society
anticipating the world meeting

Portrait of the FAMILY
The family is the fundamental nucleus of society, but today all efforts are bent on stripping it of meaning. In preparation for the Seventh World Meeting of Families in Italy, May 30–June 3, 2012, a father, a sociologist, a priest, and a journalist compare their experiences and reflect on the Pope’s words, in a conversation about “human love” and “eternal Love.”

by Paola Bergamini

In the 1960s, the feminists shouted, “No longer mothers, wives, and daughters, let’s abolish families,” and in those same years the psychiatrist David Cooper wrote, “There is no sense speaking of the death of God if we are unable to conceive of the death of the family,” to emphasize that the two factors are related. Over 40 years have passed: God is not dead, and neither is the family. But the attacks upon them have been numerous. The dominant culture has sought and seeks to eclipse the former–if He exists, He’s extraneous–and similarly, and not by chance, to set aside the latter, to strip it of its one true meaning: “the human space of the encounter with Christ,” as Benedict XVI said to the Pontifical Council for the Family, speaking of the Seventh Meeting of Families, which will be held in Milan from May 30th to June 3rd. Last September, speaking to engaged couples in Ancona, the Pope said that “all human love is a sign of the eternal Love that created us.” The adjective is striking: human. More than a concern, there emerges in the words of the Holy Father a passionate love for humankind and the certain hope that in this moment of crisis, of the disintegration of the “I,” the family is a cornerstone, a reverberation of a Beyond, as if to say: the road is there.
To explore these considerations, we gathered different figures around a table: Chiara Beria di Argentine, a writer and journalist, Eugenia Scabini, Professor of Psychology of the Family at the Catholic University of Milan, Fr. Carlo Romagnoni, parish priest for over 40 years, and Paolo Tosoni, a lawyer, but, in this case, here as a husband and the father of seven children. A lively discussion ensued, or rather, a journey, through the Pope’s words, starting from each person’s experience.

The Pope told the engaged couples at the September meeting in Ancona, Italy: “The table is laden with so many delectable things, but it seems, as in the Gospel episode of the wedding at Cana, that the wine of the celebration has run out.” What is missing?
Fr. Carlo: I’m reminded of the faces of the engaged couples I’ve followed over the years. I realize that our young people, within a situation of human disaster, have the drive of the feeling of love that pushes them to unite, but it’s as if the foundation were lacking, that is, the horizon of the infinite. It is a journey you must make with them, starting from the human experience of the relationship.
Scabini: I’d like to pick up on this human experience. The interest of the entire tradition of the Doctrine of the Church–I’m referring for example to Familiaris consortio–starts from the marital relationship, not from the children. Today, the marital bond is the point of greatest difficulty, and this is cause for reflection. In marriage, you have to relate with another person who differs from you in gender, sensibility, and family history. In the relationship with children, the relationship of similarity prevails, as the extension of oneself. From this point of view, love is put to the test above all in the relationship with the spouse. Today, as soon as the phase of falling in love ends–which by its nature tends to emphasize the aspects of similarity, of understanding–and the other emerges in his or her diversity, the relationship tends to collapse. The other person can be captured or modified only so much. With the spouse, the impact is with what is similar to me, but also different from me. Thus emerges the mystery the Pope spoke about with the engaged couples. Marriage is the encounter of two different personalities, and the challenge is for love not to seek homogenization, but to strive for a constructive relationship. 
Tosoni: Reading these texts from the Pope, I see, after 20 years of marriage, how the wisdom of the Church corresponds to my life. Love, like vocation, is discovered over time. In the encounter with the Movement of CL, I trusted the Church without fully realizing the promise within marriage. Without making lightning progress, today I am more in love with my wife; in the midst of the quarrels, the difficulties, and the diversity, the Church has helped me to look at my wife as a sign, to raise my eyes. This has enabled and enables me to have the respect that has as its horizon the infinite. Every day is a beginning that is “for forever,” as the Pope said. After all, you cannot love a person if it is not  forever.
Beria: In the gray scenario in which we live, the speeches of Benedict XVI warmed my heart. As a reporter, I can say that the Pope knows well the difficulties and problems young people have to face. The lack of work, of a home... Having children has become a luxury. I read a few facts: decrease in marriages; increase in separations, in divorces, and also in cohabitation. It is a tsunami of the couple. However, in this moment of crisis, the family, even just as a refuge, remains a certainty, perhaps the only one. The Pope takes a further step. He says: Don’t feel alone. You are not alone. You are a precious good. Loving the other is identifying with the other. These are words of extraordinary importance, and yet they have very little resonance. The Church is always reduced to prohibitionism, to rules.

