By Bernardo Cervellera
For Asia News
Posted on April 8, 2016
For Asia News
Posted on April 8, 2016
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| Photo Source: Crisis Magazine |
Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation on family love cannot be reduced to problem of communion for divorced and remarried people. The document suggests ways to remake societal life. As a Catholic vision, it links the actual to the infinite, and calls for public policies that protect the rights of families.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, which was released today, is a vital contribution to the life of families and contemporary society.
Although it might take Catholics and non-Catholics some time to assimilate the long (265 pages) and demanding document, its emphases, passages, biblical references and look at human love are an objective and solid milestone in the quicksand of situations that are often treated only with fleeting feelings, love spells, fears and private frustrations, which hide an individualist notion of self, in which solitude marks not only the end of a relationship, but acts as it definition, origin and nature.
The document offers a sweet and powerful vision of Catholic humanity that makes its way, corrects, brightens and goes beyond a rationalist and trite conception of ego, love and society.
Some might have liked the exhortation to be only a "yes" or "no" to communion for divorced and remarried people. Instead, Francis gave us a sign and path of how, not only the family, but also the Church, and the whole of society can change. It is interesting to note for example that in the description of actual love between a husband and a wife, the document also speaks of the help that they can give to make more substantial the gifts brought by virgins, who are sometimes tempted to live a single lifestyle more than the consecrated who give their whole life (Amoris Laetitia, n.158, ff).
In the exhortation, the Catholic vision emerges in three main aspects:
1. The love between a man and a woman is continuously defined as the "image of God" and the return to what God and Christ do as a model for relationships (giving oneself, lack of anger, forgiveness, generation, raising children, etc.).
