A Big Party for Families

A Big Party for Families

The Church is hosting a celebration for families around the world. The 6th World Meeting of Families took place in January 2009 in Mexico City, Mexico. Mexico has the second largest Catholic population in the world. The Meeting is held every three years. World Meetings of Families were begun by Pope John Paul II, who convoked the first one in Rome in 1994. Successive world meetings have been held in Brazil in 1997, in Rome in 2000, in the Philippines in 2003 and in Spain in 2006. The opening address in Mexico City was given before 10,000 participants and the final Mass on the Sunday included over one million people. The theme for this year’s Conference is: The Family as Teacher in Human and Christian Values.

A participant commented in the news; "

A lot of people are waking up. I've seen a lot of people who are already actively trying to help their family. People are coming back to the faith. They want to fix their family relationships. They are discovering that their family relationships are breaking apart, and this is because they haven't put God first. They stopped invoking him. They've stopped going to Mass. They stopped going to catechism or sending their children to catechism. And now that they see problems, they want to come back."

What are some of the main themes from the World Meeting?

Rights of Families

Everyone talks about rights today. However, they are usually talking about their own individualistic rights as absolute rights. The Christian vision also looks to the rights of the family and how the family can grow and be the foundation of a new humanity and a new civilisation of love. Rights also correspond to duties.

Family as the standard-bearer of society

If we truly wish a better world then we need to strengthen the family. In the family people learn humanity and how to love, or not. The family is the school of faith, especially in the face of the ethical and moral relativism, which is so prevalent today. The family is the place to learn freedom from the slavery of the 21

st

century – namely pornography and drugs. The family crisis, however, is not just a problem of morals; it goes much deeper and is rooted in various misunderstandings about the very nature of men and women and what it means to be human.

A cultural Battle

Political lobbies and pressure groups – usually with substantial financial backing – promote a vision of the world without God. They promote a disorder in values, where, for example, certain nations adopt laws that recognize homosexual couples as marriages, and even permit them to adopt children. They swamp society with the ideology of “gender theory”, which basically means that if someone is male or female it doesn’t make any difference, it is irrelevant. The subjective desires of the individual are paramount making the sexual difference practically insignificant, to the point of trying to equate heterosexual union and homosexual relations. According to this ideology the sexual difference inscribed in the biological reality of the man and the woman does not have significant influence in the sexual identity of the individuals because it is the result of a subjective orientation and a social construction. These well-organized pressure groups pursue their own interests to the detriment of the common good and a healthy society.

Family as the School of Love

We need to appreciate more the huge contradiction between the teachings of the Church regarding life and love and what it means to be human and the policies and rhetoric of powerful national and international governments and organizations. At the root of the enormous gap between the Church's call to respect the 'language of the human body' and the gift of human life and positions assumed by influential groups and governments about marriage and children, lies an impoverished and incomplete appreciation for the meaning of life itself: loving service, death to self as the path to 'finding oneself.'" For most people the family is the place where one learns to love, or not. At crucial developmental periods in life, if we do not come to understand what it means to experience an attentive, secure, sacrificial love, we will likely find it much more difficult to give and receive love later on. The family, as a "school of love", is "relentless" in assigning homework on the subject of the give and take of unconditional human love.

Life Lessons

The family is also where people learn many important life lessons that we can’t learn, in the same way, anywhere else. The family is where we first see the building of a bridge between males and females, between younger and older, and between diverse personalities. We learn the meaning of compromise, sacrifices and sharing. We learn what religion 'looks like' when it is lived out. We learn to forgive and experience first hand what fidelity means.

Cherishing the Gift

In the family, we learn - because we experience it totally with our bodies, our minds, our emotions and our spirits - the relationship between adult love and the blessing and gift of children. In the family, we practice loving the human person in his or her entirety - their body, their soul, their gifts, their promise, their hopes - and we love persons from the first moment of their existence to their last without exception. Is it any surprise, then, as John Paul II has said so often, that the family is where we get our first and most important glimpse of the character and quality of God's love? Marriage and the gift of children remain among the greatest blessings God has given us. Human beings in history will always glimpse God's face in such love. The unique constellation of total union, commitment, fidelity, and openness to new life that is marriage, will continue to offer the safest haven for the children God entrusts us. Like our Mother Mary, our inspiration, we must heed God's words, 'Do not be afraid' as we recommit ourselves to God's causes in marriage, motherhood and fatherhood.

Re-discover the Beauty

Christians should not focus all their energies on combating a secular and erroneous concept of marriage. Rather they should rediscover its beauty for themselves and propose this ideal to the world by living it in joy and conviction. Christians need to rediscover the biblical ideal of marriage and family so they can promote this ideal to the world. We propose our vision to he world with our actions and life, more than with our words and ideas. Perhaps Pope Benedict’s Encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" received such an ""uncommonly positive" welcome around the world, precisely because it is an Encyclical that insists on this vision of human love as a reflection of the love of God. The strategy, is not "to combat the world" but to "dialogue with it, drawing out the good even from criticisms and opposition.

