Tao Po understand where you are now and so that the

steps you take are always in the right direction.

VUCA
– Dr. Stephen R. Covey
Volatility  Vision
The environment demands you react quickly to
ongoing changes that are unpredictable and out of Main End/Purpose: This course intends to prepare
your control. you for marriage and family life. It is about your
future!
Uncertainty  Understanding
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. –
The environment requires you to take action Benjamin Franklin
without certainty.
The Four Tasks of Practical Theology
Complexity  Clarity
Task Question Function
The environment is dynamic, with many Descriptive What is going Priestly
interdependencies. on? listening
Interpretive Why is it going Sagely
Ambiguity  Agility on? wisdom
The environment is unfamiliar, outside of your Normative What ought to Prophetic
expertise. be going on? discernment
Strategic How might we Servant
- Theology begins with wonder. respond? leadership

- To make us aware of what is happening to

Our Three Course Values
Energy: the strength and vitality required for
sustained physical or mental activity.
Enthusiasm: strong excitement and active interest
Excellence: the quality of being outstanding or
extremely good.
marriage and family in the modern world (The
Descriptive Task/empirical)
- To critically understand or make sense of how &
why are they happening (The Interpretative
Task/diagnostic};
- To know and understand what ought to be
happening (The Normative Task/prescriptive)

- From here to there.

1. Why are we here?

2. How do we get there?
3. What is this about?
4. When, where, and how to do
5. We meet?
6. What is expected of you?
7. First V Formation Huddle

1. Why are we here?

- To know and understand how we might respond to
Always begin with the end in mind.
the challenges and issues of married and family life
To begin with the end in mind means to start with a (The Pragmatic/strategic Task)
clear understanding of your destination. It means to
know where you’re going so that you better
 - you who are taking the course, and
2. How do we get there? - those whom one day you will serve as
husband/wife and parents to your future children.

- To contribute or enhance your self-knowledge

1. Introducing a Sound Theology of Marriage &

Family
2. What is happening to Marriage and Family
Today?
3. Theories on Marriage and Family

- The learner should be actively involved in the 4. A Theology of Marriage and Family: Nature
learning process. and Purpose
5.Love, Marriage, and Sex Salvation History –
Two Giants
Three Strategies:
6. Responsible Parenthood and Natural Family
Pag-aaral - The cognitive/objective part of doing Planning
Theology 2 provided through synchronous e-
learning. 7. How now shall I live as a Man or Woman?

Pagsasanay- The enabling or learning by doing

part.

 Conduct Online Polls

 Answer questions on BB
 Create Course Inquiry Projects (CIPs) to
expand your horizons and ignite your social
imagination.
Pagsasaloob-The interactive, communicative, and
collaborative part of the Journey. It gives you the
time and space to learn by being and doing
together through and inside your V-Formation
Family. Stages of Psychosocial Development by ______
3. What’s it all about? Infancy – trust vs mistrust
- This course is about a theological and social Early Childhood – autonomy vs. shame and doubt
scientific understanding of who we are (identity) in
the context of marriage and family. Preschool – initiative vs. guilt
School Age – industry vs. inferiority

Know thyself. – Socrates Adolescence – identity vs. role confusion

Knowing yourself is a beginning of wisdom. – Young Adulthood – intimacy vs. isolation

Aristotle Middle Adulthood – generativity vs. stagnation
Maturity – go integrity vs. despair
The target audience for this course is twofold:
Intimacy vs. Isolation
Basic Virtue: Love

4. Where, how, and when do we meet?

- Classes shall be rendered remotely, utilizing
online, i.e., synchronous and asynchronous and
offline strategies to accommodate students with no
capacity for internet connectivity. 

Quality means doing it right even when nobody is

looking. – Henry Ford

5. We meet?
6. Our V -Formation Pagsasaloob
Breaking into V Formation clusters
End in mind: to enhance your people or social
skills
1. Pagkalinga or love
2. Pag-uusap or dialogue
3. Pakikisama or partnership

