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Intervention of Rev. Sister Marie-Antoinette SAADÉ, Member of the Congregation of the Maronite Sisters of the Holy Family; Responsible for training and apprenticeship (LEBANON), auditor |
Given the scale and diversity of our multiple problems, I would like to reiterate a practical proposal on the pastoral family, which already exists, as, in my opinion, it is possible and it is in our means whereas many others are not: Working together as Churches of the Middle East on what consists of a social fabric that is disintegrating: Family, primary and fundamental cell of the domestic Church and social fabric . We observe today an increase in dislocated couples, families torn apart and the ecclesiastic courts testify to this.
It is true that the question of the family occupies and worries the Church and yet we often feel helpless in the face of such suffering. If we work together as churches, to take care of the family in all its dimensions, it seems to me that we could prevent much misery in our societies. Thinking together about a pastoral family, a simple pastoral, and intelligent and effective contribution towards all the other pastorals: that of vocations, the young, the sick, the disabled, the elderly, the sacraments, of Christian life itself.
In order to recover the disintegrating families, why not create together a shelter for couples with staff and pastoral workers skilled in knowing how to listen to couples in difficulty; staff who offer presence, listening, advice and support before they have to come to court. Because prevention is better than cure.To offer some advice to parents, sometimes basic, but so needed, about the education of their children as the challenges they face are so huge that they feel powerless so they become resigned and therefore damage can only be multiplied.
Encouraging young people to enter wider Christian movements, whether sporting, cultural or spiritual, as long as we have prepared capable and prudent educators. This is the best prevention against the temptations of drugs and other harmful addictions.
Caring for the awakening of faith in the family as the privileged place where the child learns to recognize their identity and grow by developing their talents and abilities, human and divine. Because faith is acquired the mother's lap. This is where the first catechesis is the most effective and most lasting.
Give the woman her true and rightful place. Should the Church not be at the leading edge in this area, given the practices in some Muslim communities where women are beaten, imprisoned, violated, abused, without rights, treated as domestic slaves? This indeed would be true witness. Repairing social fabric together, by promoting the human person at the heart of the family and starting from there, seems to me to be urgent and effective pastoral care.
[00186-02.05] [UD027] [Original text: French]
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Intervention of Rev. Georges NORADOUNGUIAN, Rector, Armenian College, Rome (ITALY), auditor |
If the Church is the assembly of the faithful and we are only clerics here, then we are not a Church but we are the leaders of our Churches.
With our priestly ordination or our episcopal consecration we received a state of grace; but unfortunately we have lost the grace of being in direct contact with our faithful.
In fact if we take a look at the themes dealt with it is immediately apparent that these are the concerns of us hierarchs. There are difficulties in establishing relationships among us. Difficulties in establishing relationships with the conditions of the countries we live in.
I have serious doubts about the fact that the problems we are dealing with are problems that involve our youth. I fear that what we are dealing with is a simple interpretation of what our faithful are facing or living and instead we are not dealing with the real causes.
For a solution we do not need interpretations or justifications but rather a serious diagnosis of the situation and research in its cause.
I believe it is very important to let our lay people speak and particularly our young people because they are the first to be interested in the theme and in our debates.
Their word has many advantages.
1. They are often denied the advantages reserved to us men of religion and to those who rule our countries, so young people have more courage in speaking of their difficulties and are more outspoken.
2. Not having the material benefits/social security that we have as clergy, young people have a more objective and realistic vision of the situation of their faith and the difficulties of their Churches.
3. Having no state privileges they are less afraid of “secret agents” of a country and they speak more courageously than us about the real daily challenges.
[00163-02.02] [UD023] [Original text: Italian]
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Intervention of Mr. Saïd A. AZER, Member of the Pontifical Council for the Laity (EGYPT), auditor |
Thousands of young and adult persons, members of more than twenty Apostolic movements - as well as from the Neo-Catechumenal Way - participate in a lively manner in the services of the Church in Egypt, through listening to the Word of God and the celebration of the holy sacraments.
But every day they have to face the constant temptations that threaten their faith.
The most important challenges facing the members of these movements are:
-Emigration, as a consequence of superficial faith.
-Newspapers and the internet.
-The world moving towards a “culture of death”, as Pope John Paul II said. As an example: homosexual marriages, quick divorces, abortion, the constant attacks on the Christian family.
-Many Christians are no longer interested in the liturgies and no longer listen.
-Sunday Mass alone is not enough for the growth of faith.
-Forgiveness and conversion are values that no longer exist in daily life.
-The lack of unity between members of the clergy, and their human and spiritual formation often is not acceptable and is often scandalous.
-The immersion of young persons in an anti-evangelical atmosphere.
The solution, in the face of all these challenges, is in the consciousness of the members of communities on the meaning of their presence, the value of their mission and their Christian vocation towards the Church and the countries they live in. The Neo-Catechumenal Way, for example, has a lively experience with its members who rejected the idea of emigration, youth that has abandoned drugs, rebuilt marriages, openness to life as it pertains to children, thousands of young boys and girls throughout the world have offered their lives for priestly vocations and monasteries, as well as communion with other churches.
