Don’t waste countdown to family gathering, urges Archbishop Eamon

Catholics should consider how to share the Church’s teaching on the family ahead of the World Meeting of Families, Armagh’s Archbishop Eamon Martin has said.

Speaking in St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, at the formal launch of preparations for the ninth world meeting, which will take place in Dublin in August 2018, the archbishop said the “countdown” had begun. 

He urged Catholics to consider what the world meeting might have to say to them and their families, what they hope the meeting might achieve, and what the Church might do to ensure that the proclamation of the meeting’s theme – ‘The Gospel of the Family: Joy for the World’ – “is heard and shared by as many people as possible”.

He warned against the danger that the meeting could pass as “a once-off event, an extravaganza which will come and go like a big pop concert or sports final”, and asked that Catholics consider how the Church could harness the potential the meeting presents to share the message that family is “Good News for today and for the future”.

He singled out as particular challenges how Catholics can connect with those who feel the Church has nothing to say to them, and how the Church can find “sincere and truthful” ways of welcoming and including gay people and the divorced-and-remarried into the life of the Church.

Delegates

Almost 700 delegates took part at the launch, when the archbishop said the meeting would offer the Church an opportunity to connect with young people thinking about marriage, including those with suspicions of institutions or commitments. 

Detailing how networks of support would be necessary for this, he said that a pre-catechetical programme to be launched next Spring will be a valuable resource, and said there was a need for more movements in which families support and minister to each other. 

Among his hopes for the next few years, he said, “is that we will develop Catholic family support groups at diocesan and parish level who might not only assist with marriage preparation, but also with supporting couples in the years immediately following marriage”.