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In the Heart of the Church - Ecumenism |
The Church
Becomes the Basis of Our Hope
Bishop Jean Laffitte
Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family
September 25, 2010
Address given at a
at a Couple to Couple League Convention.
Introduction
It is apt and proper to acknowledge with gratitude at the beginning
of this talk the great initiative of the Couple to Couple League to
make its members more aware of the duties of the Pontifical Council
for the Family. The council believes that this effort certainly
opens many ways for further collaborative effort to uphold the
grandeur of Conjugal love and the family. Effectively, marriage and
the Family constitute one of the most precious of human values.
Gaudium et Spes says the well being of the individual person and of
the human society is intimately linked with the healthy condition of
that community produced by marriage and the family. Nevertheless, if
we are to honestly ask ourselves whether such excellence or
importance is reflected with equal brilliance in our contemporary
society, such is a big point for reflection for all of us.
I would like to proceed then with this talk elaborating the context
where we all find ourselves in thus further understanding the
immensity of the Church's concerns. To do this is to try to outline
the actual challenges that confront marriage and the family today,
its implications and effects. Afterwards, we look into what the
reflection of the Church has been in this field at the theological,
anthropological, ethical and spiritual level. This eventually leads
us to grasp the importance of the mission of the Pontifical Council
for the Family.
I-Today's Challenges to Marriage and the Family
It is commonplace to qualify Western society of today as permissive.
Effectively, in the matters of social mores, sexuality, and
marriage, we are well within a permissive society where subjective
or partial values are exalted, values that in reality are not
experienced at an ethical level. Among them, absolute individual
liberty, well-being under its hedonistic form (the search for the
greatest possible pleasure), or still the casting off of moral
constraints; within the sphere of the affective life, only immediate
emotion, affective well-being and physical desire are so considered
to be constitutive of the nature of love. A strict separation is
worked between liberty and nature. Eventually, this contributes to
the destruction of the structural and foundational link between
marriage and family.
a) A systematic deconstruction of the structures of Marriage and
Family
We see today a total separation between the traditional and
religious conception of Marriage and the so called new family model
proposed by the post modern culture. Traditionally, there was no
difference between what the civil authorities and the religious
families understood about the concept of marriage. Till 30 or 40
years ago, when a man and a woman would come to the Mayor to be
civilly married, they were asked to take the same vows a Christian
couple does in a Christian marriage. They promised each other
fidelity, and manifested their openness to welcome eventual fruits
of their love; and naturally marriage was fundamentally understood
as the union between a man and a woman. The only difference was the
Christian education the Christian couple commit had to give to their
Children.
It is important to note that the Church never changed in this. Still
today she requires the same from the engaged couple who come to the
parish to receive the sacrament of Marriage. The Church with all the
due preparations assures the spouses of her support and acceptance
as a new couple in the Christian community and helps them in
building a better family. In all this, the Church remains perfectly
relevant and consistent. She has always recognized the fact that the
family is founded upon a contractual commitment between a man and a
woman called marriage, an institution inscribed in the nature of
man: a fact that even the entire body of legislations accepted until
several decades ago.
On the contrary we can say that a systematic deconstruction of the
institution of Marriage and Family is at the fore; to wit, in some
countries, marriage does not mean anymore the union between man and
a woman but "between persons". How is this possible? Simply by
denying the existence of two different ways of being human,
masculine and feminine; and sexual difference is reduced to a mere
question of choice and culture. It is exactly what the ideology of
the gender proposes. But where does this bring us?
Consequently, any disregard of the natural law boils down to the
relativization of the public good and the foundations of human life
held for centuries. Let us look into the so called "new models of
family"; the extension of the term "family" and of the term
"marriage" to all kinds of social realities: reconstructed families,
free unions (with no other founding act other than the sole wish of
the partners), homosexual unions, etc.. What underlies all these?
