From Familiaris Consortio to Amoris Laetitia: A Study of the Domestic Church in the Context of Evangelisation, with Reference to the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton

The Second Vatican Council revived the concept of domestic church or ecclesia domestica to suggest new ways for family evangelisation and to guide parents in teaching their children the practices of the Christian faith. However, the decades after the Council proved testing, despite the best efforts of the magisterium to address evangelisation, catechesis and family life. The three Synods of Bishops on the Family and their subsequent documents, Familiaris Consortio (1981) and Amoris Laetitia (2016), are responses to such cultural and religious challenges, even if, at times, it seems that Church documents have little effect on what happens “on the ground”. In my research, I follow this trajectory of intergenerational disaffiliation from the perspective of a participant observer who is engaged in the life of the diocese where the fieldwork has been carried out. My aim is to re-imagine and re- frame the concept of the domestic church so that families can become evangelisers in today’s cultural context. I achieve this by applying theological action research as a methodological framework, conscious that evangelisation happens by ‘talking about God in practice’. By using the ‘four voices of theology’ dialogical approach, I bring together the Church’s magisterium, sociological and cultural insights, as well as the lived experience of ordinary Catholics. I identify a common thread in the faith formation of those who have received the Catholic faith in their families and sought to share it with their children or with the communities they serve. My argument is that the cultural landscape that has been described as ‘a new apostolic age’ is fertile ground for families to become small, creative communities of faith, where the voice of Scripture gives voice to all others and where sacramental living becomes the cornerstone of an outward-looking ecclesia domestica, in service to God and neighbour.