortation on the right ordering and development of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, issued in February 1974 by Pope Paul VI. The Pope gives an overview of the activities of the Domestic Church. We have used the official translation; emphases and thematic titles have been added, however, to facilitate your personal study and reflection.
The Life of the Domestic Church +
52.    We now desire, as a continuation of the thought of our predecessors, to recommend strongly the recitation of the family Rosary. The Second Vatican Council has pointed out how the family, the primary and vital cell of society, "shows itself to be the domestic sanctuary of the Church through the mutual affection of its members and the common prayer they offer to God".1   The Christian family is thus seen to be a domestic Church" 2   if its members, each according to his proper place and tasks, all together promote justice, practice works of mercy, devote themselves to helping their brethren, take part in the apostolate of the wider local community and play their part in its liturgical worship.3   This will be all the more true if together they offer up prayers to God. If this element of common prayer were missing, the family would lack its very character as a domestic Church. Thus there must logically follow a concrete effort to reinstate communal prayer in family life if there is to be a restoration of the theological concept of the family as the domestic Church.


END NOTES
1. Vatican II, Apostolicam Actuositatem, n. 11.
2. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, n. 11.
3. Vatican II, Apostolicam Actuositatem, n. 11.
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