More than six months before the opening of the next Synod of Bishops dealing with the Family, there are many subjects on the table. Among them is Communion for individuals who are divorced and remarried, but because of this the Undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Msgr. Carlos Simón Vasquez, points out that that is not the only, nor the most important, issue.
Msgr. Simón: It is an important matter, one that calls for a response. But clearly the pastoral challenges for the family today go far beyond and are different from the question of divorce and remarriage.
Pope Francis decided personally that the first synod of his pontificate would be on the family. He wants the Church to find solutions to the “throw-away culture” that values only persons who succeed and has no room for the weak.
Msgr. Simón: “The elderly, the sick, the handicapped, euthanasia–these are themes that, as the Pope has said, reflect a “throw-away culture.” These are things that the family has to deal with because in reality it is in the family that a person is valued for what he or she is rather than what he or she can produce.”
Carlos Simón points out that it must not be only the Church that deals with this question. The family, he says, is the heritage of all humanity.
Msgr. Simón: “Blessed John Paul II said, ‘As the family goes, so goes society and the Church.’ But likewise, the Church is called to examine its conscience about how to make the family a capable subject of the New Evangelization.”