That living together, is founded no longer on an objective good of a
communal scope (an objective good of the society), but only upon the
individual desires of persons; desires which invoke the principle of
equality, meant not in the classical sense of the term but in its
ideological sense. The genuine principle of equality between men is
an equality of dignity that, when it is recognized by the law, means
that the citizens are equal in fact by right. The rights that are
recognized of a family founded upon marriage are, normally, a
recognition that the family unit is a good for society, this unit
favors a progressive socialization of future adult citizens by means
of the education of children, and finally the family participates in
the stability of the social bond. Article 16 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the General Assembly of the
United Nations on December 10, 1948, affirms that the family is the
fundamental core of society and of the State and, as such, it must
be recognized and protected. This allows us to affirm that, if the
family has so great an importance for society and for the State, it
is because it fulfills a public and general interest.
b) Banalization of Human Sexuality
Corrollary to the first problem we have just mentioned, the
systematic deconstruction of the structures of marriage and family,
is the obscuring of the true meaning of human sexuality. Marriage
has always been esteemed as the only and proper locus for the
exercise of man's sexual faculty. This has been put into question by
present realities. Human sexuality is perceived nowadays only from
the perspective of personal gratification and feeling, therefore,
forgetting the intrinsic value of conjugal act as intrinsically
aimed at transmitting life; at the moment sexuality is emptied of
its social significance, from the transmission of life within the
stable relation between man and woman, what you have is a mere
revindication of pleasure. Thus, it results to contraceptive sex and
the practice of homosexuality for the sake of seeking a maximum
sexual satisfaction. In this manner, sexuality ceases to be a
language of total self-giving and the importance of the
complimentarity of the sexes is lost.
Furthermore, if sexuality is exercized only for the sake of
pleasure, then marriage and family become just a private locus where
the individual continues to find gratification for his sexual and
affective aspirations. And all the attempts to extend the meaning of
marriage and family to whatever kind of social realities that
resemble marriage and the family are connected to this: same sex
unions, de facto unions etc.. Unfortunately, the State begins to
consider it as an exercise of one's right; afterwards, it enacts
laws to guarantee it as liberty of private choice. In effect, the
individual is considered to be possessing "the right" to form a
family, according to the so-called "new models" of family;
nevertheless, since this "so-called right" rests only on the
personal desire of the person, then everything is arbitrary. In the
end, marriage and the family wouldn't require absolute commitment
anymore. Commitment comes to be a limited responsibility. The gift
of oneself signified by the sexual act is denatured and transforms
itself into a loan, of provisional duration, if it intentionally
includes the hypothesis of a subsequent change.
The exercise of the sexual faculty itself loses its richness of
meaning from the moment when it no longer expresses an irrevocable
gift, solely and exclusively of the spouses. If the physical union
of the spouses is not founded upon an absolute fidelity, excluding
absolutely everything seeking the unity of marriage, it ceases to
express symbolically (nuptial symbolism) conjugal love; though
rewarding, it limits itself thus only to be an affective expression.
c) From a Sexual Revolution to a Political Revolution
The above mentioned challenges nevertheless are born of the sexual
revolution of the 20th century, a cultural revolution which
effectively has turned itself to a political revolution. We are
pretty much aware of different states and governments putting into
laws what has been scandalous and disdainful till half centuries
ago. For example, very recently, is the legalization of homosexual
union as an alternative to marriage in Argentina. We can mention of
the other european countries and few states of America having the
same such legislations. This makes things rather more complicated.
We are dealing here not just anymore with the problem of an
individual but a political problem with the force of law.
