Global conference on family concludes in Bangkok

A global conference organized by the India-based international Service and Research Institute on Family and Children, SERFAC, and sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Culture opened in Bangkok, Thailand on Thursday, June 16^th and concluded on Monday, June 20^th.

For five days, an interdisciplinary group of leading churchmen, academics and professionals in a host of fields from marriage counselling to developmental psychology to the sociology of new media met – as the theme of the conference indicated – “In Defense of the Family” exploring relationships between and challenges to “family, children and culture”.

Fr. Theodore Mascarenhas is the head of the Pontifical Council for Culture’s Dept. for Asia, Africa & Oceania. He was also one of the conference’s keynote speakers. He told Vatican Radio the future of societies will depend on the strength of the family, which must be both a catalyst for change and a source of stability in dynamic, evolving societies. “First we [in Europe] neglected the family,” he said, “then we said the state must look after the family.” He went on to say:

Now, we must remember that the state, or governments, are formed from the society that you have: so, if first your family and your society got damaged, obviously that damage is going to be carried into government.

Founded in 1986 by Sr Catherine Bernard to study and teach Natural Family Planning in southern India – especially in partnership with low-income couples, conference-organizer SERFAC this year marks a quarter-century of existence.

Listen to Chris Altieri’s report: