Strengthening all family types a Church priority

Monday, July 17th, 2017

The Church is doing whatever it can to strengthen all family types, including those often considered non-traditional, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn said during a recent visit to Ireland.

Speaking last week at the “Let’s Talk Family: Let’s Be Family” conference in Ireland, Schönborn endorsed family life.

“[Family is]the survival network of the future” and “will remain forever the basis of every society, he said.

“Favouring the family does not mean disfavouring other forms of life – even those living in a same-sex partnership need their families,” he pointed out.

“Today, everybody can get married, but so many choose not to get married,” Schönborn (who is the theologian who reviewed Amoris Laetitia, the papal encyclical on the family), said.

He suggested the number of “irregular situations” has increased enormously because the “framework of society has changed so much.

He went on to explain that marriage as we know it today has not always been available for many people because in the past the laws of the land often prohibited servants from marrying.

He said if he had to sum it up for Twitter, he would say, “Amoris Laetitia tells you marriage and family are possible today” … and … “Amoris Laetitia is Pope Francis’ 2016 apostolic exhortation after two synods of bishops on the family”.

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