A glimpse of the story of this evolution would certainly be of help
to understand further even indirectly its implications. In 1920,
Wilhelm Reich and Otto Gross worked to develop at the sociological
level the work of Sigmund Freud. But taking what Freud wanted to
study in the context of personal therapy into the social context,
they opened a horizon that affected particularly the social
conception of sexuality. The sexual discourse that had always
remained accompanied with reservation and modesty became little by
little a subject of public debates, provoking a series of studies
and researches and even a political revendication. Before, a
discourse on sexuality was always connected to procreation; now, the
discourse on the exercise of the human sexual faculty is only
considered in its pure physical and gratifying dynamism; and in a
way, it has become totally autonomous from its relation to a
possible transmission of life. Sooner or later, such theories turned
to concrete practices within the society. Meanwhile, other subjects
related to sexuality never discussed before continuesly occupy
public debates and discussions; homosexual practices, the search for
maximum pleasure in a relation and the revendication of a sexuality
outside of any commitment and responsibility.
Eventually, the great sexual revolutionists in the name of Reich and
Marcuse explicitly referred the sexual revolution to the dialectic
materialism of Karl Marx, giving it an ambit not just personal but
social; the revolution then had become a social revolution which
radically contested the institution of conjugal love and of the
family which civilly is the only sphere where the exercise of the
sexual faculty is normally carried out. Consequently, even the
position of the Church who is the main promoter of an ethical and
spiritual discourse on sexual matters, had been challenged. All
these elements help us understand that a discourse that banalizes
the exercise of sexuality in diverse and contradictory forms
contributes to the radical destruction of all the values that have
been structuring society for centuries: the exclusivity of loving
relations between spouses, the veneration of human life, which was
always considered a blessing, the love for the child, the respect of
the precedent generation, the sense of belonging to a familial
history, etc..
Obviously, the emergence of this permissive morality is accompanied
by the destruction of any form of authority in all its aspects:
family, politics, education, religion. Systematic refusal and
defiance of figures of authority follows; the paternal figure at the
womb of the family, the figure of a government leader at the heart
of the nations, the figure of the educator at the educational
system; at the end, the figure of the moral and spiritual authority
of the priests, bishops and the magisterium of the Church in
general.
In reality, the passage from the discourse founded on natural law to
a truly social revolution leads little by little to a political
revolution in all possible aspects of human life. Here follows some
historical observations; this revolution became symbolically strong
in the 30's; in 1948 the study of the personal sexual behavior of
man by Kinsey was published and some years later the same study was
done for the woman. This was the object of the famous report of
Masters and Johnson in 1966; at the end of the 50's, contraceptive
pill for the woman was invented and got into the US market in 1960,
and later, in Europe. Contraception became the subject of debates
during this period. We recall, it was on 25 July 1968 that "Humanae
Vitae", the church definitive document on contraception was
published. During this period too, a strong feminist movement came
about; in 1975 in France, the first law that depenalizes abortion
was legislated; at the beginning of the 80's "In Vitro
Fertilization" was developed; within this period, the suppression of
the difference between legitimate and illigitimate child took place
and the public debate on euthanasia grew; in 1998, juridical status
was given to "De Facto Union"; within this period, the development
of the application of genetics beyond therapeutic perspective
thrived, which is in the end eugenics; and presently, we have the
legislations on same sex unions.
Through this historical illustration, we see clearly today, an
attempt to separate the two dimensions of human sexuality, unitive
and procreative. The consequences of this are of two sorts. On the
one hand, a sexuality excluding procreation becomes hedonistic and
devoid of any responsibility; it develops a recourse to
contraception and implies the progressive loss of the sense of
beauty of transmitting human life; pregnancy becomes a menace, and
sexual intercourse has to be "protected". On the other hand, the
recourse to a procreation totally detached from a concrete loving
intercourse implies a kind of a manipulation of human life, where a
child is seen as merely the satisfaction of a personal desire. The
essential interest of the child and his right to be born in a stable
and loving relationship of his parents are not taken into account.
This same thing can be said of the sad reality of divorce. All these
signal as well the loss of the sense of the sanctity of marriage.
Above all these reforms is the intention to impose a new morality.
