Spokane couple to speak on marriage for the papal visit in Philadelphia

By Tracy Simmons

Mitch and Kathy Finley are marriage experts. In their 41 years together they’ve raised three sons, and between the two of them have authored nearly 40 books on relationships and Christian family.

Later this month, at the invitation of Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, they’ll be traveling to the City of Brotherly Love to speak on a panel at the World Meeting of Families. The annual event will conclude with a visit from Pope Francis.

The Finleys will speak Sept. 25 on a panel, “Marriage Then and Now: The Expectations of Matrimony at the Birth of the U.S. Nation” with author Stephanie Coontz and Marcellino D’Ambrosio of The Crossroads Initiative. Each panelist will have a different focus.

Kathy, who teaches a course on Christian marriage at Gonzaga University, said she will discuss how marriage has changed from 1765 until now, including education, family size, divorce rates, women’s roles and technology. But the biggest thing that has changed, she said, is life expectancy.

“‘Till death do us part’ is considerably longer than it was two and a half centuries ago,” she wrote in a paper for the World Meeting of Families. “If ’til death do us part’ is so much longer, that means that there will be a much longer period of time after any children have left the home when the couple is together and facing aging, which is not what couples did nearly as often in the past.”

She said this makes an intimate life partnership more complex today than it was 250 years ago.

Mitch will focus his portion of the presentation on the family’s relationship with the church.

Pope Francis once said, “Families are the domestic church, where Jesus grows; he grows in the love of spouses, he grows in the lives of children.”

Mitch says there is an interdependent relationship between a parish and a family, and that they must nourish each other.

“…As family life goes, so goes the future of the church,” he writes, adding that family includes two-parent families, single-parent families, childless married couples, singles, widows and blended families.

Mitch is a former writer for the Inland Register and has penned more than 30 books on Catholicism, most recently, “It’s Not the Same Without You: Coming Home to the Catholic Church.” Now he says he is a semi-retired writer and spends his free time playing the banjo.

Both Mitch and Kathy lead retreats and workshops on spirituality and Kathy serves as a pre-marriage counselor for engaged couples at St. Aloysius Parish.

SpokaneFāVS will be traveling to Philadelphia to cover the Papal visit. Check out this page for full coverage.