To the
priests participating in a seminar on "Responsible Parenthood"
CHURCH MUST LEAD COUPLES TO THE TRUTH
ABOUT THEMSELVES AND THEIR LOVE
On the morning of
Thursday, 1 March the Pope spoke to the priests participating in a seminar on
“Responsible parenthood: scientific philosophical and theological foundation”,
which began on 28 February at the Faculty of Medicine of the
Dearest Priests!
1. I
am happy to welcome you in this special audience which allows me to express to
you the deep affection which I have for you:
sharers with me in the one priesthood of Christ, and at the same time to
show you the great esteem in which I hold the pastoral work to which you dedicate
your best energies.
You
carry out your apostolate in a particular way at the service of the family,
rightly convinced that every help offered to this fundamental cell of human
society develops a multiplied
effectiveness being refracted on the different components of the family
nucleus as well as perpetuating itself in time, thanks to the educational work
which passes from parents to children, and through these, to the children's
children.
I
wish to confirm you in this conviction and to encourage you to continue in the
work undertaken, in which there cannot be lacking the blessing of God, the
prime author of the family community and, “when the designated time had come”
(Gal 4:4) its provident redeemer.
Responsible ministry
2. This meeting takes place on the occasion of
your participation in the Congress which the “Centre of studies and research on
the natural regulation of fertility” of the
In
the recent celebration of the Jubilee for priests I admonished: “Let us open our eyes ever more widely - the
glance of the soul - to understand better what
it means to forgive sins and to reconcile human consciences with the infinitely Holy God, with the God of
Truth and of Love” (Homily of 24 February 1984, no. 4). To reconcile the human conscience with the
God of Truth and of Love: this is your ministry, always, but in a
wholly special way when you place your priesthood at the service of married
couples.
During these days you have wanted to discover and to study in depth the
scientific, philosophical and theological foundations of responsible
parenthood; more precisely, of the teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae and of the Apostolic
Exhortation Familiaris Consortio,
with the aim of reconciling the human consciences of married couples with the
God of Truth and of Love. When, in fact,
is the human conscience “reconciled”, when is it deeply at peace? When it is in the truth. And the two documents cited above, in
fidelity to the Church's tradition, have taught the truth of conjugal love, inasmuch as it is a communion of
persons.
What
does it mean “to reconcile the conscience of married couples with the truth of their conjugal love”? When Christ's contemporaries asked him if it
were lawful for the husband to divorce his wife, he replied by referring “to
the beginning”, that is, to the Creator's original
plan for marriage. You too, who as
priests act in the name of Christ,
must show married couples that what is taught by the Church on responsible
parenthood is none other than that original plan which the Creator imprinted in
the humanity, of the man and woman who marry, and which the Redeemer came to
re-establish. The moral norm taught by Humanae Vitae and Familiaris Consortio is the defence of the entire truth of conjugal
love, since it expresses the absolutely
necessary demands of this love.
Be
sure of this: when your teaching is
faithful to the Church's Magisterium, you do not teach something that the man
and woman cannot understand. Even the man and woman of
today. In fact, this teaching
which you make resound to their ears is already
written in their heart. The man and
woman must be helped to read profoundly this “writing in the heart”. And does not the fact that during these three
days of study you have wished to discover the reasons of the Church's Magisterium, perhaps mean that you wish to
have clearer the paths by which to
lead married couples to the profound
truth about themselves and their conjugal love?
Fidelity to the God of
Truth and Love
3.
To reconcile the human conscience of married couples with the God of Truth and
of Love: the human conscience of married
couples is truly reconciled when they have discovered and welcomed the truth
about their conjugal love. Indeed, as
You
know very well that frequently fidelity on the part of priests - let's say,
rather, on the part of the Church - to this truth and to the consequent moral
laws, I mean those taught by Humanae
Vitae and Familiaris Consortio,
must often be paid for at a high price.
One is often laughed at, accused of lack of understanding, and of
severity, and of other things besides.
It is the fate of every witness to the truth, as we well know. Let's hear another passage from
With
simple and humble firmness, be faithful to the Church's Magisterium on a point
of such decisive importance for man's destiny.
Putting truth into
practice
4.
There exists a real difficulty to the
reconciliation of the human consciences of married couples with the God of
Truth and of Love: it is of quite
another kind from the one just indicated.
Reconciliation does not occur if the married couples can merely perceive the truth of their
conjugal love: it is necessary that by
their freedom they make the truth effective and put it into practice. The real
difficulty is that the heart of man
and woman is prey to concupiscence: and
concupiscence urges freedom not to consent to the authentic demands of conjugal
love. It would be a very serious error
to conclude from this that the Church's teaching in this matter is in itself
only an “ideal” which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the
so-called concrete possibilities of man:
according to a “balancing of the various goods in question”. But what are the “concrete possibilities of
man”? And of which man are we speaking?
Of the man dominated by lust
or of the man redeemed by Christ? Because this is the matter in question: the reality
of Christ's redemption.
Christ has redeemed us! This means:
he has given us the possibility of realizing the entire truth of our being, he has
liberated our freedom from the domination
of lust. And if the redeemed man
still sins, this is not due to an imperfection of Christ's redemptive act, but
to man's will not to avail himself of the grace which flows from that act. God's command
is of course proportioned to man's capabilities: but to the capabilities of the man to whom
the Holy Spirit has been given; of the man who, though he has fallen into sin,
can always obtain pardon and enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The
reconciliation of the human conscience of the married couple with the God of
Truth and of Love is effected through the remission of sins through the humble
recognition that we are not up to standard, so to speak, when measured against
the Truth and its demands, and not through the proud reduction of the Truth and
its demands to what we decide is true and good.
Our freedom consists in being servants of the Truth. As we read in the Liturgy of the Hours
yesterday: “Your better servant is not
he who claims to hear from you what he wants to hear, but rather he who wills
what he has heard from you” (St. Augustine, Confessions,
10, 26, 37, Ed. cit., 255)
Our
pastoral charity toward married couples consists in being always available to
offer them the pardon of sins through the Sacrament of Penance, not in
diminishing in their eyes the greatness and dignity of their conjugal love.
Helping married
couples
5.
“Let us open our eyes ever more widely - the glance of the soul - to understand
better what it means to forgive sins and
to reconcile human consciences with the infinitely Holy God, with the God
of Truth and of Love”.
Married couples need this more profound glance of our priestly soul, the
entire Church needs it. So that married
couples, so that the whole Church may praise the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. The Church is amazed and never
satiated in the contemplation of that Love and that Truth with which you
reconcile the human conscience of married couples.
In invoking upon your ministry the strengthening outpouring of copious gifts of wisdom and charity, with all my heart I impart to you my Apostolic Blessing.