Cardinal Blase Cupich
Nelson Mandela insisted he didn’t deserve people calling him a saint, unless, he said, “A saint is a sinner who keeps on trying.” The word trying reflects the reality that human life is a process. We humans are social beings. We develop, change, and grow through care and interaction with others.
This insight is crucial to Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia, The Joy of Love, which summarizes the Church’s two recent synods on the family. The pope teaches a pastoral approach of accompaniment.
Family is privileged place. It’s is where most people live out their love for one another and their relationship with God. The Spirit of God accompanies all of us in the here and now of our lives and relationships, our joys and struggles.
“The Church has the responsibility not only to teach its doctrine on marriage, but must also learn from family’s lived experience.” explains Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago. He presented a paper supporting Amoris Laetitia at St. Edmund College in Cambridge, England. “It’s not glimpses of perfection that reveal God’s action but the imperfect attempts at love and compassion which permeate ordinary life.”
“A new day demands a new paradigm,” writes Cupich. Amoris Laetitia is a revolution in mercy, a paradigm shift that recognizes Church laws can’t fit every situation. Families come in varieties — divorced, second marriages, single people with children or elderly parents or disabled persons, partners, immigrant and refugee families.
Rather than have the complexities of their lives separate people from the Church, Pope Francis wants the Church to learn and listen to those who live marriage day to day and respect the work of the Holy Spirit in the consciences of the faithful as they discern what God asks in their lives.
- What can the Church learn from your experience of marriage and family?