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Called to the Joy of Love: National Pastoral Framework for Marriage and Family Life Ministry
Introduction
Today, pastoral leaders face the challenge of addressing numerous marital and family situations that are more complex than in previous decades. This framework attempts to present pastoral approaches to many of these situations with the hope that all people “experience the Gospel of the family as a joy that ‘fills hearts and lives.’”1
As Pope Francis indicates, the contemporary issues faced by couples and families require an outreach that is “not content to proclaim a merely theoretical message without connection to people’s real problems.”2 Rather, “pastoral care for families ‘needs to make it clear that the Gospel of the family responds to the deepest expectations of the human person: a response to each one’s dignity and fulfilment in reciprocity, communion and fruitfulness.’”3
The Realities of Families Today
The Church’s pastoral efforts must “focus on the concrete realities” of family life in every generation.4 Within our country today, this focus is critical due to the multitude of challenges faced by married couples and families.
In response to these challenges and encouraged by these opportunities, “it is not enough to show generic concern for the family in pastoral planning.”5 Rather, we must “seek new forms of missionary creativity” to reach hearts and heal wounds in all families, Catholic and non-Catholic, with a particular sensitivity to the increasingly diverse cultural and ethnic communities in our midst and to those families that are farthest from the Church.6 Every diocese/eparchy should examine how to meet the unique challenges that their families experience—whether in the Church or territory—and respond to them with renewed creativity and commitment.
Aim and Audience
The purpose of this national pastoral framework, which is an adaptable set of principles and strategies, is to assist dioceses, eparchies, parishes, and all those who serve the family, in responding to the call to proclaim the Gospel of the family, the joy of love, throughout the United States.
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1 Pope Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia [AL] (March 19, 2016), no. 200.
2 Ibid., no. 201, quoting Relatio Synodi 2014, no. 32.
3 Ibid., no. 201, quoting Relatio Synodi 2014, no. 33.
4 Ibid., no. 31.
5 Ibid., no. 200.
6 Ibid., no. 57. See also AL, nos. 36, 201, 230, 291.