Module 1: The Why and How of Theology 2
Key Words
 Does Theology matter?
 What is Theology?
 How to do a sound Theology?
 Three Big-Picture Existential Questions
- Humanity over the centuries, it asserts, has
passed from a premodern, that is, primitive and
superstitious approach to the world (magic,
mythology, religion) to full rational maturity (the
“positive” modern age), characterized by real,
useful, certain, precise and constructive knowledge,
proper to the scientific mentality. Such a view hails
the advancement of science and the consequent
irreversible retreat of “primitive” knowledge.
 grand narratives and objective truths focusing on
how truth emerges through contextual and
subjective circumstances.
Industrial Revolution – the shift from making goods
by hand to making them by machine.
French Revolution - The French Revolution was a
watershed event in world history that began in 1789
and ended in the late 1790s with the ascent of
Napoleon Bonaparte. During this period, French
citizens radically altered their political landscape,
uprooting centuries-old institutions such as the
monarchy and the feudal system.
1. It abolished slavery in France's colonies.
2. It gave civil rights to Jews and Muslims.
3. It separated Church and State for the first
time in Europe.
4. It reformed family law, giving women and
men equality in inheritance, secularizing
marriage, and permitting divorce for the first
time in France.
- Was Jose Rizal (1861-1896) inspired by the
French Revolution?
Jose Rizal was one of the many great
Filipinos who were inspired by France's
revolutionary history and the French ideals of
liberty, fraternity, and equality. 
Both Filipino reformists and revolutionists
imbibed French liberal ideas of liberty, equality and
fraternity. Rizal's novels Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo were inspired by Alexander Dumas
(1802-1870), one of France's great literary giants.
Andres Bonifacio was heavily inspired by
the French Revolution.

Post-modernism (1960 to present) and Modernism

(which became old hat) Postmodernism was a
reaction against modernism. Modernism was
generally based on idealism and a utopian vision of
human life and society and a belief in progress.
Postmodernist philosophers in general argue
that truth is always contingent on historical and
social context rather than being absolute and
universal and that truth is always partial and "at
issue" rather than being complete and certain.
Anything goes, everyone is a critic, meaning is
subjective, relative and open-ended. It questions
 Perspective: point of view, or way we see
something /descriptive

 by our personalities
 by our life experiences,
 by our socio-cultural situations, and
 by that to which we have been exposed.

Ontology/Metaphysics deals with the nature of

being.

 What is real?
 What is truth? What is Marriage and
Family?
 What meaning can there be to life?
 What and who I am?
 How do I live?
 What is a good life? What can I hope for?
 What is the secret to genuine happiness?
 What are your questions?
Epistemology: deals with the nature, origin & limits
of human knowledge.

 What is it that we know and how do we

know what we know about who we are?

 The premodern worldview was based on

faith in divine revelation from a just God.
 I believe therefore I obey.
 The modern worldview attempts to see
universal reason and science as the guides.
 I see therefore I agree.
 In the postmodern has a despair of any
universal standard- there is no ultimate
authority or ultimate truth. It dethroned God
and science. They rely on experience and
feelings.
 I feel, therefore basta, nosibalasi.

Three Moments of THY 2

 Pag-aaral: Sitting
 Pagsasanay: Walking
 Pagsasaloob: Loving

- The Christian faith is more than a set of abstract
truths/concepts to be believed, it is the way of
Jesus Christ who leads to life.” Christian ethics or
moral life, then, is about responding to the call of
the Jesus of the Gospel.
What is Faith? Faith takes something upon the
world of another or of the speaker.
Whether in human or God, the act of faith is not
based on proofs or evidence but on the authority of
the speaker.
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through
the word of Christ. – Romans 10:17
Conscience is the voice of God in the soul. –
James H. Aughey
God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is
the beginning of prayer. – Mother Teresa
 Church as People of God
 Magisterium of the Church (Councils,
Popes, Bishops, Clergy
 Theologians
 Church Magisterium (Pope John Paul II,
Benedict XVI, & Pope Francis, Catholic
Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines,
CBCP)
 Theologians ( 4 Evangelists, St. Paul,
Augustine, Aquinas, C.S. Lewis)
 Theology as Service
It plays the role of servant in the life of the
church. One of its fundamental jobs is to
help the church think well and carefully
about how best to understand, articulate,
and live out what it believes. Theology does
not exist for itself, only for the church.
- Theology begins with wonder. It uses faith and
reason/science. It is practical.
- Theology begins with wonder. Life precedes
Theology. Theology is an attempt to understand
human life and condition in the light of Faith or
God’s word.
- Theology as Inquiry: It is an inquiry into who God
is, and if God is as transcendent and mysterious as
we believe him to be.
- Theology wrestles, at times, with questions that
don’t clearly relate to specific practices.
THE THREE BIG-PICTURE QUESTIONS or
wonders about who we are in relation to each other
and the world around us:
1. Where do we come from?
2. What has gone wrong with ourselves and
with the world?
3. Who will save us from sin and evil?
TWO GRAND NARRATIVES/stories in the
Christian religious tradition:
- We believe (faith) that tell us the truth about who
we are (identity) and how to live to be truly happy
(morals).
BIBLICAL CREATION STORY - Theology uses faith (hearing) and reason/science
(seeing)
- the human person was created “in the image and
likeness” of God as male and female (Genesis 1:
27).
Ways of knowing that things exist:
 Mental likeness: a human person is an
 Sensory experience
individual substance of a rational nature
 Agreement/Sharing with others
(Aquinas and Aristotle)
 Expert Opinion
 Moral likeness: a person is inherently good
 Logical Reasoning
and oriented to the good
 The Scientific Method
 Social Likeness: a person is a being
created with and for others
- the male is created from the dust of the earth Scientific Method (Social Psychology: Inductive)
when God breathes divine life into him (Genesis
2:7).
- the human being is not complete until both males
and females exist (Genesis 2: 20-25).
- Placed in an earthly paradise, the first persons are
free to make choices and even fail, as they did, but
they remain images of the living God.
- God created man and woman with a 'soul.' Only
the human being has received the divine breath.
- THE JESUS’ STORY or the Jesus’ Event
- (Life, Passion, Death and Resurrection)

