Vatican City, Nov 17, 2014 / 04:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Children have the right to be raised by a mother and a father, Pope Francis said, emphasizing that “the family is the foundation of co-existence and a remedy against social fragmentation.” The Pope made these remarks on Nov. 17 at the opening of the three-day international, interfaith colloquium entitled The Complementarity of Man and Woman, currently underway in the Vatican. Also referred to as the “Humanum” conference, the gathering is being sponsored by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. “To reflect upon 'complementarity' is nothing less than to ponder the dynamic harmonies at the heart of all creation,” he said. “All complementarities were made by our creator, so the author of harmony achieves this harmony.” Complementarity, which is at the core of this gathering, “is a root of marriage and family,” the Pope said. “For the family grounded in marriage is the first school where we learn to appreciate our own and others' gifts, and where we begin to acquire the arts of cooperative living.” Although the family often leads to tensions – “egoism and altruism, reason and passion, immediate desires and long-range goals” – it also provides “frameworks for resolving such tensions.” Pope Francis warned against confusing complementarity with the notion that “all the roles and relations of the two sexes are fixed in a single, static pattern.” Rather, he said, “complementarity will take many forms as each man and woman brings his or her distinctive contributions to their marriage and to the formation of their children – his or her personal richness, personal charisma.” “Marriage and family are in crisis,” he said, with the “culture of the temporary” dissuading people from making the “public commitment” of marriage. “This revolution in manners and morals has often flown the flag of freedom, but in fact it has brought spiritual and material devastation to countless human beings, especially the poorest and most vulnerable.” Pope Francis noted the evidence pointing to the correlation between “the decline of marriage culture” and the increase of poverty and other “social ills”. It is women, children, and elderly persons who suffer the most from this crisis, he said. The Pope likened the crisis in the family to threats against the environment. Although there has been a growing awareness of ecological concerns, mankind has “been slower to recognize that our fragile social environments are under threat as well, slower in our culture, and also in our Catholic Church.” “We must foster a new human ecology,” he said. “The family is the foundation of co-existence and a remedy against social fragmentation,” the Holy Father continued, stressing the importance of marriage in the raising of children.   “Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child's development and emotional maturity,” he said. Pope Francis encouraged the participants in the Colloquium to especially take account of young people. “Commit yourselves, so that our youth do not give themselves over to the poisonous environment of the temporary, but rather be revolutionaries with the courage to seek true and lasting love, going against the common pattern.” He also warned against being moved by political agendas. “Family is an anthropological fact, he said, which cannot be qualified “based on ideological notions or concepts important only at one time in history.”   Pope Francis concluded his address by confirming his participation in the World Meeting of Families to take place in Philadelphia, USA, in 2015. Following the Holy Father's remarks, CDF Prefect and moderator of the colloquium's opening sessions, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, spoke at length on the central themes of the gathering. At the core of the Colloquium which has gathered representatives from diverse religious traditions, is the question of the import of man and woman's complementarity “for the relationship between the human person and God”. Recounting the Genesis account of the earth's creation, followed by that of man and woman, Cardinal Mueller said in his intervention the “difference between man and woman, both in the union of love and the generation of life, concerns God's presence in the world.” It is man's calling “to discover [this] in order to find a solid and lasting foundation and destiny for our life.” “In sexual difference,” the cardinal went on, the man and the woman “can only understand him or herself in light of the other: the male needs the female to be understood, and the same is true for the female.” It is therefore the the aim of the colloquium, Mueller concluded, “to explore the richness of sexual difference, its goodness, its character as gift, its openness to life, the path that opens up to God.” Later that morning, keynote speaker Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks opened his intervention by telling “the story of the most beautiful idea in the history of civilization: the idea of the love that brings new life into the world. There are of course many ways of telling the story, and this is just one.” The Rabbi explored the evolutionary development leading to the human family, from which emerged “the union of the biological mother and father to care for their child.” Then, with the development of cultures came the normalization of polygamy: “the ultimate expression of inequality because it means that many males never get the chance to have a wife and child.” “That