A couple gets married in Stockholm, Sweden, in this 2013 file photo. Four cardinals said they formally asked Pope Francis to clarify his teaching on Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried and have not received a response in two months. (CNS photo/Fredrik Sandberg via EPA) See CARDINALS-POPE-AMORIS Nov. 14, 2016. The purpose of the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in August 2018 is to fully present the teaching of Amoris Laetitia, the apostolic exhortation on love in the family, of Pope Francis. In the midst of certain controversies since its publication in April 2016, it is often forgotten that it was written after, and consequent upon two Synods of Bishops on the family in Rome in 2014 and 2015.
It reflects the teaching of the universal Church, therefore, in a dual sense, as an apostolic exhortation of the Pope and as a document based upon these two consecutive Synods of Bishops.
Last month, WMOF2018 launched its new interactive website. Its homepage contains a quotation from Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the President and host of this forthcoming international event. This quotation is a prelude to a visual recording of an address given by the archbishop in June in Dublin to international delegates as part of the preparation for it.
The key quotation of Dr Martin, being relied upon on this website, is “the ideal family does not exist but great families do exist”. Undoubtedly, in one sense, this quotation reflects a central theme in Amoris Laetitia where Pope Francis writes that “no family drops down from Heaven perfectly formed; families need constantly to grow and mature in the ability to love.” (AL 325)
Description
In the summary description of Amoris Laetitia, published by the Holy See at the same time as this document, it is also stated therein that “the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia seeks emphatically to affirm not the ‘ideal family’ but the very rich and complex reality of family life. Its pages provide an open-hearted look, profoundly positive, which is nourished not with abstractions or ideal projections, but with pastoral attention to reality”.
Amoris Laetitia is grounded upon the emphasis by Pope Francis in his earlier Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), that realities are more important than ideas and that excessive idealisation of the family, which can alienate so many, should wisely be avoided. In this way, Amoris Laetitia is also consistent with a clarification at the heart of Evangelii Gaudium which is perfectly expressed by Fr Julián Carrón in the text Disarming Beauty (2017). This is the observation that, “in the Catholic world, the battle for the defense of values has become, over time, so important that it has ended up being more important than the communication of the newness of Christ and the witness of his humanity”.
For the renewal of Christian life, this is the centre which must hold and around which all other endeavours must revolve. As Pope Benedict XVI has said and as Pope Francis has reiterated in Evangelii Gaudium: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”. (EG 7)
With this centre of concern in mind, this quotation of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin can then be further understood when seen as a reiteration of what was said by him at the original launch of the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in 2016. On that occasion he said: “you see that there is no such thing as the ideal family. There are many problems which we must address. But this does not mean that we renounce presenting an ideal, which men and women and young people can aspire to and hope to achieve”.
However, an unfortunate consequence of stating that “the ideal family does not exist but great families do exist”, is to effectively renounce the real need of presenting an ideal which we can aspire to. It is also inconsistent with Amoris Laetitia which does not state that the ideal family does not exist but rather counsels that “there is no stereotype of the ideal family”. (AL 57) To say that the ideal family does not exist is problematic and an adherence to the dictatorship of relativism for a number of reasons.
In the first instance, it undermines the presentation of the ideal of marriage between man and woman, as central to the incarnation of God’s plan for humanity. The ideal of marriage is, in fact, precisely set out in Amoris Laetitia and in which Pope Francis clarifies: “In order to avoid all misunderstanding, I would point out that in no way must the Church desist from proposing the full ideal of marriage, God’s plan in all its grandeur…a lukewarm attitude, any kind or relativism, or an undue reticence in proposing that ideal, would be a lack of fidelity to the Gospel and also of love on the part of the Church for young people themselves. To show understanding in the face of exceptional situations never implies dimming the light of the fuller ideal, or proposing less than what Jesus offers to the human being.” (AL 307)
To say that the ideal family does not exist also unwittingly supports the greatest intellectual malaise of Western society at this time, the ultimate product of relativism – the unquestioning adherence to a false understanding of equality. We believe that we are building Western societies without discrimination, but, in the name of this good purpose, we are really creating societies without distinction, by reason of having forgotten their Christian foundations.
