The Archbishop of Westminister, Vincent Nichols is urging Catholics in England and Wales to complete ‘the pope’s survey’. So far around 5,000 people from England and Wales have filled in the survey. Elizabeth Davies, marriage and family life project officer, told the Catholic Herald that 15,000 people had accessed the survey so far but only Read more
Pope Francis has convened an extraordinary Synod meeting in Rome next year, on marriage and the family and has asked Bishops Conferences worldwide to undertake wide consultation with their people, in order to provide input to the discussion. The New Zealand Catholic Bishops have put the questions from the Extraordinary Synod document in an online Read more
Most remarkable about the consultation regarding sex, marriage and family life, in which the Catholic Church has asked Catholics throughout the world to take part, is its brave implication that things have to change. One sentence in the official document accompanying the Vatican’s questionnaire is an example of this. As a result of the current Read more
For his new book, author Andrew Solomon spoke with parents who have children completely unlike them — with autism, Down syndrome or dwarfism. SPIEGEL spoke with him about his findings and how they changed his parenting. SPIEGEL: Dr. Solomon, in your book you write about Jason Kingsley, who was a child star on “Sesame Street.” What’s Read more
The situation of remarried divorcees will be a major topic of discussion when Catholic bishops meet in October 2014 for an extraordinary Synod of Bishops called by Pope Francis on the pastoral needs of families. The Code of Canon Law says such a synod is held to “deal with matters which require a speedy solution”. Read more
The results of an online survey, commissioned by Hyundai to look at Kiwis’ attitudes toward family life, found work pressure had a significant impact on family time. Mounting work schedules are straining quality family time, with parents missing dinnertime and working through the weekend. Almost 60 per cent of parents said their work commitments had Read more
If you’re looking for a two-parent, man-and-wife, never-divorced kind of family, head to one of those citizenship ceremonies. If you want to find traditional American family values—a man and a woman officially married to one of their “own kind,” no plans for divorce, an older dad who is the breadwinner, a stay-at-home mom—the best place Read more
We all know what’s coming. Everywhere in the developed world, populations are greying. The media are full of stories about the surge in the numbers of the elderly within the next 20 years, while governments have been pushing the age of retirement entitlements upward. Most of the spotlight has been on the new greybeards themselves—the Read more
Traditional theories of secularization maintain that religious decline led to the deterioration of the family. Not so, argues Mary Eberstadt in her new book How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization (Templeton Press, 2013). Eberstadt is a leading cultural critic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center Read more
My mother used to say a phrase I’ll never forget. As a teenager, there were times that I would refuse to do as she asked, would stomp my feet in anger, or argue that she didn’t love me. But she would always reply, “Wait until you’re a mother and you’ll see why I worry about Read more