Eighth Pastoral Letter The Family, Responsibility of Church and State “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church” (Eph 5:25) Assumption 2005 INTRODUCTION To our brother bishops, priests, deacons, men and women religious and all our faithful laypeople: “Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” (I Tim 1:2) 1. The Catholic Church believes that the family exists for the well-being of the human person, of society and the Church. It is in fact a “natural society” that existed before the State and any other organised grouping. That is why it has peculiar, inviolable rights. Besides, it is not only a juridical, sociological or economic entity. It is primarily a community of love and fellowship, capable of transmitting a collection of cultural, social, moral and religious values; values essential for the growth and welfare of its members, as of all members of society. The family is in fact the “sanctuary of life,” the place where life is welcomed and protected against all aggression and in which it is able to enjoy authentic human growth.1 The family is the basic cell of society, in which the human person is born into the life of the community. There husband and wife are called to give themselves to each other with love and children learn about the love of God and humane, moral values. Healthy, stable family relations are the basis of a rich affective life. They are the foundation of freedom, tranquillity and brotherhood in society. They teach individuals about communal living and sharing spiritual and material goods. The family is truly a precious community. If it is injured, a gaping wound opens up across the whole of society. It is enough to mention the pain of divorce and the serious harm it causes to parents and children. Parents then became acquainted with the bitter experience of solitude and abandonment and children are subject to the clash of parental quarrels, sometimes themselves becoming a means of exerting pressure and blackmail. We may also say that the family is the “basic cell of the State:” for the State acts like a parent to its citizens and protects people’s moral well-being. That is why it is proper for Church and public authorities to look after the family so that it and its members are sheltered from any influence contrary to natural and divine law.2 The family is a “domestic Church,” built on the sacrament of marriage. So it is the basic cell of the Church. It is a community of faith, hope and charity. In it is realised the communion between persons on the model of the Holy Trinity. It aims at selflessness, the gift of self and the unity of its members according to the model of the union between Christ and the Church. It is the first place of education in prayer. There the children of God persevere in prayer together as a Church. As domestic Church, it 1. Charter of Family Rights, Introduction, 5d ; Evangelium Vitae, 92; Centesimo Anno, 39. 2. Humanae Vitae, 23; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2206-2207 and 2385; Familiaris Consortio, 42. 7 participates in the life and mission of the Church of Christ and contributes to the building up of the Church of Christ and the edification of the Kingdom of God. It participates in the priesthood of Christ in its three dimensions: prophetic, a community proclaiming the Gospel; priestly, a community praying and remaining in dialogue with God; royal, a community in the service of man.3 2. The importance of the family in general, and of the Christian family in particular, the help it needs, and the necessity of protecting it from the dangers that threaten it, so as to allow it to be fulfilled and carry out its fundamental duties, have led the Council of Eastern Catholic Patriarchs to focus its reflection on “The family in the Middle East – The family, responsibility of State and Church,” during its 13th. Congress held in Cairo, 9-13 December 2003, in St. Stephen’s Residence, Maadi, hosted by H.B. Patriarch Stephanos II Cardinal Ghattas, Patriarch of Alexandria for the Coptic Catholics. We are happy, brothers and sisters, to address to you this pastoral letter on the family. After an opening chapter on the identity and holiness of the Christian family, we shall discuss the difficulties encountered by the family in Middle Eastern countries in different spheres: economic, moral, means of communication, bioethics, religious education, marital communion, local legislation and tribunals and finally legislation and ways of thinking at an international level. We shall then speak of family pastoral care, needs and the directives and solutions proposed by the Council. This pastoral advice as a whole completes the triple ministry of bishops and priests: teaching, sanctifying and governing. It co-ordinates the activities of movements and organisations working for the family and life. The pastoral care of the family must become for us today a concrete, true and effective priority in order to respond to the call and love of Christ the Redeemer, “sent… not to condemn; but that the world through him might be saved.” (Jn. 3:17)4 CHAPTER ONE THE IDENTITY AND HOLINESS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY 3. We believe that God is love. We also believe that everything that God has created, he created through love, in love and for love. All creation comes from God- love, bears the imprints of God in the depth of its being and is directed towards the realisation of its end, which is to return to God, the love and happiness of every being. Man, in particular, created in the image of God, bears in his nature and in all his activity the distinctive marks of his origin and end. And it is insofar as he lives in conformity with what he carries in the depths of his being that he will be able to be fulfilled and happy. That is inscribed in his nature and is at the same time one of the constants of Revelation: God calls man to live in love, to go beyond himself through love and to be fulfilled for love. God calls man and at the same time gives him the necessary means to respond to his love. 3. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, 11; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2204-2205 and 2685; Familiaris Consortio, 21 et 49-64. 4. Humanae Vitae, 29. 8 In marriage, an institution both natural and divine, a human goes out of his individualism, goes towards the other, gives himself to the other and sacrifices himself for the other. Through love one is even ready to die for the other. Thus he satisfies the most profound longings of his nature and accomplishes the conditions for his happiness. Like all human realities, marriage also has been wounded by original sin and by personal sin. Whilst being in principle such a sublime reality, it bears, more than anything else, the consequences of human and social wrongdoing. That is why it is in need of redemption and salvation. Yet God has not given man up to sin. He has come to meet him. He has sent his Son, become man, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, born of Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit into the setting of a family. He lived and worked in the context of a family. He attended marriages and blessed them. He purified marriage, brought it back to its original calling and raised it to the level of a sacrament, that is, he made of marriage a sign and instrument of sanctification, a source of blessings and a token of love for humanity and for the Church. The Church, especially in the Eastern tradition, has condensed its doctrine on the sacrament of marriage into an affirmation that we wish now to meditate upon with you: marriage and the family are the sanctuary of love and life. 4. They are a sanctuary. That is the sure teaching of the Church, based on reason and revelation. It opens up a broad array of spiritual and pastoral conclusions. The first of these conclusions is that marriage is originally a good and holy institution, because God so willed it, instilled it in human nature, blessed it and raised it to the level of a sacrament. The family, for its part, founded upon marriage, comes from the holy love of God, and is the source of sanctification for all its members. Over the course of centuries, the Church has firmly defended the goodness and sacredness of marriage and the family, against the heresies which saw in marriage “the realm of evil“ and against the hedonist ideas that viewed the family as an encroachment upon freedom and a source of problems; in short, a restriction on hedonism. Doubtless, marriage and the family have been affected by sin. Our everyday social experience teaches us how much values of life, love and family have been unfortunately degraded and shows the sad and dangerous deviations to which the family is exposed at every level, personal, familial and social. Despite these observations, which require realism and serious work to correct, sanctify and purify, we continue to repeat emphatically the faith of the Church: marriage and the family are fundamentally good and lived according to God’s plan, they constitute a source of blessings and sanctification. Marriage constitutes part of God’s plan. That too, we shall never stop repeating. Marriage and the family are not an invention of man. They make up part of the natural vocation of every human being, in every society and age.