Hence, for example, in publically-funded schools, the statist intention is to remove all religious identity from schools so that they are all the same in the secularist values that they teach to children. Catholicism is, however, based upon an inherited culture of ideals that arise from informed distinctions as to what is more beautiful, true and good.
Accordingly, Pope Francis has said that “A school’s mission is to develop the sense of the true, the sense of the good, the sense of the beautiful”.
The balanced meaning of equality, which we have abandoned in this country, is set out in Article 40.1 of the Constitution of Ireland, which provides that all citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law. Yet, it also provides that this “shall not be held to mean that the State shall not in its enactments have due regard to differences of capacity, physical and moral, and of social function”.
The beautiful, true and good meaning of equality, expressed in the Irish Constitution in this way, recognises differences and then seeks to justly order common resources in light of them.
The false understanding of equality, however, as the unthinking imposition of a secularist uniformity, is the engine that is driving the ideological colonisation of marriage, something which Pope Francis emphatically warns us against. Last year, in Tbilisi, Georgia, Pope Francis said that “today there is a global war to destroy marriage”. He also said “today you do not destroy with weapons, you destroy with ideas. It is ideological colonisation that destroys.”
The collapse of true equality (which recognises genuine human differences and justly allows for them) and the corresponding rise of false equality (which confuses the just recognition of these differences with discrimination) has served to colonise marriage from being based on the difference between man and woman.
This relatively recent, international phenomenon, has its roots in an adolescent progressivism (a phrase of Pope Francis) which denies the truthful differences of the nature of man and woman.
This is the anthropological crisis of our time – the denial of our nature as human beings. The drama where this crisis is being played out primarily is in marriage and family life as it is in this most human of fields that we especially need to be honest about our own nature.
We need to be true to who we are. Each of us is procreated from a man and a woman, our unique mother and father. The genetic heritage from each of them is written into the cells of our bodies. Every human person inherently longs to know his or her own mother and father and for them to love each other.
The loving, life-long bond between a man and a woman and their child or children, is the ideal not simply because the Catholic Church teaches that this is so. It is the ideal because it is in accordance with the most fundamental and truthful nature of the human person. To live life with a loving relationship with one’s mother and father, who, in turn love each other, is an ideal which resonates with the very nature of each one of us, with how we have been created. To say that there is no ideal family is contradicted by the very nature of what it is to be human.
It is, of course, true that in Western societies this ideal is experienced less and less but it nonetheless remains as an essential ideal which is real. It is a reality written into the genetic fabric of each human person. Realities may be greater than ideals but there is no ideal more real than the deepest nature of the human person. We cannot deny this. To say that there is no ideal family is such a denial.
Given the new power of the secularist colonisation of marriage, if the Church does not propose the ideal of what is ultimately beautiful, true and good in marriage and family life, where are young people to go in search of it? How else will the increasingly unspoken rights of children to the love of their mothers and fathers be vindicated?
Progressivism
We have to move from this adolescent progressivism that characterises so much of our public debate about marriage and family life into an adult understanding of them, which is tested by how committed we are to protecting the dignity of every child to know his or her own mother and father. For as Nelson Mandela said: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
To say that there is no ideal family also fundamentally undermines the way of proceeding set out in Amoris Laetitia to help families that are struggling or conflicted, which, in truth, applies in varying degrees to all families. Ironically, the Church’s offer of this assistance to all families is precisely what this quotation of Archbishop Martin is seeking to capture. Instead, it serves to block an invitation to conversion.
“The way of proceeding” is a Jesuit term arising from its founder St Ignatius of Loyola. He urges us to be ‘contemplatives in action’, which means that life is understood as being in a state of motion, of constant formation and revelation, which necessitates continuous discernment and integration.
