The new book in the series "Famiglia e Vita," directed by the Pontifical Council for the Family, has been published. This volume entitled Famiglia e amore imperfetto (The Family and Imperfect Love) contains essays by Grace Attili, Claudio Risè and Olivier Bonnewijn on the consequences for the children of the emotional toil experienced by parents.
"Education is for wise men and women. And it is necessary to have a rock to hold on to. However, being wise does not mean being perfect." These are the words of Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council, in the foreword. "As adults―he continues―we all have the experience of discovering that our mother and father were not the idols of perfection that we saw when we were little." Parents are not always as their children would like them to be; but this imperfection, made of limitations, mistakes and weaknesses, has not prevented them from taking on the challenge of raising and educating a family at the service of life.
The awareness of imperfection, on the contrary, opens the way to forgiveness and reciprocal acceptance, and at the same time it generates the courage to set out in a continuous act of love, precisely the education of one's children, with a tension and constant search in one's heart."
Fr. Gianfranco Grieco, the text's editor, says: "love with a capital A is always imperfect."