The Virtue of Solidarity

Solidarity is key to discovering the truth about the family and the foundation for building a civilization of love. The concept of solidarity was first expressed by socialist Pierre Leroux as an alternative to "the Christian idea of love -- as the new, rational and effective response to social problems." However, it was Pope John Paul II, who purified the concept of solidarity, even to the point of describing solidarity as 'undoubtedly a Christian virtue' which 'finds its deepest roots in Christian faith' and 'is expressed in Christian love.' Often we speak in this regard about “communion”. We are all created in the image and likeness of God, i.e. this doesn’t simply mean that we are fashioned as such, but it also means that we should function as an image of God – committed to a life of loving communion with others. Solidarity's role in and through the family is more than just another 'social virtue' along with truth, freedom, justice, subsidiarity and charity. If solidarity's future must be built upon this communion of persons, then the champion of this communion is first and foremost the family. Without solidarity within the family, there can be no solidarity beyond the family.

More than a Meal

It is no more complicated than sitting down together at the table, but simply sharing family meals is key for children's development. The breakdown of the family is a symptom of a sick and weak society. Problems of all sorts increase in irregular families: Women are more likely to be abused, kids are more likely to use drugs, and women and children of broken families have a higher probability of living in poverty. Though it cannot be the solution for every problem, the simple act of eating together as a family has an effect on the development of children. According to a study done by the National Centre on Substance and Addiction at Colombia University, when comparing adolescents who eat dinner 0-2 times a week with their families and those who eat dinner 5-7 times, those who eat with their families more frequently are 40% more like to talk to their parents about a problem. Meanwhile, 171% of the teens who don't eat with their families note more tension at home. Academic performance went up 38%. Kids were 142% less likely to smoke, 93% less likely to drink, 191% less likely to use marijuana and 169% less likely to have more than half of their friends be drug users.

Parents take charge!

Parents must take hope that it is possible to pass on Christian values to their children, and take action to claim the right to educate their families. Some families do this brilliantly with great effort and devotion. However, he pointed out that many families fall short of this, because they have delegated much of their responsibility as educators to the local schools. No matter how good the school is in transmitting Christian values – and we have lots of fantastic schools in this regard – it can never substitute the education at home. Another force that takes education out of the hands of the family is the so-called "global youth culture." In this culture, the two most influential forces are the "sexual revolution" and the music and entertainment industry – aimed at a teenage audience. Instead of being introduced into a culture of love, children were and are abandoned to a culture of the use of each other for pleasure. Parents must wake up and take action! We must recall that it is our inalienable duty and therefore also our inalienable right to educate our own children. We need to spend time with children so as to transmit values, and become involved in their education for life. The unhealthy global youth culture is not an irresistible force. It is possible to pass on our own Christian culture. Many parents and families are already doing it.

Chastity Education

Sex education is chastity education - and these are lessons best taught in the family. The family creates favourable climate for sex education in a hyper-sexualized culture. However, there is a need to win back what the word “chastity” means. We need to clarify the concept of chastity: This virtue is a spiritual energy, which knows how to defend love from the dangers of egotism and aggressiveness, and knows now to promote it toward its total fulfilment. The reduction of sexuality to the merely instinctual dimension has favoured, moreover, in its most extreme and lowest manifestations, the spread of pornography and sexual violence. It is urgent for families to take on the primary role that they have in the affective and moral formation of their children. We can give children a lasting support and help through motivating them to sense their own dignity, to help them develop the capacity to possess and control oneself, openness to interior balance, and to be committed to the values of procreation, life and the family. We need to introduce them to the full truth about the human person and support them in loving the truth.

The Humpty Dumpty Syndrome

Are you as oblivious as Humpty Dumpty when it comes to the media, naively considering yourself a critical thinker when in actuality, you meekly swallow the preaching of today's opinion-makers? A great deal of the content to which children and young people are exposed through the media, is an educational challenge for the family. Violent content promotes violent actions. The same is true for TV programs with sexual content. What is worrisome is not limited to what is shown but "how it is presented," he said, noting a study that showed 80% of adolescent programming included sexual content. The media industry’s presentation of reality is like a set of crazy mirrors in front of a society, where everything can become a bit distorted and, in effect, unreal. Like Humpty Dumpty, the egg who was oblivious to his fragility, people are impoverished in their capacity to grasp reality due to the effects of media. They don’t take seriously enough that the media and entertainment industry for many families is the “master of the house” and the most influential teacher.

The Meeting of families in Mexico, involving approximately 80 nations, has a powerful message for the world. The families and speakers come from all five continents. The participation of families and individuals from Africa is particularly notable, proving that despite the distance and the cultural diversity, the value of the family and the formation of children is a constant in all of the cultures of the world. More than 150 presenters have come together to share their diverse charismas and support-tools in achieving a healthy and harmonious development in the family, as much in the economic realm as in the cultural and spiritual. Let’s hope that their message can be heard and can become the motivation for change.

(Father Duncan McVicar, taken from the News Bulletin)

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Article - A Big Party for Families