Catholic Dads

Pope John Paul II and His Letter to Families – Part 1

September 8th, 2010

Father to Father is a weekly feature, appearing each Wednesday, examining what the Church, through the office of the Pope, is saying to us fathers. You can subscribe to the newsfeed here.

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Pope John Paul II greets children who received holy communion in the Holy Family Church in Zakopane, Poland on June 7, 1997. (AP Photo / Massimo Sambucetti)

As summer winds down, most of us can reflect and express gratitude to the Lord for the extra time we have spent with our families, on vacation and around the home. All of us recognize the importance of family. I am fairly certain all of us wish civil institutions would do more to recognize its importance.

Surprisingly (at least for some) the United Nations did just that towards the end of the last millennium. The UN proclaimed 1994 as the International Year of the Family. The Vatican followed suit and Pope John Paul II issued a lengthy, energetic Letter to Families: Gratissimam Sane.

We will be looking at various aspects of this letter over the next few weeks. But let’s begin at the, er, beginning!

The Pope opens with words both affectionate and personal:

The celebration of the Year of the Family gives me a welcome opportunity to knock at the door of your home, eager to greet you with deep affection and to spend time with you.

A true father!!

His letter continues, noting that there are many paths that men must walk in their pilgrimages on earth but clearly

the family is the first and the most important

He delves into the genealogy of the person as the foundation of the family, responsible motherhood and fatherhood, the common good of the family, the meaning of the fourth commandment, the reasons for familial and marital breakdown, and more.

Examining the marital covenant (para. 7), the Pope laments that today

emphasis tends to be laid on how much the family…owes to the personal contribution of a man and a woman.

This, he points out, is incorrect, in as much as the family is a community of persons living together in communion.

[Community] arises whenever there comes into being the conjugal covenant of marriage, which opens the spouses to a lasting communion of love and of life, and it is brought to completion in a full and specific way with the procreation of children: the “communion” of spouses gives rise to the “community” of the family.

I love the language the Holy Father uses here. But there is more: we are presented with a task and a challenge.

The task involves the spouses in living out their original covenant. The children born to them – and here is the challenge – should consolidate that covenant, enriching and deepening the conjugal communion of the father and mother. When this does not occur, we need to ask if the selfishness which lurks even in the love of man and woman as a result of the human inclination to evil is not stronger than this love.

The desire to remain an individual in a marriage is the roadblock to communion and to community, without which there is no authentic family. How, then, do we complete the task and conquer the challenge? With God:

From the outset [husband and wife] need to have their hearts and thoughts turned towards the God “from whom every family is named”

For us husbands and fathers, I see allocation of time – how we spend those moments with our spouses and our families – as one of the biggest challenges.

Your thoughts?

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