- The Gospel story of Jesus Christ provides the

fuller revelation of the meaning of persons as
images of the Creator. The Second Vatican Council
taught that Jesus Christ reveals our human nature
to us as the “New Man” (Gaudium et Spes, 22).
- By becoming one of us, God reveals our unique
dignity in the order of creation.
- New Creature
- What does it mean that a Christian is a new
creation? This means that anyone who belongs to
Christ has become a new person. The old life is
gone; a new life has begun!
2 Corinthians 5:17

- Theology is practical. It has to do with real life
and relevant to the problems and challenges that
we face. It must affect how we live our lives.
- Theology as Transformative Knowledge. It must
lead to change. It must not leave you unchanged
but affects who you are (identity) and therefore how
you live (behavior). If you are truly knowing God
and being known by God, you cannot stay the
same. You will be shaped by that experience.
Module 2. Marriage and Family Today
- Sociological imagination is an ability to see the
context which shapes your individual decision
making, as well as the decisions made by others.
Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a
society can be understood without understanding
both.
- The family is one of the five universal social
institutions established to control and regulate the
life of mankind. It is closely associated with the
institution of marriage. In fact, both institutions are
complementary to each other.
- While they have historically been closely linked in
most cultures, their connection is changing and
becoming more complex: in their outlook and
practices.
- For primitive people, failure to marry and
childlessness are the most terrible curse.
What is going on with marriage and family in
the Philippines lately?
Some observations on the present of the family in
the Philippines:
  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact
tank that informs the public about the
issues, attitudes and trends shaping the
world.
 National Demographic & Health Survey
2017) Gathers information to estimate
current levels of fertility, mortality, and
migration, including the factors that affect
them.
 Social Weather Station is a social research
institution in the Philippines founded in
August 1985.
- The family has been taken to mean a social unit
composed of interdependent members, usually
related to one another by blood or consanguinity,
and often occupying the same residential abode
(tahanan).
- Filipinos are known for having strong and
close family ties.
- They place high regard and put importance on
their family before anything else.
- Parents work all day and do all they can to feed
and provide for their children.
- In other countries, when a person turned 18,
he/she may live away from his/her family.
- 12.6 million Filipino families consider themselves
poor – SWS (OCT 21, 2022 9:50 AM
PHTRUSSELL)
- Around 12.6 million Filipino families considered
themselves poor in the first few months of the
Marcos administration, according to the latest
survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations
(SWS). 
- SWS said 49% or an estimated 12.6 million
Filipino families considered themselves poor in the
third quarter of 2022. It is slightly higher than
the June 2022 survey figures at 48% or around
12.2 million Filipino families. 
- SWS survey says 1 in 3 Filipinos jobless.
- In other countries, when a person turned 18,
he/she may live away from his/her family.
- Compared to other creatures, our childhood is
prolonged, and our teenage behavior seems to stay
even longer with humans.
Role of the Family
“The family’s role in the traditional system has been
describe as “pervasive,” exerting influence on the
nature of other social organizations: politics,
education, religion, economics.” - Mendez, et al.,
1984

