• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Catholic Review

Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Menu
  • Home
  • News
        • Local News
        • World News
        • Vatican News
        • Obituaries
        • Featured Video
        • En Español
        • Sports News
        • Official Clergy Assignments
        • Schools News
  • Commentary
        • Contributors
          • Question Corner
          • George Weigel
          • Effie Caldarola
          • John Garvey
          • Father Ed Dougherty, M.M.
          • Guest Commentary
        • CR Columnists
          • Archbishop William E. Lori
          • Rita Buettner
          • Christopher Gunty
          • George Matysek Jr.
          • Father Joseph Breighner
          • Father Collin Poston
          • Robyn Barberry
          • Hanael Bianchi
          • Amen Columns
  • Entertainment
        • Events
        • Movie & Television Reviews
        • Arts & Culture
        • Books
        • Recipes
  • About Us
        • Contact Us
        • Our History
        • Meet Our Staff
        • Photos to own
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • CR Media platforms
        • Electronic Edition
  • Advertising
  • Shop
        • Purchase Photos
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
  • CR Radio
  • News Tips
  • Subscribe
Pope Francis caresses the cheek of a child during an audience Oct. 24, 2022, with students and staff of the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and Family in the Vatican's Clementine Hall. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Pope: Church’s concern for the family goes beyond focus on couples

October 24, 2022
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
Filed Under: Feature, Marriage & Family Life, News, Vatican, World News

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The importance of the family for the Catholic Church and for society means that theological reflection on family life and pastoral responses to the joys and problems of families must focus on more than the relationship between a husband and wife, Pope Francis said.

“Theology itself is called to elaborate a Christian vision of parenthood, filiality, fraternity — therefore, not only of the conjugal bond — that corresponds to the family experience within the horizon of the entire human community,” the pope told staff and students of the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and Family.

The audience Oct. 24 marked the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ refoundation of the institute established by St. John Paul II in 1982 after the 1980 Synod of Bishops on the family called for the creation of centers devoted to the study of the church’s teaching on marriage and family life.

A couple presents Pope Francis with a “spiritual bouquet” — an offering of prayers for him and his intentions — during an audience Oct. 24, 2022, with students and staff of the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and Family in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

The expansion of the institute’s focus was criticized by some groups as lessening a focus on traditional Catholic teaching about the sacrament of marriage and marital relations.

Pope Francis acknowledged those criticisms at the audience but said, “it would be gravely mistaken” for anyone to read the institute’s expanded focus “in terms of opposition to the mission it received with its original institution.”

“In reality,” he said, “the seed is growing and generating flowers and fruit. If a seed does not grow, it stays there like a piece in the museum, but it does not grow.”

As a pontifical institute, he said, the center is called to help the whole church look “without naïveté” at the transformations taking place in people’s understanding about “the relationships between man and woman, between love and generation, between family and community.”

“The mission of the church today urgently calls for the integration of the theology of the marital bond with a more concrete theology of the condition of the family,” he said. “The unprecedented turbulence, which is testing all family bonds at this time, calls for careful discernment to note the signs of God’s wisdom and mercy.”

“We are not prophets of doom, but of hope,” Pope Francis insisted. So, even when looking at crises impacting families, the church also must see and share “the consoling, often moving signs of the capacities family ties continue to show on behalf of the faith community, civil society and human coexistence. We have all seen how valuable, in times of vulnerability and duress, the tenacity, the resilience and the cooperation of family ties are.”

No one benefits from an attitude that says the church will encourage and care for the vocations only of perfect families, the pope said, because “marriage and family life will always have imperfections until we are in heaven.”

Pope Francis warned the students and staff to “be careful of ideologies that meddle to explain the family from an ideological point of view. The family is not an ideology, it is a reality.”

To understand and assist “a family that has this grace of a man and a woman who love each other and create, and to understand the family, we always must go to the concrete, not ideologies. Ideologies ruin, ideologies meddle to make a path of destruction. Be careful of ideologies!”

Personal accompaniment key to Vatican’s expanded vision for marriage formation

RADIO INTERVIEW: The Holy Family

After vote, House sends Respect for Marriage Act to Biden for signature

Give joyful witness and lobby hard for families, pope tells Italian groups

Bishop Barron disappointed by Senate passage of Respect for Marriage Act

Bishops reiterate church’s ‘firm opposition’ to Respect for Marriage Act

Copyright © 2022 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Print Print

Primary Sidebar

Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service is a leading agency for religious news. Its mission is to report fully, fairly and freely on the involvement of the church in the world today.

View all posts from this author

For the latest news delivered twice a week via email or text message, sign up to receive our free enewsletter.

| MOST POPULAR |

  • St. Mary’s High School swimmer breaks record held by Michael Phelps
  • Long homilies are ‘a disaster,’ keep it under 10 minutes, pope says
  • Gov. Moore’s budget cuts BOOST, proposes phase-out of scholarship program
  • Catholics look to night skies as new comet reveals ‘the glory of God’
  • Mercy delivers Magic show in ‘Classic’ victory over Maryvale

| Latest Local News |

Mercy delivers Magic show in ‘Classic’ victory over Maryvale

Catholic Charities assists in counting Baltimore’s homeless population

Gov. Moore’s budget cuts BOOST, proposes phase-out of scholarship program

| Latest World News |

Catholics call for prayer, justice as video of Memphis Black man’s deadly arrest released

Where in the world is Catholic Mass attendance highest?

Former priest Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life, faces sexual misconduct allegations

| Catholic Review Radio |

CatholicReview · Catholic Review Radio

Footer

Our Vision

Real Life. Real Faith. 

Catholic Review Media communicates the Gospel and its impact on people’s lives in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and beyond.

Our Mission

Catholic Review Media provides intergenerational communications that inform, teach, inspire and engage Catholics and all of good will in the mission of Christ through diverse forms of media.

Contact

Catholic Review
320 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
443-524-3150
mail@CatholicReview.org

 

Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent

  • An open letter to Marie Kondo: Thanks for sparking my joy
  • Catholics call for prayer, justice as video of Memphis Black man’s deadly arrest released
  • Where in the world is Catholic Mass attendance highest?
  • Mercy delivers Magic show in ‘Classic’ victory over Maryvale
  • Former priest Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life, faces sexual misconduct allegations
  • Analysis: As GOP primary season nears, will pro-lifers embrace Trump or hold out for a new hero?
  • Mission begins by meeting Jesus in the Scriptures and Eucharist, pope says
  • Catholic Charities assists in counting Baltimore’s homeless population
  • Bishop’s heroic crusade against America’s suicide epidemic is personal

Search

Membership

Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada

Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association

The Associated Church Press

© 2023 CATHOLIC REVIEW MEDIA, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED