'Familiaris Consortio', a road map: Part 1

Professor of Catholic Social Teaching and Political and Social Ethics at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas here in Rome, Dominican Father Alejandro Crosthwaite affords us an insight into the Post -Synodal Exhortation 'Familiaris Consortio' .

That's in a couple of interviews timed to coincide with 7th World Meeting of Families currently taking place in the Milan Archdiocese as from Wednesday 30th May. One Pope Benedict is scheduled to attend later in the week precisely from the 1st to the 3rd of June.

A meeting which is taking place on Italian soil for the first time since that first one ever in Rome back in 1994 during the pontificate of Blessed John Paul II.

There have been five other such meetings since then. Two took place during the pontificate of Benedict XVI who attended the first of these in Valencia, Spain back in July 2006 but missed out on the 2009 one in Mexico City.

These meetings take place every three years, are sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Family whose current President is Cardinal Ennio Antonelli and are hosted by different diocese across the world.

The theme of the current gathering in Milan ' The Family : Work and Celebration' reflects the need for a message of hope for families affected by the current critical economic situation.
But getting back to the interview with Father Crosthwaite, Veronica Scarisbrick begins by asking him to place Church teaching on family issues within an historical context.
As a result she discovers that the Early Church was hesitant in speaking out on family matters and how the root causes for this lie in the persecutions taking place at the time which often pitted family members on each side of the divide. The ensuing result was the necessity for the Church to invite its members to be part of a wider family.A factor which played into the Church itself eventually being considered as a family.
It wasn't until the 4th and 5fth centuries, Father Crosthwaite explains, that the situation developed. Around this time in fact the Church started paying more attention to the family with a particular emphasis on marriage and sexual ethics. Although at the time it never considered the family as an institution. This perception of the family was foundational for the Church and for society.
Basically, Father Crosthwaite says it was only around a century ago that the family begins to take a prominent role in Catholic theology reaching a high point during the Second Vatican Council.
And consequently Pope John Paul's Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation 'Familiaris Consortio' translated into English as ‘ On the role of the Christian Family in the Modern World’ and published on November 22, 1981 summarises the Church's teaching over time regarding family issues.
The current meeting of families in Milan provides us with a chance to revisit this document referred to as Post- Synodal because it was the result of a Synod which focused precisely on the role of the Christian family in the modern world with the intent of serving as a point of reference.
Among the questions put to Father Crosthwaite in this interview are this document's relevance thirty years on in what is a very different world, as well as the tensions in the teaching real life situations.

Mention is also made in this programme of Pope Benedict XVI's words during the Prayer Vigil in Valencia on the occasion of 5th World Meeting of Families , when he remarked : " the family is the privileged setting where every person learns to give and receive love"....

Listen to Part 1 of Veronica Scarisbrick's interview with Professor of Social Teaching Father Alejandro Crosthwaite. ...