"The family, the Christian family, the family and marriage, has never been attacked as now, directly or indirectly." Pope Francis said this in Spanish in response to questions asked by faithful from Argentina at the audience with close to 7,500 members of the Schönstatt Apostolic Movement, received in the Paul VI Hall on the occasion of the centenary of its foundation in Germany, in October 1914, by Father Kentenich.
Prompted by members of the apostolic movement, Francis, going back to issues discussed at the recent Synod, observed how in society a model of the family as a form of "association" is increasingly proposed: "... All of this is called the family, right? There are so many families are divided, so many marriages broken, so much relativism in the conception of the sacrament of marriage! At present, from a sociological point of view and from the point of view of human values, just as in the case of the Catholic sacrament, of the Christian sacrament, there is a family crisis, a crisis because it is getting blows from all sides, that leave it seriously injured"!
The Pope consequently urged all present to reflect on the contemporary reality in which we are witnessing the "reduction of the sacrament to a rite": "What they are proposing is not marriage, it is an association. But it is not marriage! Things need to be said very clearly, and they must be said! The pastoral ministry helps, but in what is happening here the only important thing is the 'solidarity'. So, accompanying also means wasting time. The great master of wasting time is Jesus! He lost time accompanying, to make the conscious more mature, to heal wounds, to teach ... Accompanying means walking together."
In light of this, Francis calls for in-depth marriage preparation, accompaniment, for engaged couples, so that they may understand the "forever" that is now being challenged by the "culture of the provisional," without being "shocked" by what happens, "family dramas, the destruction of families, children" who suffer from their parents' disagreements, but also new partnerships: "There are new forms, which are totally destructive and limit the grandeur of marital love. There is so much cohabitation, and so many separations and divorces: for this, the key to helping is 'solidarity,' accompanying and not proselytizing, because that is useless: accompany, with patience."
