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 EWTN News,
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 EWTN News.
“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.”
-- EWTN NEWS
Christian joy is borne out of nearness to Christ, said Pope Francis
during his Angelus address for the third Sunday of Advent, adding that
“gloomy-faced” saints are a contradiction.
In a video message delivered to the displaced Iraqi Christians on
Saturday, Pope Francis decried the suffering experienced by those
persecuted for their faith, while expressing his gratitude for their
witness. 
As Nigeria's general elections draw near, the archbishop of the central
city of Jos warned candidates not to put political agendas over people's
safety and urged more rapid solutions to Boko Haram violence.
Pope Francis cautioned against the false appearances of those who are
proud or vain, saying that true holiness is found in the silent,
everyday witness of the poor and humble.
In an executive order, the mayor of Manila has declared a five-day,
non-working holiday for Pope Francis’ Jan. 15-19 visit – a decision the
Philippine government is considering on a national level.
In keeping with his usual tradition on papal trips, Pope Francis held an
in-flight press conference on his way back to Rome, in which he opened
up about the debate surrounding last month’s Synod of Bishops.
Pope Francis in his weekly general audience said that the Church on
earth is on a pilgrimage to heaven guided by the Lord, who will lead us
to the fullness of joy and truth at the end of time.
Pope Francis said Tuesday that brotherhood and a spirit of mutual
service are needed to overcome conflict, telling the Council of Europe
that both the continent and Christianity have special roles to play in
this work.
While Pope Francis was applauded at the European Parliament on Tuesday
at his mention of children “killed even before being born” as among the
victims of a “throwaway” culture, the European Court for Human Rights
has said regulating the treatment of infants born-alive 
Pope Francis’ address to the European Parliament touched on a variety of
issues, all of which, he said, ought to promote the “centrality” of the
human person so that a true cultural renewal can be attained.
God's love is the “source” and “destination” of all holiness, said Pope
Francis on Nov. 24, speaking of India's newly declared saints during a
Mass of thanksgiving in the Vatican.
In
his ad limina address to the bishops of Zambia on Monday, Pope Francis
urged them to continue to build upon the efforts of missionaries to the
country, a quarter of whose people are Catholic, and who are nearly all
Christian.
On the Feast of Christ the King, during the canonization Mass of six new
saints, Pope Francis said that Jesus Christ’s kingdom comes through his
works of mercy--works that Christians must imitate with tenderness.
Pope Francis condemned priests and laity who turn their parishes into a
“business” by charging for things such as baptisms, blessings and Mass
intentions – calling it a scandal that's hard to forgive. 
In his homily on Thursday Pope Francis
said that the Gospel scene in which Jesus wept for Jerusalem’s closed
heart is repeated today with those in the Church who are afraid to let
him work in their lives.
One of the lessons learned from this week's Vatican conference on
marriage, say organizers, is that the beauty of man and woman's
complementarity is not political, but is rather the human experience. 
In his weekly general audience address Pope Francis said that
holiness can never be selfish, but is a gift that must be put into
practice through daily witness and attentiveness to the needs of others.
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.
