W hen the woman came for our daughters, we were crowded around a small round metal table, eating damp French fries and day-old bagels. It was early evening, and we’d had a long day, and now another stranger was giving my wife a piece of paper. Was this yet another petition to sign? A cool Catholic app to download? I watched with increasing annoyance as Anna began chatting with her. Were they both somehow immune to the spill-and-tumble-filled dining of our four small children? Obviously I could have done something about that myself but, er, I needed to look something up on my phone first.
We’d just come from many hours of talks, about faith and family life, delivered by cardinals and lay experts at the World Meeting of Families, in Philadelphia. American law professor Helen Alvaré had emphasized the foundational importance of the family for the health and flourishing of society; and Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana had reflected on Laudato Si and the “difficulty of recognizing the humanity of another person in a throwaway culture.”
