Last Saturday was the third and final day of work of the conference organized by the Pontifical Council for the Family, at the Church Palace in Rome, under the title "The vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world." After the Mass presided by Msgr. Mansueto Bianchi, assistant of the Italian Azione Cattolica, several moments marked the work of the many family associations who came from around the world to make their contribution to next October's Ordinary Synod. First of all, Mrs. Caroline Terrenoir, of Australia's "WOOMB International," presented part three of Synod's Lineamenta, speaking at length about the issue of the methods of natural fertility regulation. This presentation was rapidly followed by the reports to the assembly on the work done in the language groups of the conference. Thereafter, each committee submitted and offered its specific conclusions, developed in the course of its meetings on these days, to the President of the PCF, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia. Msgr. Paglia, after having stressed the crucial importance of these contributions for the next synod meeting, reiterated that "these reports will be greatly taken into account by the Secretariat of the Synod."
The President of the PCF then gave a final speech, in which he highlighted the ten most critical concerns of today's family, the first of which produces a break in the vital link between the family and the celebration of the Eucharist, "leading, on the one hand, to the family's disintegration and, on the other, to the progression of desertifying individualism, even within parishes." In order to avoid reducing faith to ideology and imposing it pharisaically on others, Msgr. Paglia finally recalled the fundamental importance of "always witnessing through action what one professes verbally, reiterating how all Christian families should feel safe in their daily evangelizing, well rooted in this work, which is nothing other than a test of coherence, in the certainty that they are always supported, even in the most dramatic situations, by the love of the victorious God, the Lord of life and history."
At the end of the conference, after the convocation of all the family movements for a new conference, in spring of 2016, there was a lively exchange between the participants and the President of the PCF, which gave Msgr. Paglia the opportunity to note the ideas and proposals of the delegates, as he responded to all their questions.