Accordingly, in seeking to help and support all families, Amoris Laetitia invites those involved in giving pastoral care to distressed families to a threefold engagement of “accompanying, discerning and integrating weakness” (chapter 8).
The Christian ideal of the family is not needed to accompany a family that is conflicted or in distress. It is, however, essential for the further steps of discernment and integration for families to take place. If there is no ideal of the family to base a discernment upon, the weakness in the family cannot be integrated.
The family is then confined beneath a ceiling of mediocrity and is prevented from being lifted by the consoling presence of the Holy Spirit to realise the Christian ideal in daily life, an invitation that is constantly there for every family. For as Pope Francis says in Amoris Laetitia, “Let us remember that ‘a small step, in the midst of great human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order, but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties’”. (AL 305)
We must avoid excessive idealisation of the family but we must also avoid the denial of its ideal as otherwise the horizon of hope becomes blocked. The Church must bring the light of Christ to where families are but it must then lead them into becoming transfigured by His love.
It is in the gaze of his light that it is suggested that there are five ideals or upward steps which must be sequentially honoured at the World Meeting of Families 2018 if the potential of this event is to be practically realised. They can be described as follows by reference solely to what is written in Amoris Laetitia:
The integrity of marriage
“Christian marriage, as a reflection of the union between Christ and his Church, is fully realised in the union between a man and a woman who give themselves to each other in a free, faithful and exclusive love, who belong to each other until death and are open to the transmission of life, and are consecreated by the sacrament, which grants them the grace to become a domestic church and a leaven of new life for society.” (AL 292)
The human ecology of the family
“Respecting a child’s dignity means affirming his or her need and natural right to have a mother and a father. We are speaking not simply of the love of father and mother as individuals, but also of their mutual love, perceived as the source of one’s life and the solid foundation of the family.” (AL 172)
The domestic church
“Led by the Spirit, the family circle is not only open to life by generating it within itself but also by going forth and spreading life by caring for others and seeking their happiness. This openness finds particular expression in hospitality…The family lives its spirituality precisely by being at one and the same time a domestic church and a vital cell for transforming the world.” (AL 324)
The family as constitutive of society
“The family is a good which society cannot do without, and it ought to be protected. ‘The Church has always held it part of her mission to promote marriage and the family and to defend them against those who attack them’, especially today, when they are given scarce attention in political agendas.
“Families have the right to ‘be able to count on an adequate family policy on the part of public authorities in the juridical, economic, social and fiscal domains’.” (AL 44)
The family as a living reflection of God
The Triune God is a communion of love, and the family is its living reflection…the word of God tells us that the family is entrusted to a man, a woman and their children, so that they may become a communion of persons in the image of the union of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. (AL 11)
***
Karl Rahner once said that “the most important fact in all of theology and spirituality is that the three persons of the Trinity want to reveal themselves to each person”. They do this through our families and call us to be completely one as they are one. (John 17:21) This ideal is something that they realise through us, notwithstanding our weaknesses, mistakes, infidelities and fragility. In fact, it is the humility of a repentant heart, broken by these experiences, that can often allow for their operative grace in families to become most visible.
Every family, no matter what its history, can make the ideal of God’s love a reality in our world, once those within it experience that God loves them first.
This is the deepest purpose of the family, to enable the joy of God’s love to be found through its relationships, to satisfy the eternal longing in each of us, in the words of the poet Raymond Carver: “To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the Earth.”
This is the ideal of the family made real – to make it known to each person within its embrace that he or she is loved first, loved and needed and not to be lived without. This is the Gospel of the family, joy for the world.
Patrick Treacy is a Senior Counsel. The five ideals referred to in this article for the World Meeting of Families 2018 are explained more fully in a text entitled ‘Mission Territory – Pope Francis, Ireland and the World Meeting of Families 2018’ which can be downloaded from the homepage of the website of Integritas, a domestic centre of Christian spirituality, Ennisnag, Stoneyford, Co. Kilkenny (www.integritas.ie).