David QuinnA papal visit to Ireland might overshadow the actual theme of the meeting, writes David Quinn
The near certainty that Pope Francis or his successor will visit Ireland to take part in the World Meeting of Families in two years’ time will catapult that event not alone on to the national stage, but the world stage also.
Without a papal visit the event would be far more low-key, like the Eucharistic Congress of 2012. In its own way, that was a successful event bringing together Catholics from all over the country and from many parts of the world. It highlighted that there is still energy in the Irish Church and that there are still plenty of groups pursuing many different ways of bringing the Gospel in its many aspects into the lives of ordinary people.
But the congress had little enough impact on the national consciousness and in fact there is anecdotal evidence that it was perceived by priests outside Dublin as a mainly Dublin event. Were it not for that, it would have been twice as big as it was.
The World Meeting of Families is now guaranteed to be a major event because it will mean the first papal visit to Ireland in 39 years by the time it happens, and because it will mean the Pope will complete the visit of St John Paul II to Ireland by travelling to the North. That will be momentous.
Momentous
When the Pope travelled to the US last autumn for the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, he widened his itinerary and went to Cuba also. That, too, was momentous, even though John Paul had been there before him.
Oddly enough, while drawing attention to the World Meeting of Families there is a danger that a papal visit will end up overshadowing the actual theme of the meeting, ‘The Gospel of the Family: Joy for the World’.
The visit to the North will grab most of the headlines around the world and his visit to the South will mean lots of commentary about the state of the Church in Ireland today and where it needs to go from here. The World Meeting of Families itself may then become something of a sideshow. But that is probably unavoidable.
The World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia had as its theme, ‘Love is our mission, the family fully alive’.
When Pope Francis spoke at the final Mass in Philadelphia, he delivered one of his typically homespun homilies. He mostly avoided theory and spoke about day-to-day family life.
He spoke about the “little gestures… we learn at home… the quiet things done by mothers and grandmothers, by fathers and grandfathers, by children, by brothers and sisters. They are little signs of tenderness, affection and compassion. Like the warm supper we look forward to at night, the early lunch awaiting someone who gets up early to go to work. Homely gestures. Like a blessing before we go to bed, or a hug after we return from a hard day’s work. Love is shown by little things, by attention to small daily signs which make us feel at home. Faith grows when it is lived and shaped by love. That is why our families, our homes, are true domestic churches. They are the right place for faith to become life, and life to grow in faith.”
In his address to the bishops who came to Philadelphia for the meeting he was somewhat more theoretical when he spoke about the fact that, “until recently, we lived in a social context where the similarities between the civil institution of marriage and the Christian sacrament were considerable and shared. The two were interrelated and mutually supportive”.
This was a clear reference to the fact that the US Supreme Court had just legalised same-sex marriage and to the fact that divorce is now so widespread. Marriage in its civil form is no longer for life or between one man and one woman.
Assuming it is Pope Francis who comes to Ireland and not a successor, no doubt he will concentrate mainly on the day-to-day realities of family life as it is lived in ordinary homes. But he will have to address, even if indirectly, the political and social reality in which the family in the West and in Ireland now finds itself.
It can be no coincidence that in the same year Ireland voted for same-sex marriage the Pope chose Ireland as the location for the next World Meeting of Families.
Irish law no longer treats the natural family, which is to say the family that arises from the union of man and woman, as having any special importance even though society is absolutely dependent on it, and no other family can arise without the union of man and woman in the first instance, even if the child arises from IVF because then the sperm of a man and the egg of a woman must be united.
Our law now pretends that the natural ties are of little importance and in their roles as mothers and fathers there is no difference that matters between men and women. At the same time, we are told how vital it is that there be equal numbers of men and women in politics.
So it is hard to see how the World Meeting of Families can avoid somehow addressing what happened last year.
Pope Francis himself in his recent Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia said: “As Christians, we can hardly stop advocating marriage simply to avoid countering contemporary sensibilities, or out of a desire to be fashionable or a sense of helplessness in the face of human and moral failings. We would be depriving the world of values that we can and must offer.”
So if the World Meeting of Families failed to do this, it would be very derelict in its duties. And it would be no good to relegate this extremely important theme to one of the many speeches that will be delivered by lay people over the course of the meeting because the message would be entirely lost.
It is worth noting also that 2018, when the event will take place, will be the 60th anniversary of the publication of Humanae Vitae, the encyclical which reiterated the Church’s opposition to artificial (though not natural) means of birth control.
But it is a mistake to reduce that encyclical to that aspect only, because the encyclical was a spot-on analysis of where the sex revolution inaugurated by the pill has led us and this is something Pope Francis has often spoken about in praising Pope Paul VI and his controversial encyclical.
So it would be very strange if Humanae Vitae did not rate a mention in 2018.
In terms of the attention anything gets in the media, and therefore the extent to which the public will pay attention to anything, much will depend on what Pope Francis himself will say.
Let us hope he will encourage the Church in Ireland, give his trademark homespun advice to ordinary families and be willing to say the controversial and prophetic things that need to be said about what Western society has done, and is doing to the family.