The following is an interview that His Excellency, the Bishop of San Diego, gave to his diocesan paper.
It gives the sense that the Diocese of San Diego – and the Catholic Answers Forum – is exceptionally blessed to have such an excellent bishop, who is very much of the mind of Pope Francis.
*‘How to Make Our Parishes Magnets for Family Life’
Bishop Robert W. McElroy reflects on the diocese-wide discussions about how to strengthen Catholic families in the San Diego area — known formally as a synod — and why they are needed now more than ever.
Question: How did the idea for a synod at the San Diego Diocese come about?
Answer: There is no more important topic for living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ than the area of marriage and family life. It’s for that reason that Pope Francis asked the bishops of the world to collaborate with him in a process called a synod … To reflect on how do we make the Gospel of Jesus Christ present in family life and marriage in today’s culture where there are so many obstacles to living out that vision.
The fruit of their work was a document called “Joy of Love.” It’s about how we, in our family life, attempt to be Christ-like, but in a realistic way.
The synod here in the Diocese of San Diego was an effort to take the lay leadership, the priests, the sisters and brothers, and sit down together, and in some depth reflect on this: In light of what the pope said in “Joy of Love,” how do we make this real here? What are the particular challenges we face? What are the particular opportunities that we have?
How do we bring the Gospel into families where there are great stressors, where families are fragmented, to single parents?
How do we deal with those who are divorced and feel alienated from the life of the Church? How do we say to them: “Christ is calling you. The Church is calling you to be part of us.”
How do we bring spirituality into family life? It’s a very grave challenge. Many young parents don’t feel easy praying with their young kids.
How do we reach out to young couples and say to them: “Being married in the Church is a wonderful celebration of the love and permanent commitment you’re making. And we invite you to take that step.”
The synod in San Diego is an effort to address those very questions.…What steps do we need to take, in the coming years, to make marriage more what we all know it should be and our faith tells us it can be?
Q: How do the diocese’s unique cultures influence the deliberations?
A: The Diocese of San Diego is very, very diverse culturally, ethnically, racially. And for that reason, our diverse population brings richness to the life of our parishes, our Masses, and our school communities. And that’s a challenge on one level but on another, it’s a real opportunity.
What the challenge of our synod has been is to try to find strategies to seize upon the genius of marriage and family life which is in each culture. … Each of them points to the reality of Christian marriage and how it can be lived out.
We want all of our communities to contribute their genius on family life, the part of their culture that emphasizes the permanence, the depth, the unconditional commitment, the sacrifices, the compassion, the “being there” for people.
Q: As you have listened to some of the deliberations, what have you discovered?
A: One of the challenges we have here and throughout the United States is that the support from extended families is not there for many families. As a result, one of the challenges we have in our parishes is how to create sustaining networks of support. How to help young married couples understand that when their first major fight comes, it’s not a crisis, it’s simply a part of married life.
In most dioceses in the U.S., being a single-parent family would mean someone not married to begin with, or someone who is divorced or whose spouse has died. Our delegates identified two more elements here in San Diego. One is when one of the parents is deployed. That makes them single for a period of time, putting demands on them. How do we, in the Church, help them?
The other is deportation, when a husband or wife has been deported.
Those elements make us different and give us specific challenges.
Q: How did the delegates define “family”?
A: The group working on how to bring spiritual depth to family life raised the issue of inclusion. What they said is that we really need our marriage and family outreach to stress that families are all-inclusive. They include single people, they include gay and lesbian people, they include the homeless, the marginalized. They include everyone. They are all part of our families.
And thus, when we talk about the spirituality of family life, it has to convey very powerfully the fact that Christ calls to each and every one of us and invites us to be part of this family, which is the Church, but also to be a part of family life, the families which we’re born into and those created in our lifetimes.
Q: In general, what do you see as the outcome of the synod?
A: We’re hoping that the synod will point us in the right direction: How to make parishes magnets for family life, which speak to people’s hearts and souls about what Christian family life can be.*
thesoutherncross.org/headline2.asp