is what makes the first chapter of Genesis so revolutionary,” he said, “with its statement that every human being, regardless of class, colour, culture or creed, is in the image and likeness of God himself.” Rabbi Sacks spoke at length about the development of family within the Jewish tradition, noting how the Jews were “became an intensely family oriented people, and it was this that saved us from tragedy.” From the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D through centuries of persecution, he said, “Jews survived because they never lost three things: their sense of family, their sense of community and their faith.” “Marriage and the family are where faith finds its home and where the Divine Presence lives in the love between husband and wife, parent and child,” he said. In an interview with CNA, President for the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch, reflected on the fundamentals of complementarity, beginning with the first chapter of Genesis. “We have this very beautiful idea, an image that the relationship between man and woman is an image of God,” he said. “In this sense, in the Catholic Church, the marriage between husband and wife is a Sacrament. This Sacramental issue is very important for us.” Citing the interfaith character of the Colloquium, Cardinal Koch, who served as moderator for the afternoon sessions he stressed the need to give witness about complementarity “first of all in an ecumenical way.” The chance to “give witness about family and marriage in an inter-religious dimension is a very beautiful opportunity,” he said. David Quinn, director of the IONA institute and newspaper columnist, was among the participants in the colloquium. “The conference is obviously an extremely major international gathering about the importance of marriage between a man and a woman,” he told CNA. “It’s probably the most significant gathering of its kind to date that’s been organized by the Church, and specifically by the CDF.” “The loud and clear message for me,” Quinn said, “is the importance of the complementarity of men and women, and particularly the right of a child to be raised by their own mother and father whenever that is possible.” Citing Ireland’s upcoming referendum on same-sex marriage, set to occur in 2015, Quinn said “this is obviously a loud and clear message that people need to hear. That the sexes are complimentary.” “This is imbedded in the very nature of marriage itself. You deny the nature of marriage if you deny the importance of the complementarity of the sexes, and above all if you deny that mothers and fathers should raise children together.” Read more

Vatican City, Nov 17, 2014 / 01:11 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Updated November 17, 2014 at 6:25a.m. MST. Adds comments from Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi SJ at paragraphs 9-10. Pope Francis on Monday officially announced that he will visit the U.S. in September 2015, including a visit to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. “I wish to confirm, if God wills it, that in September of 2015 I will go to Philadelphia for the Eighth World Meeting of Families,” he announced at Vatican City's Synod Hall Nov. 17 during his remarks at an international colloquium on the complementarity of man and woman. The Philadelphia World Meeting of Families will take place from Sept. 22-27. Even before the Pope's announcement, the meeting was expected to draw tens of thousands of people. Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia had told a gathering of Catholic bishops last week that a papal visit would likely result in crowds of about 1 million. A global Catholic event, the world meeting seeks to support and strengthen families. St. John Paul II founded the event in 1994, and it takes place every three years. Archbishop Chaput had previously hinted that Pope Francis would attend the 2015 meeting, although he cautioned that the visit had not been officially confirmed. In March 2014, a Pennsylvania delegation including Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter visited the Vatican to help encourage the Pope to visit the U.S. On Thursday, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the head of the Holy See’s permanent observer mission to the United Nations, told the Associated Press “if he comes to Philadelphia, he will come to New York.” The 70th anniversary of the U.N.’s founding would be “the ideal time” for a papal visit, the archbishop said Nov. 13. Next year also marks the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s 1965 visit to the U.N., the first such visit from a Pope. In August, on his return flight from South Korea, Pope Francis said he wanted to visit the U.S. in 2015 for the Philadelphia gathering. He also noted that he had received invitations from President Barack Obama, Congress and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, as well as from Mexico. However, despite the anticipation of the Pope's possible visit to New York and Washington while in the U.S., Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J. told journalists shortly after the announcement that as of now nothing else is confirmed. The Pope, he explained, “didn't say anything about any other steps or moments in his trip to America. He guaranteed his presence to the organizers of the World Day for Families, but as for the rest, I have no concrete information.” Pope Francis has visited the Holy Land and Albania as well as South Korea. He will visit France and Turkey