Families on the Front Lines

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - June 17, 2005

Pope Benedict has picked up right where his predecessor left off.

Pope John Paul II spent most of his priesthood, and all of his pontificate, trying to strengthen the Christian family. Through letters and encyclicals, diplomatic interventions, participation in international conferences, the founding of the John Paul II Institute for the Study of Marriage and Family, and countless homilies, speeches and individual meetings, he labored indefatigably to defend the truth and rights of the family against constant and various assaults.

For the last two years of his life, he gave particular attention to an intensive program to strengthen family life in the Diocese of Rome. Last week, at the end of that two-year process, his successor addressed the thousands of delegates at the Diocese of Rome's Family Convention.

Pope Benedict noted that the family is "subjected to many difficulties and threats and therefore has a particular need to be evangelized and concretely supported."

Families need the Church, he said, because families need the truth of the Gospel as well as the concrete material and supernatural support in order to confront the many threats against it.

But the Church and the world, he added, desperately need truly Christian families. "Christian families are a decisive resource for education in the faith, for the building up of the Church as a communion, as a missionary presence in the most diverse situations of life, and as Christian leaven throughout culture and social structures."

The family, in other words, has an irreplaceable role within the Church as a school of faith and communion of love, but it also is the fundamental launching pad for the proclamation of the Gospel - as salt, light and yeast - outside the Church.

These truths are as relevant for the Diocese of Fall River as they are for the Diocese of Rome, for families here are facing even greater threats than those in the Italian capital.

Benedict noted that a culture built upon "anarchic freedom" with regard to marriage, family and sexuality is waging war against the traditional culture of the family, based on freedom directed toward the true gift of self in love. It is a clash between those who think freedom is achieved by giving free rein to the libido and those who think that freedom comes through harnessing it. It is, in short, a battle between moral anarchy and moral order. We see the cultural expressions of moral chaos, Benedict said, in "the various modern forms of the dissolution of marriage, free unions and 'trial marriages,' and the pseudo-matrimony of persons of the same sex."

Catholic families in the Commonwealth are, in many ways, on the front lines of this cultural combat, especially since our Supreme Judicial Court redefined matrimony to mean whatever the SJC thinks it means at any given moment. How can good Catholics families not only withstand but respond to the onslaught?

Benedict gives us the answer, just as he gave Christian families in Rome. The first step is to receive through the Church the abundant resource of God's help - through the Gospel, the sacraments, prayer, and other concrete material and spiritual support. The second step is to cooperate with God and share those gifts as missionaries and leaven throughout the rest of society.

Just as in Rome, the Church here wants to provide families assistance for both of those stages.

On the weekend of July 16-17, at Stonehill College in North Easton - right in our diocese - the first Northeast Catholic Family Conference will be held. It will feature an inspiring array of excellent speakers and Catholic leaders, and focus on a multitude of practical issues Catholic families of every generation are now facing: Raising Catholic children in a secular age, the power of an intimate marriage, the role of grandparents and extended family, the family and the media, evangelizing through the Rosary, Pope John Paul II's theology of the body, and much more.

There will be no need for babysitters, because there will be dynamic teen track of music and presentations and a "kids camp" initiating youngsters in Eucharistic adoration and in fun workshops on the faith.

The theme of the conference is "Making the Faith Visible" and it will highlight the example and wisdom of various men and women who have made the faith visible by lives of personal holiness, including St. Gianna Molla, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Fr. Patrick Peyton, the great evangelist of the family Rosary who is buried at Stonehill. Each day will run from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm in the campus' modern, air-conditioned facilities. The event is being sponsored by the Knights of Columbus in collaboration with Holy Cross Family Ministries, the Catholic Daughters of the Americas, the Daughters of St. Paul and local dioceses.

Registration is easy and inexpensive at necatholicfamilyconference.com. Those without access to the internet can call the Massachusetts State Council of the Knights of Columbus at 781-551-0628.

On this Father's Day weekend, as we naturally focus on what makes families strong and healthy, I'd encourage all dads, moms and kids to give each other a gift - attending this conference together - that will strengthen their bonds with each other and with God and make our liberating faith about the meaning of marriage and family in God's plan more visible.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.