There exists a political pressure from international organizations
to impose new ethical criteria. They do this by introducing new
concepts such as: reproductive health, the liberalization of
abortion as right of the woman over her body, etc. Within this
pretext of imposing new culture and ethical criteria, what is aimed
at is to acquire a perfect dominion over human life, in particular
over its transmission. This explains then the presence of national
legislations which are anti-life and anti-family in many different
countries at present.
II- Human love and hope: the teachings of the Church
The little overview of the actual societal realities we've just done
appears to be alarming; socially, politically and morally. But I
hope that I have not given you an impression that we are in a
desperate situation. Yes, our present situation maybe difficult, but
not without hope. But with the actual realities, we ask, is there
really a reason for our hoping? Benedict XVI in his 2nd Encyclical
Spe Salvi, speaks of the nature of hope as something rooted on
anything that is constant and stable. The fact that the church has
never wavered on her teachings on sexuality, marriage and family,
the Church becomes the basis of our hope and she remains the only
institution that has the capacity to direct and guide us. I believe,
contrary to the actual circumstances, as christians and people of
good will, these realities become a providential invitation for us
to profoundly deepen our perceptions and understanding of human life
and its transmissions thru the exercise of human sexuality.
Briefly, let us see how the Church has been a constant and relevant
guide for us. During the 20th century where all these circumstances
we have seen a while ago, took place and developed, there, came
along paradoxically, a new fervor for the spirituality of married
couples, which without doubt, was a positive response to the
Encyclical Letter of Pius XI "Casti Connubii". In effect, "Casti
Connubii" reaffirmed marriage and family to be the true and proper
way for the spouses's perfection and therefore their sanctification.
Considerably, the personalistic philosophy that thrived during this
century, stimulated as well this fervor among married christians.
This makes us realize that never the Church abandoned her faithful
particularly in the times of great trials. To mention a few among
the magisterial documents of the Church that have been published,
Gaudium et Spes, Humanae Vitae, the Instruction Donum Vitae,
Apostolic Exhortations Familiaris Consortio, the Apostolic Letter
Mulieris Dignitatem; the Encyclical on the sanctity of life
Evangelium Vitae, the Cathechesis of JP II on Human Love sometimes
known as the Theology of the Body, the Deus Carits Est of Benedict
XVI which focuses on reunderstanding love; all these documents are
apt to help and guide us.
Equally important to have in mind, in favor of marriage and the
family is the creation and mobilization of a great number of
ecclesiastical structures; the Pontifical Council for the Family,
the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family,
The Pontifical Academy for Life, and the active political presence
of the Church in the international organizations and assemblies. I
would like to invite you now to join me and let us have another look
on some of the essential subjects which have been deepened by the
Magisterium concerning marriage and family.
a) The nature of marriage
The Church always speaks of marriage as an intimate community of
life and love founded by the Creator with its own proper laws. She
understands that man and woman have been structurally created in
such a way that they are capable of giving oneself totally to
another for the rest of their lives. It is man's nature to tend to
communion, as he was created by God according to God's nature which
is a communion of Divine Persons. JP II speaks of man's fulfillment
not in man's solitude but when he is in communion. Truly man becomes
an image of God when he is experiencing a true communion with the
other. This means that when the Church speaks of marriage and
family, she is doing it from the logic of nature which is accessible
to human reason. In effect, the human being created as masculine and
feminine, is called to a communion of persons.
This communion of man and woman in marriage is directed towards the
good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children.
Such communion is destined to be indisolluble. In a society that is
marked by permissiveness and individualism, indisollubilty becomes
questionable, a delimitation of one's liberty and many times
contested to be a mere imposition by the Church. Hoever in reality,
the indissoluble characteristic of the conjugal bond belongs to the
nature of conjugal love itself and never an imposition by the
Church. Properly, marriage is a personal gift in which man and woman
exclusively vow themselves to one another, an expression of a total
giving of oneself. A gift presupposes totality without which one
cannot speak of fidelity in marriage. Otherwise, as I've mentioned
before, the gift turns out to be a loan. At times, this
indissolubility is tested, but the church always believes that if
the Creator made man for this communion, He must have given man the
same capacity to live by it.
Some of you may ask, why there exists a Sacrament of Marriage if it
is true that indissolubility belongs to the nature of conjugal love?
The Sacrament consolidates the indissolubility of the union, making
the spouses more capable to live their union according to their
spiritual nature. God entered into a definitve covenant with his
people and the sacrament of marriage becomes the actual realization
of such great love of God for his people.
b) The Family as the place for the transmission of life
The Church considers marriage as the natural place in which life is
transmitted and therefore the family is the place where human life
is cared for through the education of the children.There is nothing
original to this. However, the explosion of the family in the West
with its consequences to the children, the technologies that render
scientifically possible a procreation independently from the loving
relation of the spouses, they call for a profound anthropological
question related to human life and its transmission. If marriage is
ordained to to the procreation and education of children, it is
according to this natural predisposition of the creator, that we
would be able to understand that the union between man and woman can
be fecond to have a consequence the birth of a new human being. In
marriage, this union is an expression of a donation of oneselft that
is total, exclusive, and definitive. In such a manner, the spouses
becomes cooperator of the love of God, at the same time procreators
with God. God remains the sole creator. It is God alone that can
create the soul that gives life to the human body. Thus human life
always comes as a gift and the couple must be open to receive it.
Therefore, this implies that the spouses do not possess the right to
have a child; they are gifted with a child. If to have a child is
held as a spouses's right, then it may lead to hostile practices of
contraceptive sex, or to scientific practices that make procreation
possible outside the conjugal act, or to practices that entail
violation of the exclusivity of marriage.
This boils down to stripping the child of his dignity as a gift to
be cherished, and not only as something that satisfies the interest
of the couple. On the one hand, the decision not to have a child
expresses something like a lack an internal lack of hope: either the
spouse don't see any value that they can transmit; or they do not
consider themselves valuable enough, worthy of being transmitted.
Somebody who does not have the sense of posterity doesn't therefore
believe much in himself. This is an anthropological pessimism.
Christian hope is something that animates human action and is not
only a static virtue that does not have any influence on one's way
of action. Here we have been talking about the couples choosing not
to have a child for whatever reason, and not of the couples having
the sincere desire of a child and not being in the position of
having it for whatever reason. We all know that sterility is
difficult to accept for many couples. But the presence and the
intensity of their desires are already a testimony of human and
Christian hope, and that human life is good, worthy to be desired,
defended and promoted
c) The Family in the Society
Conjugal communion is not an end in itself. But it constitutes a
foundation that edifies the family which the church considers a
communion truly of service to the person first of all; secondly, to
the diverse interpersonal relations among persons: paternity,
maternity, filiation, fraternity. The family is a place of natural
contact between members of different generations, and assumes the
role of mediation among individuals and society, and serves as the
first institution for socializations among persons. Familiaris
Consortio speaks of the family as a school of deeper humanity.
Through the absolute spirit of gratuity, love and respect
experienced within the family, man knows how to be human. In effect,
the existence of a sound and healthy family is an efficient social
subject and resource for the humanization and personalization of the
society.
There exists therefore a grand number of family functions that
renders necessary the defense of the family: the education of the
children, the care of the sick and the assistance to the aged which
no other institution could do better. It is for this reason why the
church defends the family strongly according to its classical model;
otherwise, its decadence renders possible the collapse of the
society. The society's common good can only be served by
institutions that fundamentally and essentially contribute to it:
the marriage between man and woman on which is founded the true
essence of the family. No other alternative form of unions except
the union between man and woman that can guarantee the common good
of the society.
For reason of time, I have limited the reflection on the
contribution of the Church to the fundamental topics of the
indissolubility of Marriage, on marriage as the place for the
transmission of life and on the family and its service to the
society. There are many other aspects the Church has been dealing
with especially in the last fifty years. At this juncture, I would
like to present to you now the mission of the Pontifical Council for
the Family.