in November, and Sri Lanka and the Philippines in January 2015. He will return to France for a longer visit in 2015. In June, the Pope accepted an invitation to visit Mexico, though a date for the visit was not announced. The World Meeting of Families will take place shortly before the October 2015 meeting of the Synod of Bishops on the Family, which will discuss the mission of the family in the Church and in the world. At the last World Meeting of Families in Milan, Italy, in 2012, more than 1 million people representing 153 nations attended a papal Mass with Pope Benedict XVI. The 2015 meeting's theme is “Love is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive.” The meeting will include many speakers and breakout sessions. Keynote speakers include Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, Cardinal Robert Sarah, professor Helen Alvare, and Dr. Juan Francisco de la Guardia Brin and Gabriela N. de la Guardia. The Philadelphia meeting will mark the first time that the event will be held in the United States. Registration for the 2015 World Meeting of Families began on Nov. 10. The World Meeting of Families website is www.worldmeeting2015.org. It is on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/WorldMeeting2015 and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/WMF2015. Read more

Vatican City, Nov 16, 2014 / 09:23 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis made an appeal for peace and dialogue with members of immigrant communities in his remarks after the weekly recitation of the Angelus in Saint Peter’s Square on Sunday. The P... Read more

Vatican City, Nov 15, 2014 / 07:53 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has told a group of Catholic doctors that “playing with life” in ways like abortion and euthanasia is sinful, and he stressed that each human life, no matter the condition, is sacred. “We're are living in a time of experimentation with life. But a bad experiment… (we’re) playing with life,” the Pope told an audience of 4,000 Catholic doctors gathered in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall on Nov. 15. “Be careful, because this is a sin against the Creator: against God the Creator.” Pope Francis offered his words in an address given to members of the Italian Catholic Doctors Association in celebration of their 70th anniversary. He recalled that many times in his years as a priest he heard people object to the Church’s position on life issues, specifically asking why the Church is against abortion. After explaining to the inquirer that the Church is not against abortion because it is simply a religious or philosophical issue, he said it’s also because abortion “is a scientific problem, because there is a human life and it's not lawful to take a human life to solve a problem.” Regardless of the many objections he has heard saying that modern thought has evolved on the issue, the Pope stressed that “in ancient thought and in modern thought, the word ‘kill’ means the same!” “(And) the same goes for euthanasia,” he explained, observing that as a result of “this culture of waste, a hidden euthanasia is practiced on the elderly.” This, he said, is like telling God: “’at the end of life I do it, like I want.’ It's a sin against God. Think well about this.” The belief that abortion is helpful for women, that euthanasia is “an act of dignity,” or that it’s “a scientific breakthrough to ‘produce’ a child (who is) considered a right instead of accepted as a gift” are all part of conventional wisdom that offers a false sense of compassion, he said. And this includes “(the) use of human life as laboratory mice supposedly to save others,” the Pope continued, saying that on the contrary, the Gospel provides a true image of compassion in the figure of the Good Samaritan, who sees a man suffering, has mercy on him, goes close and offers concrete help. With today’s rapid scientific and technological advancements the possibility of physical healing has drastically increased, the Pope observed. However, the ability to truly care for the person has almost gone in the opposite direction. Some aspects of medical science “seem to diminish the ability to ‘take care’ of the person, especially when they are suffering, fragile and defenseless,” he said, explaining that advancements in science and medicine can only enhance human life if they maintain their ethical roots. “Attention to human life, particularly to those in the greatest difficulty, that is, the sick, the elderly, children, deeply affects the mission of the Church,” the Bishop of Rome continued, saying that often times modern society tends to attach one’s quality of life to economic possibilities. Frequently the quality of a person’s life is measured by their physical beauty and well-being, he observed, noting how the more important interpersonal, spiritual and religious dimensions of human life are often forgotten. “In reality, in the light of faith and of right reason, human life is always sacred and always ‘of quality’,” he said. “No human life exists that is more sacred that the other, just like there is no human life qualitatively more significant than another solely in virtue of resources, rights, economic opportunities and higher social status.” Pope Francis told the group that as Catholic doctors, it is their mission to affirm the sacredness and inviolability of human life, which “must be loved, defended and cared for,” through word and example, each in their own personal style. He encouraged them to collaborate