The Second Study Seminar on the results of the Synod promoted by the PCF
The second seminar on the results of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, organized by the Pontifical Council in preparation for next January’s conference of the associations and movements, met on Friday, November 28th.
The leading participants of this session (the first was held in early November with representatives of international family associations) were twelve delegates from entities and associations dedicated to supporting and promoting human life in different parts of the world. This was an opportunity to reread the debate on the question of the family from a particular viewpoint, starting with the generating force kept and accomplished in this human experience. The meeting opened with the introduction of the President, Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, who recalled the work and the stages of the long synodal path. The Archbishop particularly focused on the challenge that the synodal path offers to local churches and especially to families. This is a challenge that the Dicastery wants to take on by promoting and soliciting, throughout this year, debate as widespread and deep as possible on the topics that have most strongly marked the synod, and even those that were less developed or reported in the media, but which urgently require serious discussion and reflection. Then, Ms. Joan Clemens, auditor at the Synod and representative of the WOOMB, presented her testimony and told about her experience of the Synod. In her intervention, Ms. Clemens emphasized the risk, also encountered during the work of the Synod, of dwelling too much on the critical analysis of the family’s situation throughout the world, perhaps without giving due recognition both to the testimony offered by many "wonderful families" in their daily lives of faithful and fruitful love, and to the possible solutions to the many problems that certainly exist and need to be addressed, especially through effective paths of formation. The rest of the day provided an opportunity for participants to react to the proposed reflections and to identify the nuclei and the crucial issues that will be the subject of extensive study and debate at the Congress next January.