Like Moses before the burning bush, those talking about the real-life situations of families must take off their sandals because they are standing on holy ground, Pope Francis said.
The pastoral care of families requires "a climate of respect capable of helping us listen to what God is saying," the pope said June 16, opening the Diocese of Rome's annual pastoral conference.
The families, catechists, priests and bishops participating in the two-day meeting were focusing this year on outreach to families in Rome in light of Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation on the family, "Amoris Laetitia" ("The Joy of Love").
In the question-and-answer session, he assured participants that his exhortation was thoroughly reviewed by Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, a respected theologian.
The document, he said, fully conforms to Catholic doctrine, but some people "want doctrine that is mathematically precise. That does not exist!"
"Truth is found in neither strictness nor laxity," the pope said. "The Gospel teaches something different: welcome, accompany, discern, integrate."
A priest must listen to each family, ask questions that help the person reflect and grow, but "not sticking his nose into every detail" of the couple's life, the pope said.
"Morality is always an act of love, love for God and for one's neighbor, he said. "And it also is an act that leaves room for the conversion of the other."
An attitude of superiority, he said, can even lead to "pastoral cruelty," for example when a priest refuses to baptize the baby of an unwed mother.
In his formal presentation, Pope Francis said that as the diocesan gathering reflects on the family, participants must keep three things in mind: "the life of each person, the life of every family, must be treated with great respect and great care, especially when reflecting on these things; we must guard against setting up a pastoral plan of ghettos and for ghettos; we must give space to the elderly so they would begin to dream again."
The biblical image of the burning bush, Pope Francis said, should be a reminder that "family" is not a theme or a theory, but a reality lived by real people with real joys and sorrows.
The spiritual climax of the Gospel of John, as Father John Waiss points out, occurs at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus utters his parting words: “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold your mother!” (John 19:26-27). While these words were addressed to the Apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Church has long understood this moment as a universal adoption. To truly image Christ, we must share in His parentage; if we embrace God as our spiritual Father but reject Mary as our mother, we treat Christ as a half-brother rather than our "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). As Origen noted as early as the third century, the profound depths of the Gospel are only accessible to those who, like John, rest their heads on Jesus’ breast and receive Mary into their own homes. This maternal role is deeply rooted in biblical typology, positioning Mary as the fulfillment of the great mothers of the Old Covenant. She is the New Eve , the mother of all the living according ...