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Letter #32, 2015: Eleven Cardinals and a Pope[2015-08-28][Engleză]August 26, 2015, Wednesday Eleven Cardinals and a PopeIntroductory note We have just come out with a special 132-page Commemorative Edition of Inside the Vatican magazine, welcoming Pope Francis to America. At the center of the issue is a beautiful, deeply moving Photo Essay on "The Beatitudes of Pope Francis." This Photo Essay alone makes this magazine well worth obtaining, reading, and keeping. We would like you to receive and read this issue. All you have to do is click here, order a subscription, and you will receive this issue as the first issue of your subscription. We have been passionate about keeping our publication in print, and we continue to be so. We think it is important. If you agree, why not consider a subscription? The annual price of $49.95 is similar to a family pizza dinner. Not an insignificant cost, but not so enormous that it is a daunting prospect. We hope some of you, after seeing this beautiful Special Commemorative Edition, will say, "Ok, this magazine is worth supporting." Nothing could be more helpful for us than a few dozen, or a few hundred, new subscribers. So consider ordering a subscription beginning with this Special Commemorative Edition, and please consider becoming a supporter of the magazine. If you would like to subscribe but for some reason cannot order on the internet, please let me know by return email -- but include your complete mailing address. Or call, in the US, to our fulfillment house toll-free: 1-800-789-9494. ==================== Papal and Cardinalatial Reflections on the Family "Are we able to think of God as the caress that holds us in life, before which there was nothing? A caress from which nothing, not even death, can detach us?" Pope Francis today in Rome at his Wednesday General Audience. The talk is one more in a series of reflections on the family in the lead-up to the October Bishops' Synod on the Family (October 4-25) Cohabitation prior to sacramental marriage is very rare and exceptional among young members of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. This irregular type of union is not at all approved of by Indian society. Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, 56, Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church in Trivandrum, in the southern province of Kerala, India, in his essay for the book Eleven Cardinals Speak on Marriage and the Family, due out from Ignatius Press on September 4. He is also head of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India The more our world of today is sunk down in immorality, the more there is need for the Church to be a light to the world for all to see. Cardinal John Onaiyekan, 71, Archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria, in his essay for the same book, Eleven Cardinals Speak on Marriage and the Family, due out from Ignatius Press on September 4 "Why did God make families? So we would not have to fight with strangers." Old saying ==================== Misinformation, disinformation and partial information rage as we approach this fall's Synod on the Family. The very "sensus fidelium" (the "sense of the faithful"), which Catholic tradition holds always remains firm and reliable even when tested in the currents of intense theological debate, seems itself troubled and vacillating, as the results of certain recent surveys and polls show (more than 70% of German Catholics recently polled said they would like to see homosexual partnerships recognized and blessed by the Church; see below, end of this email.) This is startling. Clearly, the traditional faith of many Christians has been influenced, and altered, by the broader culture. The Effort of Pope Francis Pope Francis has been at pains to "square the circle" -- to support an opening to more effective and loving pastoral care and concern for families in troubled and irregular situations, while maintaining the perennial teaching of the Church on the indissolubility of marriage as a permanent union between one man and one woman. In recent weeks, Francis has been giving a series of talks on the family which are evidently designed to provide a certain framework for the October Synod's discussions. His latest catechesis, from today in Rome, is a moving treatment of prayer. The Pope strongly encourages families to pray together. And, strikingly, he gives an eloquent insight into his own understanding of how one develops a "personal relationship" with God in and through prayer. "We think of the formulation of the great Commandment, which supports all the others: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might' (Deuteronomy 6:5; cf. Matthew 22:37)," the Pope begins. "The formula uses the intensive language of love, pouring it over God," he continues. "See, the spirit of prayer abides first of all here." The Pope is saying prayer is not perfunctory, or directed above all to one's own needs and concerns, but rather something living, spontaneous, alive, and directed toward a God one knows personally and loves. "Are we able to think of God as the caress that holds us in life, before which there was nothing?" the Pope asks. "A caress from which nothing, not even death, can detach us? Or do we only think of Him as the great Being, the Almighty who has made everything, the Judge who controls every action?" Francis sums up: "Only when God is the affection of all our affections does the meaning of these words become full. Then we feel happy, and also somewhat confused, because He thinks of us and, above all, He loves us!" Enter the 11 Cardinals... While the Pope is giving these weekly instructions on marriage and the family, other Church leaders have been giving interviews, and writing articles, in an evident desire to set forth guidelines and parameters for the synodal discussions. This effort has now produced a book which will come out from Ignatius Press on September 4 entitled Eleven Cardinals Speak on Marriage and the Family. This book, reviewed below, is essentially a defense of traditional Catholic teaching on marriage, and the 11 cardinals, from many different countries and continents, eloquently defend the idea that marriage and family are something precious, beautiful, though subject to wounding and suffering. Two Points: Beauty and Fragility... Two points perhaps need to be emphasized. First, that in the indissolubility of marriage, taught by Christ and defended over the centuries by the Church, there is something that surpasses all material considerations and rises to the level of the mystical. This is the reason the defense of marriage is not only a pragmatic matter -- the need to provide a safe, stable, loving environment for children, a "womb in the world," as it were, following the nine months in the mother's womb -- but also a philosophical, theological, metaphysical and mystical matter, that is, a matter that touches on the very highest things humans can know and contemplate and be molded and formed by. A stable marital union provides not only physical security to the two spouses and their children -- and their children's children, and their children as well. It also provides a metaphysical landscape, a country of the soul, within which not only bodies, but also souls, can live, grow, and flourish. This is why, in small Italian villages, where daily life could be tough, in the old days, when one asked a villager what was the most important thing in human life, they often would say, without even pausing to reflect, "La famiglia" -- the family. Because the family transcends the individual. The family comes before and comes after the individual. And this is why a society which exalts the individual, which turns the individual into a type of demigod, seems intent on diminishing the family, on loosening or even dissolving the ties of brotherhood and sisterhood, of fatherhood and motherhood, of all those family loyalties that were once thought to be of the highest importance for a person's life. That is why this issue is not in the end an economic one, or even a matter of civic or state interest, but rather a matter of those ultimate moral principles which provide a framework for the moral development of the human person, for an understanding of reciprocity, of sharing, of sacrificing, of loving and forgiving, of what God's "unconditional love" may be like -- a love that is "forever" (even when, as may happen, personal emotions and feelings no longer support and ensure that unconditionality). Then, the Shadow... And then we come to the shadow. This is the second point that needs to be emphasized. A shadow, sooner or later, falls into each of our lives, into each of our relationships, and even into spousal and family relationships. A shadow of selfishness, misunderstanding, anger, self-justification, sin. This shadow causes division, casts the beautiful reciprocity of relationships into a certain darkness, leading often to the destruction of those relationships, humanly speaking. Brothers may turn against brothers, fathers against sons, daughters against mothers, and spouses against spouses. This is when the unity of the family -- that high ideal which is in fact often a profound and much-appreciated reality -- is torn and, tragically, in too many cases, broken. We have in the story of the Prodigal Son a story of broken family unity. And we all know of other such stories... Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com Contor Accesări: 923, Ultimul acces: 2026-07-31 16:10:59
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