If the family, the basic unit and foundation of

society, disintegrates, society also disintegrates,
which may trigger radical shifts in values, a general
spiritual degeneration, and, consequently, anarchy,
war, and genocide.
Families affect the world in a way trillion drops of
rain induce a deluge.
Bernie V. Lopez (October 7, 2014) Pope Francis
and the Family Crisis. Philippine Daily Inquirer
“The Filipino family is in transition.”
Dr. Grace T. Cruz of the University of the
Philippines Population Institute.
The family is in crisis, asserts the 2014 Vatican
Synod on the Family. Its report highlights, as
subjects for Church concern, broken marriages;
divorced, nullified and separated families; children
out of wedlock; violence in the home; same-sex
marriage; and more.

The traditional structure, purpose, and functions of

marriage and family are being challenged both
from within and outside.
 The Model Child- the good child, obedient,
live by the rules
 The Eternal Child- the baby of the family
 The Sick Child-
 The Rebel Child- black sheep, provokes,
questions, refuses, brings trouble
 But later on, the roles may be reversed; the
children are expected to take care of their 60% of women aged 15-
elderly parents because of reciprocity or
utang na loob.
49 are currently in a
union;
 Later, most if not all of you will marry
(between ages 25-29) and have your own
families and thus assume the same status
and perform the roles of your parents to you 42% are formally
as their children married and
• 2.3.1 Structural Changes
 The traditional notion that the nuclear
Filipino family consisting of a married
18% are living together
couple, man and woman, with children, in a consensual union
living together under one roof is being but are not formally
challenged.
married.
 Source: Elizabeth Angsioco, The Changing
Filipino Family, The Manila Times, October
25, 2014. Available on line at
http://www.manilastandard.net/opinion/colu
mns/power-point-by-elizabeth-angsioco/
161239/the-changing-filipino-family.html
 Family is Relational not Structural.
 Instead, there is a growing change in the
better appreciation of the quality of
relationship in the family more than its
structure of composition (husband+ wife=
child/ren).
 Self-identification as a family is getting to be
more common among groups of people who
 Live-in arrangements and delayed
love, respect, and care for each other no
marriages may have been brought about by
matter if they do not fit the traditional
the changing values and perceptions in
structure of what a family is.
relation with sexuality (its purpose) and
 In the past two decades, the proportion of reproductive health.
cohabiting Filipino women of reproductive
 This transnational family is a direct offshoot
age almost trebled, from 5.2% in 1993 to
of labor migration which is estimated to be
14.5% in 2013 to
about 10% of the country’s population.
2017 18 % There is an entire generation of children
who grew up with surrogate parents or with
(Abalos 2014; PSA and ICF 2014) only one parent.

SOLO-MOTHER Inang Tatay
• Let’s do the math – 538 x 365 = 196,370
The emergence of female-headed households
which make up of 18% of all Philippine
households.
9% of these are headed by single women,
7% are separated/divorced,
Filipino teenage mothers EVERY SINGLE
DAY, according to the Philippine Statistical
Authority from 2017.
babies born each year to teenage mothers
in the Philippines!  Nearly 200,000
teenagers get pregnant every year!  And to
make matters worse, there are roughly 40
births each year by girls who have not yet
reached the age of 13. You read that
correctly – precious young girls who have
not even entered their teens, carrying a
baby for nine months in their child-like
womb.

and 2% are married but the husband is away.

• SOLO-FATHER/HOUSE HUSBANDS/Stay-
at-home-Dads Tatay na Ina
• According to the 2012 Survey on Overseas
Filipinos, over a million Filipinas work
abroad, up almost 4% from 2011 and that’s
on top of the thousands of female
breadwinners who live in the Philippines.
• SOLO-FATHER/HOUSE HUSBANDS/Stay-
at-home-Dads
• According to the 2012 Survey on Overseas
Filipinos, over a million Filipinas work
abroad, up almost 4% from 2011 and that’s
on top of the thousands of female
breadwinners who live in the Philippines.
• However, 95% believe that a child needed a
home with both parents to be happy.
• Sexuality is the strongest irrational force in
human life. The social systems (especially
the family & religion) are bound to seek to
control and regulate it. Non-procreative
sexual acts are strongly discouraged in the
Roman Catholic Tradition.
• Teenage pregnancy affects about 6% of
Filipino girls. That sounds like a small
number but is the second highest rate in
Southeast Asia based on Save the
Children’s Global Childhood Report from
2019. An estimated 538 babies are born to