Does the human race still need the family?

Monday, May 16, 2011

*Eduardo R.Jimenez

BLOGGER PROFILE

When we look at the situation in society today, we see signs of family disintegration, along with many new definitions of family, such as women having children without fathers, by using artificial means of insemination. Others maintain that marriage is not necessary, and so more and more couples are choosing to simply live together for as long as their love lasts. At the same time, we see a high percent of divorce, domestic violence, young people involved in gangs, and the problem of substance abuse. 

Wow! That’s a very negative picture to paint, but my purpose is to call attention to the need and importance of Family Life Ministry.

To put it in a positive way: The issue is not that the human race does not need the family; on the contrary, without the family there is no human race. We were created in the image of God and God in his holy Trinity is Family. God is revealed in Scripture as LOVE. If we were created in God’s image, then we are called to live with love and in love. There is a relationship between this call to God, who is love, and our fulfillment as human beings: The further we are from God, the less we are fulfilled as human beings; the closer we are to God, the more we are fulfilled as human beings. All the negative social effects we are witnessing today are the consequence of our movement away from God.

Our Family Life Ministry Office is working hard to at least contribute our grain of sand to the enormous challenge of building the Kingdom of God as families serving families. We are attempting to put into practice what Pope John Paul II wrote in his 1981 Apostolic Exhortation On the Family (Familiaris Consortio): “No plan for organized pastoral work at any level must ever fail to take into consideration the pastoral area of the family”(no. 70). In 1988, the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Marriage and Family Life developed a manual for all pastoral leaders called “A Family Perspective in Church and Society,” based on Familiaris Consortio. Ten years later this document was updated and remains valid as an answer to many current challenges in the field of family life ministry.

Our office’s guiding vision for planning, implementing and evaluating programs and ministries rests on four elements:
- A Christian vision of family life
- A view of the family as a developing system
- Recognition of diversity in families
- The need for partnership between families and institutions

I would like to focus now on the second element: the family as a developing system. This assumes that an individual lives connected to others by relationships. One of the most important dynamics in family systems is the family life cycle, made up of stages. At each stage, there are tasks to accomplish in order to pass to the next stage successfully and so on. These stages include: New family without children, new parents, school-age family, empty-nest family, aging family (post retirement couples or parents).

Our office looks to support families at each stage so they can transition successfully to the next step in the developmental process. And so we have programs and movements that minister to families at the first stage through marriage preparation programs: Camino del Matrimonio in Spanish; Sacramentality Day in English, based on John Paul II’s Theology of the Body; Life Skills Day or Engaged Encounter in English; Pre-Cana II in English and Spanish for those entering second marriages; Convalidation programs in English and their Spanish counterpart, Matrimonio 2000; and the Foccus Inventory, a precious tool for all marriage preparation.

For the first stages after marriage our office works with movements such as World Wide Marriage Encounter and Movimiento Familiar Cristiano.

For families with children we have Impacto and Encuentros Familiares.

For those who are divorced and separated we have Wellspring retreats in English and Resurrection retreats in Spanish, as well as support groups in both languages (called Agape in Spanish).

For divorced and remarried couples who are not able to receive Communion, we recently started a new ministry, Verdad y Misericordia (Truth and Mercy) also based on Familiaris Consortio.

For families in need of bereavement we have Betania for parents who have lost children; Naim for widows and widowers; and a new ministry for families dealing with illness called Senderos de Esperanza (Roads of Hope). Both Naim and Senderos de Esperanza offer retreats.

Despite all these movements and programs, the archdiocesan Family Life Ministry is not covering all the needs and challenges facing today’s families. But at least we are trying humbly to support them at most of their stages and through many of their struggles. We want to build the Kingdom of God by strengthening families in the love of the Lord Jesus, because we believe that closeness to God will make us more human, more able to live our authentic Christian identity with freedom and dignity.

That's why we invite those of you still discerning an area of service to consider helping us serve marriages and families in this ministry, or just to 'come and see'. Will you?