GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The project was initiated by the Pontifical Council for the Family as a continuation of the VIth World Meeting of Families held in Mexico City, where it was deemed necessary to give further impetus to the social subjectivity and to the evangelization of the Christian family.
The project has its direct interlocutor in the Church community. In this sense, we can say that this project operates ad intra and is intended to be an instrument in the service of communion among the local Churches for the promotion of fruitful sharing of pastoral experiences that show the value of the Christian family as an agent of evangelization.
The project aims to collect and share those experiences that, after careful discernment by our Pontifical Council, appear appropriate for stimulating similar practices or experiences in the other local churches, associations, groups and movements involved in family ministry. Since these experiences are real facts, we believe that beauty expressed by the testimony of specific concretizations can be very encouraging. The emphasis is, therefore, on effectiveness, gratitude and praise to the Lord for what He works in the family. Thus, at the same the family ministry receives new vitality, in an indicative rather than mandatory sense, fellowship is promoted by the initiation of a revaluation of the goodness the Holy Spirit diffuses in the Church, by redimensioning its apostolic undertakings and avoiding of all forms of particularism or exclusion.
On the basis of this idea after an International Study Seminar held in Rome in September 2009 the Episcopal Commissions for the Family, as well as and certain movements, groups and associations, were asked to indicate to us the experiences in their specific geographic areas that they consider the most original and the most successful with respect to the methodology, results and possibilities for dissemination, which could be easily adapted to other environments.
A total of 187 experiments were gathered; they are perhaps fewer than expected, but they do suffice to illustrate the situation of the family ministry in different geographical areas. They were presented at a conference held in Rome last November.
On this topic, see the
Conference given by Mons. Carlos Simon Vazquez at the Study Seminar FAMIGLIA SOGGETTO DI EVANGELIZZAZIONE (Rome, 10-11 September, 2009)
The
Report on the International Congress La famiglia cristiana, soggetto di evangelizzazione by the Rev. José Guillermo Gutiérrez Fernández, Official of the Pontifical Council for the Family.
