Family Matters

As Ramadan draws to an end, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue has sent its annual greetings to the Muslim faithful , urging Christians and Muslims to come together in safeguarding the dignity of the family, the “fundamental cell of society.”

I found this message of especial interest in light of Pope Benedict’s September mission intention: “That, faithful to the sacrament of matrimony, every Christian family may cultivate the values of love and communion in order to be a small evangelizing community, sensitive and open to the material and spiritual needs of its brothers.” Evangelization, the council letter reminds us, does not just extend outward in ministry to our non-Christian brethren, but it can also draw them in as friends and fellow evangelizers.

Some highlights from the letter:

One of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes , which deals with the Church in the modern world, states: “The well-being of the individual person and of human and Christian society is intimately linked with the healthy condition of that community produced by marriage and family. Hence Christians and all men who hold this community in high esteem sincerely rejoice in the various ways by which men today find help in fostering this community of love and perfecting its life, and by which parents are assisted in their lofty calling . . . .”

These words give us an opportune reminder that the development of both the human person and of society depends largely on the healthiness of the family! How many people carry, sometimes for the whole of their life, the weight of the wounds of a difficult or dramatic family background? . . . Christians and Muslims can and must work together to safeguard the dignity of the family, today and in the future.
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I need only remind you that the family is the first school in which one learns respect for others, mindful of the identity and the difference of each one. Inter-religious dialogue and the exercise of citizenship cannot but benefit from this.

And, from the Pontifical Council for the Family , under Cardinal Antonelli, comes this: The Christian family should strive to be characterized by “profound unity, respect of differences, generous openness to life” and “the care of the weakest.” “The beauty of the family,” writes the cardinal, ” must be witnessed in a concrete way . . . [by] building genuine Christian families that can be a burning fire, a point of reference for all.”

Who said saints were only forged in monasteries?