2014-11-18 15:23:00

Rabbi Sachs and Sr Prudence on challenges to family life


(Vatican Radio) The importance of the family as the backbone of society and the complementarity of men and women in all the world’s major religious traditions is the subject of a three day interfaith conference taking place here in the Vatican this week. Following an introduction by Pope Francis on Monday, conference participants have been sharing experience and challenges from different countries and from their various faith communities.

Among those addressing the conference is the former Chief Rabbi of the UK and the Commonwealth, Jonathan Sachs, who noted that in Britain there will soon be more than 50% of all children born outside of marriage….

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The result of the decline in stable, two parent families, Rabbi Sachs says, is a rise among young people in eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, depression, suicide attempts and other stress-related symptoms. Three million children are living in an affluent society in this new form of poverty of the single parent family and it’s women who are bearing the brunt because they are the heads of 92% of those families.

One million children will grow up never knowing or meeting their fathers, Rabbi Sachs says, and this is leading to an unprecedented divide between these disadvantaged kids and those growing up in stable, two parent families who will be advantaged in every way. This is a scandal, he says, and it needs someone to stand up for those children who are the victims of this widespread desertion of marriage.

Also speaking on the first day of the conference was Sr Prudence Allen, a member of the chaplaincy team at Lancaster University in England and a newly appointed member of the International Theological Commission. She talked about the principles of complementarity, as well as the rise of sex and gender ideologies which challenge the traditional vision of marriage and the family…..

Sex ideology, Sr Prudence says, was begun by Alfred Kinsey who reduced the human person to sex activity measured in terms of sexual outlets….recently, she noted, all sorts of distortions in his research have been identified….

Gender ideology, she says was founded by John Money who thought the person was a collection of unconnected parts that from birth to the age of about two could be put together, almost like a Lego set, into different kinds of combinations. But Sr Prudence says this destroyed what we would call the centre of integration where we become an organised, integrated man or woman…..it is important to distinguish between the development of these ideologies, she says, and the reality of sex and gender identity.








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