III-The mission of the Pontifical Council for the Family
May 13, 1983 is a day to reckon not only because it's the feast day
of Our Lady of Fatima but because it is the day when the attempt
against John Paul II was carried out. On that very same day, during
the audience, the Pope intended to announce the creation of two very
important institutions, willed to concentrate on matters related to
Marriage and the Family: the creation of an Academic Institute known
now as the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the
Family which through the years has acquired a worldwide distinction
in the field of Marriage and Family; then the creation of the
Pontifical Council for the Family as an organism of the Curia of the
Roman Catholic Church. The Council had been established on May 9,
1981 replacing actually the Committee for the Family that Pope Paul
VI had established in 1973.
The pope considered equally important an academic approach and a
pastoral one, to safeguard the dignity of marriage and family. For
while the Institute has been commissioned to deepen understanding of
the different aspects of human love, marriage and the family from
the theological, ethical and anthropological point of view, the
Pontifical Council was mandated to offer pastoral service to the
universal Church for the benefits of families. It has to assists
bishops, family associations, universities and various organisms of
the Roman Curia in line with those among their functions which
relate them to the family. Thus, as both institutions, John Paul II
Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family the Pontifical
Council for the Family, work on their particular fields, they but
compliment fundamentally for the service of marriage and the family.
a) Structure of the Council
In the Palazzo San Calisto in the famous quarter of Trastevere,
there, work for the service of the family, 12 to 15 people under the
Presidency of His Eminence Ennio Antonelli, the Secretary and the
Under Secretary. It also has created its body of members and
consulters each group comprised of 40 persons. This system allows us
to be constantly updated as regards the different realities
surrounding the family in the world and be immediately aware
especially of any anti- family and anti-life legislations in the
national and international level with which the Council can act
accordingly. The Council does much certainly with the help of the
family associations, movements, local Church organizations,
committed couples, families and single individuals devoted to uphold
the dignity of marriage and the family.
b) The General Concerns of the Council
Just like any other dicastery of the Roman Curia, the Pontifical
Council for the Family receives bishops from around the world when
they do their Ad Limina visit to Rome. It means that we are able to
receive more or less 3,500 bishops of the Church every five years.
Normally we receive at the Council's office a visit of a "National
Bishops' Conference" every after two weeks. If the Council can
address the challenges to the Family, it is thanks to these bishops
whom we dialogue with and who inform us of the concrete situations
of the families in their respective dioceses.
Moreover, the Council for the Family functions independently but in
collaboration with the various Family and Pro-life Associations
around the world. To my personal knowledge, at present we are in
contact with around 350 to 400 Associations from about 70 countries.
Some associations come to visit us at the council while others
invite us to be part of what they organize in their respective
localities such as colloquia, congresses and seminars; exactly what
you the Couple to Couple League have done. Thank you for giving me
this happy opportunity to meet, thank you and encourage you further
to continue with the useful activities you are doing for the Church
and in particular for the Family. The presence of the various
movements and associations committed to the service of life signify
further realizations of the value of marriage and family.
Another significant concern the Council does is to work hand and
hand as well with the different organisms of the Holy See, most
especially with the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith and the
Secretary of the State. Moreover, we work closely as well with the
Apostolic Nunciatures around the world, not solely for diplomatic
purposes, but to help National Episcopal Conferences dealing with
anti family legislative issues in their respective countries. In
such a case, the Bishop's Conference may bring up a particular issue
to the Nunciature, who in turn asks the Holy See for an expert, to
help them deal with the issue. The informal colloquia with
responsible politicians on any debatable legislative matters, the
good relations with different civil and political institutions, all
these build up the council's capacity to shed light on political
matters. To wit, I've been asked to visit next month the European
Parliament and meet up with a certain number of Christian European
Legislators.
c) Programs and Undertakings
Among other things, the most important activity that the Council
organizes is the World Meeting of Families. You must have heard of
the last meeting held in Mexico in January 2009, or of the previous
one in Valencia, Spain, in July 2006, or of the one in Manila last
2003. With the impact and successes they all these previous meetings
had, the council looks forward with great anticipation to the next
meeting which will take place in Milan, Italy, from May 30 to June
3, 2012. Obviously you may take this announcement as an invitation.
The preparation is extremely demanding.
I've mentioned earlier that the council works in close collaboration
with pro-life and pro-family movements and associations. In this
aspect, the council more importantly creates an avenue where all
these movements and associations meet in view of working together
and enriching one another thru a sharing of experiences and
resources. For instance, we had last March a three day congress in
which 30 pro-life associations had the opportunity to meet and work
together on different topics. Come November, we shall organize as
well a meeting of different family associations which will be
working on the theme "The Family: Subject of Evangelization." The
venerable John Paul II many times elaborated and deepened the fact
that the Family is not only a recipient and object of pastoral
activity but likewise a true and first agent of evangelization. The
idea is to gather a certain number of associations and ask them to
explain how they involve and help families realize such an
evangelical identity. Why do we do this? It's because there exist
tremendous beautiful and fruitful pastoral experiences in many
various countries which have made the families immensely involved in
evangelization. Coming together to share those experiences, we hope
to contribute in building a better communion and communication among
these movements and associations, so that they profit from one and
the other's experiences; as what can be effective in one country may
be tried in another. The first of this kind took place in Rome in
2009. For this year 2010, it will focus on two particular subjects:
Preparation for Marriage and "Ministering" to the Family. This
November 27-29 congress would be concluded by a prayer vigil at the
Basilica of St. Peter with the probable presence of His Holiness
Pope Benedict XVI as presider. In lieu of these aims, the Council
has begun to create a Vademecum (Pastoral Manual) that would serve
as reference and guide for pastors, priests and couples doing the
preparation of the engaged couple, in view of their reception of the
sacrament of marriage.
Finally, the council has also initiated a huge inquiry on the topic
"The Family: A resource for Society." It's a study on the relevance
of the traditional family set up vis-a-vis the new model of family
being introduced today. It's a scientific sociological study that
would delve on the efficacy of the traditional family in relation to
the stability of the society; it is to let the fact speak that the
traditional family set up, albeit imperfect in some aspects, is
fundamentally and largely beneficial to the society, while the
so-called new model of family life menaces it. In Italy this has
been started. The Episcopal Conference of Spain will be doing the
same and we do hope that these would be replicated in four other
countries. We are hoping that even in the States such study would be
conducted.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, I would like to express a personal conviction.
First, Christians should never be conditioned by the diffusion of
these post modern ideologies or by the actual realities that
confront marriage and family, alarming as they are. I understand it
is easy to be discouraged and distressed seeing all these realities.
Nevertheless, the family remains rich in itself by grace, nature,
and mission entrusted to it; therefore, we have to love it. And
loving the family means appreciating its values and capabilities,
and fostering them always. Furthermore, we can love the family by
identifying the dangers and the evils that menace it and overcome
them; loving the family means endeavouring to create for it an
environment favourable for its development. As we look around, we
could see other regions in the world, in which their social life is
largely permeated by a sound family life, especially in Asia and
Africa, and this is something that should inspire us. By faith we
know that we have an extra reason to care for this reality which is
the family.
Second, while we have to give a testimony of reasonable optimism, it
should be always grounded on the good news of the gospel. If man and
woman find happiness in building a family, it is because God created
them capable of establishing this kind of communion. And into their
communion, He offers his spirit of love, and the grace of His Son
enables the spouses to live well this communion. When God imbued the
family with His Presence thru the Incarnation of His Son within its
bosom, family life has never been the same; its splendour has been
manifested and her mission revealed: as truly a way for man's
perfection and his salvation. In the end, we have to hear again the
resounding challenge of John Paul II to every family: "Family become
what you are"!
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
