Children without family is ‘new humanitarian tragedy’

(Vatican Radio) The high percentage of children worldwide who do not grow up in families is a “new humanitarian tragedy” to which the Church must respond, said Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk. Faced with this challenge, he said, the Church must try to accompany these young people as they grow and eventually try to create families of their own.

He also underlined the need "to rediscover the role of the Holy Spirit" in the sacrament of marriage and to assist couples to be open to the graces that can help them overcome their woundedness and live their marriage more fruitfully. 

The Synod Father and Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church spoke with Vatican Radio about his intervention at the Synod and about the contributions the Eastern Catholic Church can make to the current discussion on marriage and family.

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The Archbishop said he shared two main themes at the Synod based on the persecution of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church during the former Soviet regime, when it was not possible to share the faith outside of one’s home.

“Family for us…was a place for the transmission of the faith and a place where we were protected as a human being, a last castle of the protection of human dignity. And it is why it is so crucial and important to defend the family as a foundation of society,” he said.

The Archbishop said he was struck by a fact that was shared during the Synod: that a high percentage of children worldwide today – about 70 per cent – are not growing up in families, constituted by a mother and a father.

“It is some sort of new humanitarian tragedy because in such a condition, the human person is becoming more and more fragile, unprotected,” he said. “We, as a Church, as a Christian community have to provide for them a special assistance… in order to help them to create their own families.”

EASTERN APPROACH TO MARRIAGE

He said while the discussions at the Synod focused largely on canonical procedures and how to help those who have divorced, his intervention offered the theological and spiritual view of marriage, according to the Byzantine tradition.

“Our tradition is not based so much on canon law, not in canonical procedures but in the spiritual and ascetical guidance of Christians,” he said. “Our question is: How can we support … the people of today’s culture, people who are getting more and more fragile, to be able, according to spiritual and human growth and maturity, to achieve such an ideal (of marriage)?

“According to the tradition of the Byzantine Church, priest and bishop is not a judge,” he continued. “His task is not to justify or condemn somebody, especially in such a delicate issue as marriage and family. But our task is to be as spiritual fathers, (so) as to provide some sort of spiritual healing.”

“We have to realize how many possibilities, how many instruments Jesus Christ gave us,” he added. “Those instruments are spiritual assistance, the sacraments of the Church, prayers, blessings, support, solidarity.”

MARRIAGE AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

The Archbishop explained the difference in the Eastern and Western theologies of marriage.

In Eastern Catholicism, the priest is the main celebrant of marriage and the mediator of the Divine Grace that constitutes the sacrament. In the Latin tradition, the celebrants of the sacrament are the spouses and a marriage can be declared null if “the spouses were not able enough to perform their role as celebrants, manifesting fully and consciously their will to be married,” he explained.

But in the East, he explained, it is difficult to say that a marriage is null since the “constitutional action” in the sacrament “is performed by the Holy Spirit” through the priest, and not by the spouses.

“We can say that in many cases we could not see some effects, fruits of that sacrament because of the fragile human being. But we cannot say that the Holy Spirit was not present at all when we were celebrating the sacrament of marriage,” he said.

The pastoral approach in assisting families in need in the East is based on this understanding of the sacrament.

“In this way, we are trying first of all to rediscover the role of the Holy Spirit in that sacrament and to help our Christian families to live their marriage more fruitfully and to be able to receive more graces in order to heal their own human fragileness,” he said.

Report and interview by Laura Ieraci