(Vatican Radio) The Church is called to defend the family and marriage from every
possible misrepresentation of their true nature, said Pope Benedict on Friday, as
he greeted the first group of Bishops from France to travel to Rome on their 5 yearly
Ad Limina pilgrimage. Emer McCarthy reports:
The group from western France
– led by Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard - were received by the Holy Father in
Castel Gandolfo, who focused his address on the role of the laity in the life of the
Church as well as the risk of an excessive "bureaucratization" of ministry in the
diocese.
He urged the prelates to defend the family, which is threatened today
by wrong conceptions of human nature. "Defense of life and the family in society -
the Pope said - is not retrograde, but rather prophetic" because it helps to "promote
the values that allow the full development of the human person created in the image
and likeness of God" :
Quoting from Sacramentum Caritatis, the Pope
said. “The good that the Church and society as a whole expect from marriage and from
the family founded upon marriage is so great as to call for full pastoral commitment
to this particular area." Marriage and the family, he added, "are institutions that
must be promoted and defended from every possible misrepresentation of their true
nature, since whatever is injurious to them is in fact injurious to human coexistence
as such".
Pope Benedict also focused on life in the Christian community, noting
that "the solution to the diocesan pastoral needs" can not be limited to " organizational
issues".
"There is a risk - he observed – of over emphasizing efficiency resulting
in a kind of bureaucratization of pastoral care that focuses on structures, organizations
and programs, which can become self-referential for the exclusive use of the members
of these structures ". This, he added, will have little effect on "the life of Christians
who distant from regular practice." Evangelization, he warned, requires that we start
"from a personal encounter with the Lord, a dialogue rooted in prayer."
The
Pope then turned his attention to the laity who are called to carry out duties in
the Church: “We must encourage respect for the difference between the common priesthood
of all the faithful and the ministerial priesthood of those who have been ordained."
Differences "not only in degree, but in their very nature." For this reason, he said,
"fidelity to the deposit of faith as taught by the Magisterium" must be encouraged
and "professed by the whole Church." It is important, he said, that the collaboration
between laity and priests "always take place within the framework of ecclesial communion
around the bishop who is its guarantor."
Finally, Benedict XVI recalled his
Apostolic visit to France in 2008. A visit, he reiterated, which aimed to stress the
Christian roots of the country that provide a solid basis on which to support efforts
to the new evangelization.