St. John Chrysostom described the family as “a little Church.” He presupposed a household comprised of a father, a mother, and children who live in harmony. Of course, families often differ from this pattern, thus complicating, but not invalidating, the principle that the Church is a family and the family is a church. For our purposes, we will address mixed marriages in which one of the parents is Orthodox, the other is Catholic, they were married in the Orthodox Church, and baptized their children Orthodox. We shall see that the unity of the family does not depend on confessional affiliation. It is blessed in the Orthodox Church, and therefore the separation of the spouses at the chalice is inconsistent with the theology of marriage.