I would like to dwell on this point: not feeling alone. What does this mean in the sphere of the family?
Scabini: The Pope says to “avoid shutting yourselves into intimist, falsely reassuring relationships.” Love is something quite different; it projects beyond itself. There are two key words. The first: communion. The Church connects it to the Trinity, a rapport of different people, thus, communion seen as a relationship that holds together the diversities, as a profound and mysterious bond. In order for this bond to flower in the family, affection and respect are needed, which means stopping on the threshold of the other, who always surpasses you. The second: a community of generations. Today there is this strange idea that the couple is born like a new world, without ties with the story that generated it. Everything is flattened out to the present–like society, which has forgotten the sense of history. Instead, the family is an enriching encounter, a revisiting of what existed before. For this reason, it is necessary to broaden relationships to a horizontal and vertical fraternity that embraces siblings, friends, and grandparents.
Tosoni: My wife literally educated me to this, because she comes from a big family. She often gets together with her siblings who maybe have problems, difficulties. If it were up to me, I’d stay closed in my own little shell. The family “broadened” horizontally to relationships is the concrete way, more than a lot of discourses, to support and help society. It spreads; it’s an osmosis. The simplest way to testify to what I believe is through my family.
Fr. Carlo: The Pope says that “the family founded on the Sacrament of Marriage is a particular realization of the Church, saved and saving, evangelized and evangelizing community”–thus, total openness. For a year now, I’ve been living in a small town. Well, it’s almost as if these relationships and the traditions drag on, but they seem to lack meaning. The beautiful things Christianity has built still exist in certain “little islands,” but they’re short-winded because they often lack the consciousness of the meaning that the other is. There is a dearth of awareness of one’s own existence as individual and as family. The positive is sucked away by a culture that works against relationships.

Let’s go back to the Pope’s words when he says that in our society “everyone is urged to act in an individual, autonomous manner, often solely on the perimeter of the present.” It is the attempt to eliminate the possibility of the bond of good that unites you to the other.
Scabini: In this sense, the family is the epiphenomenon of a crisis of bonds. The individual functions, choosing what pleases him, but when the relationship needs care, education, and responsibility, everything collapses. It’s no longer any good. But children not only relate with their father and with their mother; they also identify with the relationship that exists between their parents. This means that you understand the relationship if you see it in action, enacted. There are theories on familial and social bonds as “light bonds” one enters and exits with nonchalance, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Bonds need to be cultivated and always have a strong impact on the life of the people.
Beria: In this sense, in addition to the absence of fathers, or of grandfathers, I also see urban planning that has developed for the most part vertically, that certainly does not facilitate the possibility of relationships. But there is another fact that strikes me, above all if I think of young women: everything is planned. First there is pressing work commitment, career, then children. Certainly, unlike other European countries, Italian policies on the family work against the desire to have a child; the structures are lacking. However, it seems to me that these women, once they reach a certain age, decide “to want” a child, at times without a father. A computer generation. But in this, without wanting to condemn anyone, I seem to perceive a fear, and also pain. The Pope articulates his understanding of this fear very well when he speaks of cohabitation, which not only shoots ahead, but isn’t even a guarantee for the future. Nothing can guarantee love like sacrifice, which is not just bearing someone, but a sign of loving. Planning life is tragic. As the Pope says, it lacks hope. For years, importance was given to success, money, and ephemeral goods, but now this deep crisis brings out the pith, the meaning for which life is worth living. The windbags disappear. If I could do it all over again, I would have had more children and fewer journalistic scoops!
Tosoni: I agree; structures are missing, and there aren’t adequate family policies, but I know families who, even though they don’t have a high income, have a lot of children. It’s hard, but the energy for facing the difficulties comes from the ideal you live. I’m struck that notwithstanding all the ferocious battling in the media, the family still holds. There’s a need for affection, for meaning. This crisis is an opportunity to be a witness, with one’s own life, to the meaning that sustains life.
Scabini: I would like to emphasize one point. The Pope and the Church never said that the value of the family is proportionate to the number of children you bring into the world. The number is not the key, nor is the generosity, because generosity without gratitude is suspect. Love is the reflection of what you have received and not of something that qualifies you as good. If you live this attitude, you are capable of sacrifice, of forgiveness. In family relationships, we hurt each other some. The problem isn’t not wounding each other, but having the energy capable of overcoming, of going beyond. The positive isn’t ever automatic. You need to draw nourishment from that source of good, from the certainty of a love that preceded you. “Even if your mother should abandon you, I will never abandon you,” says God in the Bible. This is a point that gives peace. Otherwise, you destroy yourself because you can’t manage to do everything, because you haven’t done enough for your children. This generative attitude is expressed in work as well: you also generate in the way you work, how you care for the other. The family is a form of relationship that you extend to other relations as well. Finally, I’d like to say that a healthy relationship includes a sense of humor, which means being a bit detached from yourself and not expecting the other person to be exactly what you have in mind. Irony is a form of forgiveness. It lies within that care of the other the Pope speaks of–and Cardinal Scola picks up in his letter for the world meeting–when he underlines that faithfulness together with the indissolubility and the transmission of life are the three foundations of the family.
Tosoni: One thing is certain: the family is truly an adventure for each of us because it is “the inextirpable experience of a good,” as Fr. Carrón said. For this reason, it is a resource for all of society. It’s what makes me happy and grateful every morning, when I get up and look at my wife and children.