The “indissoluble bond” of the Catholic Church with its members,
including those struggling to live up to Church teaching on family life,
“is the most transparent sign of the faithful and merciful love of
God”, Pope Francis has said.
While many people today struggle to live the Christian ideal of
marriage and family life, the chief task of the Church’s theologians and
pastoral ministers is not to point to failures, but to draw close to
people “so that grace can ransom them, reanimate them and heal them”,
the Pope told staff, faculty and students of the Rome-based Pontifical
John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.
Formally opening the institute’s 2016-17 academic year, Pope Francis
paid tribute to the “farsighted intuition” of St John Paul II who, in
1981, founded the institute of graduate studies focused on Catholic
teaching about the family.
In addition to the main campus at Rome’s Pontifical Lateran
University, the institute now has branches or affiliates in the United
States, Benin, Brazil, India, Mexico, Spain and Australia.
According to the Sydney-based Catholic Weekly, the day before Pope
Francis met the group, Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne announced the
Australia campus would close after 2018 for financial reasons.
In August, Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia as
chancellor of the institute, calling for a renewal of its programme and
structures to ensure that “a pastoral perspective and attention to the
wounds of humanity should never be lacking”.
Addressing the students and faculty, Pope Francis said it was
important to remember that the treasure of being created and loved by
God is something human beings carry “in earthen vessels” and is fragile.
“Grace exists, just as sin does,” he said. “Therefore we must learn
not to resign ourselves to human failure, but to support the ‘ransoming’
of the Creator’s design at all costs.”
Repeating a line from Amoris Laetitia, his apostolic exhortation on
the family, Pope Francis told the students and staff: “At times we have
proposed a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of
marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical
possibilities of real families. This excessive idealisation, especially
when we have failed to inspire trust on God’s grace, has not helped to
make marriage more desirable and attractive, but quite the opposite.”
The bonds of married couples and families “are put to the test in
many ways” today, he said.
Individualism, a conception of freedom that
is disconnected from any sense of responsibility to others, indifference
to the common good, “ideologies that directly attack the family
project” and growing poverty all threaten families as well as society
itself.
Marriage and family life are based on “God’s design” for “the
alliance of man and woman”, he said. That requires “cooperation and
respect, generous dedication and responsible sharing, an ability to
recognise differences as a richness and a promise, and not as a
motivation for subjugation and an abuse of power.”
But rather than encouraging efforts to understand the other, he said,
modern culture seems to want “to cancel differences” rather than
resolve the tensions that stem from them. Such an attitude undermines
marriage, but also undermines any attempt to build a peaceful society
where all sorts of differences are acknowledged and valued.
“In effect,” he said, “when things go well between man and woman, the
world and history go well, too. Failing that, the world becomes
inhospitable and history stalls.”
Pope Francis urged theologians and students at the institute to seek
ways to help Catholic families “be more aware of the gift of grace they
bear and be proud of being able to put it at the service of all the poor
and abandoned who despair of ever being able to find or rediscover” the
grace of God’s love for them.
Catholic theology and pastoral work, he said, also must take a much
more positive approach in focusing less on how people are going astray
and more on being close to them and giving them the guidance and support
they need and deserve as members of the Church.
“Theology and pastoral concern go hand in hand,” the Pope said. “A
theological doctrine that does not let itself be guided and shaped by
the Church’s evangelising purpose and pastoral concern is just as
unthinkable as a pastoral plan that does not know how to treasure
revelation and tradition with a view to better understanding and
transmitting the faith.”