with others, including those with different religions, in seeking to promote the dignity of the human being as a basic criterion of their work, and to follow the Gospel’s instruction to love at all times, especially when there is a special need. “Your mission as doctors puts you in daily contact with so many forms of suffering,” he said, and he encouraged them to imitate the Good Samaritan in caring for the elderly, the sick and the disabled. By remaining faithful to the Gospel of Life and respecting life as a gift, difficult decisions will come up that at times require courageous choices that go against the popular current, the pontiff noted, saying that this faithfulness can also lead “to conscientious objection.” “This is what the members of your association have done in the course of 70 years of meritorious work,” the Pope observed, urging the doctors to continue implementing the teachings of the Magisterium into their work with trust and humility.   Read more

Vatican City, Nov 15, 2014 / 06:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Following the dramatic and media-hyped Extraordinary Synod last month, the Vatican is hosting a colloquium seeking to find “new and creative language to speak to people where they are.” This is according to Helen Alvaré, professor of law at George Mason University, and communications liaison for the Humanum Colloquium, which will run from Nov. 17­-19 at the Vatican. The gathering is sponsored by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. The aim of the conference, Alvaré told CNA, is “to assist the entire project of the man and the woman in marriage by helping [to promote] a greater understanding of what this relationship is as a human institution.” The gathering seeks to offer support for those “who hope for marriage, but sometimes despair, and for people who are struggling with it if they have it.” Based on the papers which will be presented at the conference, she said, the speakers will be approaching the notion of complementarity by promoting an appreciation for its beauty, as well as its benefits for “men and women at the level of the couple, the level of the family, the level of the community.” The gathering brings together experts from around the world and diverse religious traditions, including Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim, and so on. Despite these religious and cultural differences, Alvaré said, the themes linking the presentation on marriage are “so incredibly common that really do get at the reality of the relationship between a man and a woman as a natural human institution.” For instance, one theme which appears across the board, she said, is that of time: namely, the time it takes to understand their relationship, to discover how their similarities and otherness, and the qualities of their interaction “leads both of them to a higher place,” and “how their differences are the source of some of their strongest happiness.” Another theme was the beauty of self­gift: namely, “of unselfishness, of avoiding ego, of gift, of service, of sacrifice.” This notion of gift, she said, is “globally speaking and inter­religiously speaking.” In addition to presentations by experts from a wide range of religious traditions, the three day gathering includes the showing of these short films about the family: “The Destiny of Humanity: On the Meaning of Marriage,” “Understanding Man and Woman,” and “Challenge and Hope for a New Generation”. The videos were chosen because “visuals, beauty is an important component of teaching, of persuading, and also of helping,” Alvaré said. “It’s something new, useful, beautiful, that touches people in a place where maybe words don’t touch them, or haven’t yet. It’s a classic approach, a classic way that the Church in the past has spoken. It’s a way that the world is attempting to characterize the relationship between the man and the woman.” Although the agenda for the colloquium was set long before last month's Extraordinary Synod on the Family, Alvaré said the interventions which will be delivered nonetheless answer the call made by the Synod fathers to find new ways to speak old truths. “And that is, I would say, a hallmark, maybe even the soul, of this conference.” The witnesses given by representatives of more than a dozen different religious traditions, Alvaré said, “are in and of themselves something creative and new.” She also cited the beautiful imagery provoked by the short films which will be featured on each day of the conference, using “what art has always been to the Church ­­ a way of communicating truths in a different fashion.” The final document of the Synod also addressed the need to invite “the witness of men and women the world over”. This is achieved by the films, she said, in their representation of men and women from diverse states in life: married and single, young and old, those happy and those struggling, hailing from various cultural and religious traditions. “The Synod invited this kind of contribution because we are dealing with a human institution experiencing problems that requires a human response,” she said. “How do you get that? You look to a wide variety of human beings.” Noting how the Relatio spoke about “the couple as sort of the heart of the marriage and family,” Alvaré said that this is where colloquium begins: with the couple. It explores “how [this relationship] works, how it’s lived, how people struggle with it, stereotypes of it that are false... And that’s a great way to begin.” Read more