While most middle-aged bachelors would run a mile rather than offer advice on people's marriages, Canberra Goulburn's Archbishop Christopher Prowse isn't afraid to rise to the challenge.
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He is to host his first diocesan assembly, themed "The Joy Of The Gospel In Married and Family Life", this weekend.
"700 people have now registered and that is the capacity of the venue; it is the best attendance for an assembly we have ever had," he said.
Archbishop Prowse chose the theme because there is already an international conversation on marriage and the family going on within the church at the behest of Pope Francis.
"(And) since I've been the bishop here I can see it is a very real issue in the diocese as well," he said. "There are a tremendous number of courageous people trying to keep families together."
Archbishop Prowse said growing up with six siblings had given him an appreciation of the value of family life.
"Society comes through the family," he said. "If the family is weakened society is weakened."
The Archbishop said the assembly was a chance to offer encouragement and to listen carefully to what individuals were saying about the latest challenges to family life.
These include the necessity for both parents to work to fund ever-increasing material expectations, the conscription of grandparents and even great grandparents into childcare roles because of the high cost of professional services and the introduction of social media, with its plethora of often dubious role models, into the family mix.
"Social media is a double-edged sword," he said. "On one level there is a great opportunity to see the global village; on another is the danger of role models from all sorts of incoherent philosophical backgrounds."
Archbishop Prowse said priests and bishops had much to contribute to discussions about marriage, families and parenting.
"One of the most beautiful names people use for a priest is `father'," he said. "I am not a physical father but I am the father to the spiritual family.
"People do seek our advice; we are in and out of families like nobody else. There is a certain accumulated wisdom that comes from that."
Listening and sharing is part of the tool kit he hopes will allow the Catholic Church to negotiate the once barbecue-stopping issues of same sex marriage, de facto relationships, a divorce rate that is edging towards the 50 per cent mark and blended families.
The Archbishop said while the church has to remain true to its own long-held theology it also had to listen to same sex attracted people and the wider community.
"This is a breach that is not helped by over-politicising the issue and people getting terribly emotional," he said.
"Sitting down and having a good chat is sometimes difficult because of the fragilities of opinion but it is worth it."
The church had not responded well in the past.
"Some of our expressions have been incoherent to modern day sensibilities; they have often been shaped with a philosophical terminology more appropriate to another age," he said.
"The big panorama (issue) is the crisis in intimacy, the crisis in friendship, that affects us all."
The assembly's proceedings will be streamed live on Saturday:
