Faced with the data released by ISTAT and the analysis of the CISF report there is an ecclesial reality that does not give up.
The family is in difficulty, too often ignored by politics. And the birth crisis is one of the most dangerous consequences.
"The Church will always play its part and will always be an ally of those who support the family", said Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, president of the IEC, in the interview published yesterday by Avvenire. An important passage to underline that, also in the light of the pitiless photograph that has emerged in these days in rapid succession from at least three authoritative sources - Istat, Cisf, Lancet - the ecclesial community does not intend to retreat in its commitment to family evangelization. And when we speak of the "Gospel of the family" we mean not only everything that concerns the pastoral and catechetical approach, but a very wide range of educational and social interventions.
Tens of thousands of people have made the social and educational commitment of the family, in its many forms, a reason for living and a privileged way of living the missionary commitment in support of the many domestic weaknesses.
For all these realities that, in various areas, refer to the new social doctrine traced by Pope Francis in Amoris laetitia, the crisis of the family and the denatal emergency documented in these days, in a precise and merciless way, by statistics, analysis and projections, are worrying but not disorienting. If in the Cisf 2020 Report the fragmentation and hybridization of the family has been photographed, with the advance of a post-family with a variable profile, we must not forget what had already emerged in the double Synod on the family 2014-2015. "Starting from the synodal reflections, there remains not a stereotype of an ideal family - writes Pope Francis (AL 57) - but a questioning mosaic formed by many different realities, full of joy, dramas and dreams".
Could it be that the many faces of the post-family correspond, at least in part, to the "questioning mosaic"? Because, if so, it is precisely in the face of these new perspectives that the commitment must be doubled, in the light of what the Pope always explains in the same passage of the Post-Synodal Exhortation: "The realities that concern us are challenges. Let us not fall into the trap of exhausting ourselves in self-defensive lamentations, instead of stirring up missionary creativity".
But "without making the family an electoral slogan", Cardinal Bassetti said among other things. And in the knowledge that it is not only state interventions that will change the fate of a reality that has changed profoundly in the course of history and that will change again.
The "crisis of civilization" mentioned by the president of the Italian bishops can be transformed into a cultural turning point capable of facing the uncertainties and concerns of the present, transforming them into a great occasion for rebirth. It is the great task of the whole family movement that continues to believe that the values of marriage, generativity and the family represent a good that no society can renounce.
Source: Avvenire
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