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Interchurch Marriages--Laboratories of Christian Unity? A close look at the post-conciliar pronouncements of the Roman Catholic Church on marriages leaves one with an ambivalent impression. On the one side, respect, appreciation, even encouragement characterize the Magisterium's teaching when it comes to acknowledging the contribution that families make to the search for Christian (1) The 1993 Ecumenical Directory singles them out as potential builders of unity, (2) thus repeating an expression that Pope Paul VI had used earlier in Evangelii nuntiandi. (3) Pope John Paul II's memorable phrase, You live in your the hopes and difficulties of the path to Christian unity, pronounced during his visit to England in 1982, (4) has since then become a much cherished dictum for families worldwide. More recently, while addressing the member churches of the Polish Ecumenical Council, Pope Benedict XVI declared that the decision to enter an can lead to the formation of a practical of unity. (5) One may wonder, however, how seriously such rhetoric is to be taken. Is not a a place where people put all their energy to search for new insights, experimenting with new ideas, new methods, new instruments, and eventually make new and fascinating discoveries that may have the potential to alter previous understanding and practice? So, what the pope seems to suggest is to go and invent, get new ideas, experiment with them, take risks, and--although no one knows yet what the solution will be and how to get there-have faith that there is there something worth all the effort, namely, the of all Christians. But, what if our interchurch researchers will really get there one day and cry out their eureka! we have found it!? Is there any chance that their findings will be hailed, accepted, and received by the official church bodies and ultimately make a difference in their teaching and discipline? The reason for such skepticism be found in another layer of the magisterial teaching and legislation that strikes a different tone compared to the rhetoric referred to above. What used to be the tenor of a long-standing doctrinal and pastoral tradition before Vatican II, when the ecclesiastical authority uncompromisingly condemned mixed marriages and dissuaded people from entering into them, (6) has not completely disappeared from the current teaching. That the Catholic Church accepts marriages only with some reservation is reflected in a phrase of the Ecumenical Directory wherein it says that marriage between persons of the same ecclesial Community remains the objective to be recommended and encouraged. (7) To substantiate this stance, this and other documents constantly refer to the intrinsic problems and difficulties that impose themselves on the conjugal union if the spouses come from different faith communities. Since there is indeed some evidence that couples are at a higher risk of marital instability and of giving up on their religious practice, (8) the pastoral concern that is expressed in the Church's attitude of reservation should certainly be acknowledged and taken seriously. Apart from these pastoral considerations, however, there is a deeper, theological ground on which the Church's discriminating position against unions seems justified. It says that marital unions in which one of the spouses is a baptized non-Catholic cannot possibly attain the same degree and intensity of conjugal communion than do same-church Catholic marriages. If, however, marital has as its prerequisite ecclesial communion, which the Catholic Church guarantee only for its full members, as this position upholds, then it is hardly thinkable that marriages play any significant role in bringing the separated churches more closely together as the image of the laboratory for Christian unity suggests. …