[00120-02.02] [UD003] [Original text: French]
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Intervention of Card. Peter Kodwo Appiah TURKSON, President of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace (VATICAN CITY) |
AWARENESS OF THE CHURCH’S SOCIAL DOCTRINE
From a reading of the Instrumentum laboris of this synod, what emerges is the need to spread more widely awareness of the Gospel and the Church’s Social Doctrine among Christians, and more widely, in the countries of the Middle Eastern region. Therefore in line with the sense of para 26 (Instr. Laboris), awareness of the PCGP site could be encouraged as an instrument at the service of the local Churches for a deeper study of the Church’s Social Doctrine. On this subject, the PCGP undertakes to complete the translation of the Compendium of the Church’s Social Doctrine into Arabic.
Furthermore, we could consider, given the intention of the PCGP to set up a summer school at this dicastery, also inviting and involving priests from the Middle East in the sense of the desire expressed in para 26 (Instr. Laboris). Another initiative that could be promoted by the PCGP is that of bringing the Church’s Social Doctrine directly to the Middle East, organizing, for example, a symposium to present Caritas in veritate.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
In para 37 we read: “In the Middle East, freedom of religion customarily means freedom of worship...” etc. Given the theme of the Peace Message 2011 (Religious freedom, the road to peace), it would be useful, first of all, to restate the fact that authentic religious freedom includes the freedom to preach and convert. Furthermore, it should be noted that in certain countries, the subject of religious freedom is still viewed with a certain diffidence. For them, religious freedom implies religious relativism, indifference and the negation of the country’s religious inheritance. The Catholic Church faced the same problem with regard to the interpretation of “Dignitatis Humanae” from Vatican II (the Declaration on religious freedom) years ago. But as Pope Benedict VXI teaches us, “Religious freedom does not mean religious indifferentism, nor does it imply that all religions are equal” (Civ. 55). In fact there is no conflict between religious freedom and the strong defense of a person’s religious identity against relativism. Religious freedom is about the privilege (freedom) of a believer to form, live and announce his religious experience, without coercion from the state, but with the possibility of contributing to the social order.
Therefore the Churches and minority religions in the Middle East must not be subject to discrimination, violence, defamatory propaganda (anti-Christian), the denial of building permits for places of worship and the organization of public functions. In fact, the promotion of the Resolutions against the Defamation of Religions in the framework of the United Nations should not limit itself to Islam (Islamophobia) in the Western world. It should include Christianity (Christianophobia: the religion and the community of believers) in the Islamic world.
We can also promote the adoption, again within the UN framework, of a resolution on religious freedom as an alternative to the resolution on the defamation of religions.
MIGRATION
In the section relating to international immigration in the Middle East in particular referring to paragraphs 49 and 50 we encounter themes that are particularly close to the heart of this PCGP:
The theme of immigration as a worldwide phenomenon (emigration and immigration).
The theme of decent jobs for domestic workers, who are largely women. To this have to be added needs linked to the respect for human dignity, human rights and the rights of workers, as well as needs linked to respect or religious belief.
FORMATION OF YOUNG PEACE PROMOTERS
Finally, given the large amount of hostility present in the area of the Middle East, paragraph 69 underlines the importance of training young people “to go beyond these bounds and internal hostilities to see the face of God in every person, so as to work together and build an all-inclusive, shared civic order”. The PCGP could elect to favor stagieres and participants from the Middle East at the summer schools who, having returned home, can act as spokesmen for a message of peace among young people, a sort of peace practitioner (cf Laura Villanueva and her peace Field Japan).
In conclusion, as maintained in paragraph 115 the greatest witness Christians can bear in the social field, in the Middle East as in the rest of the world, is that of freely loving their fellow man. The invitation to give, and freely, on the part of Benedict XVI in the encyclical Caritas in veritate is, in fact, an invitation to assume a fraternal way of behaving, an attitude of promoting the growth of our neighbor, an attitude of seeking the common good.
[00116-02.07] [IN090] [Original text: Italian]
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Intervention of Mons. Raymond Leo BURKE, Archbishop Emeritus of Saint-Louis, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura (VATICAN CITY) |
The first concern is a somewhat widespread problem of Catholic faithful passing to a non-Catholic Eastern Church or the Islamic religion in order to free themselves from a matrimonial bond. Within the perspective of ecclesial communion which considers the indissolubility of marriage as its great treasure, the abandonment of the communion of the Church with the pretension of breaking the marriage bond inflicts a distinct wound upon the membership of the Church.
The second concern is the treatment of causes of marriage nullity with justice, both in service of communion and as a witness to Justice of which the Church should be the mirror in the world. Keeping in mind no. 29 of the Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum caritatis, the following points must be observed: the need to prepare fitting ministers of justice for the ecclesiastical tribunals (cf. CCEO, cann. 1086, § 4; 1087, § 3; and 1099, § 2); the collaboration, also between sui iuris Churches, in the erection and operation of effective ecclesiastical tribunals (cf. CCEO, cann. 1067-1068); the assiduous observance of the procedural laws, in order to avoid even the appearance of partiality; the acknowledgment of the service of ecclesial communion, in this precise matter, offered, together with the Petrine ministry (cf. CCEO, can. 1059), by the Apostolic Signatura through the vigilance over the administration of justice (cf. Lex propria, art. 35; and can. CCEO, can. 1062, § 1); the fitting and swift administration of justice in causes of marriage nullity as an essential means of promoting the teaching on indissolubility; the better coordination of the administration of justice at local tribunals with the justice exercised by the Holy See, also by means of agreements or conventions between the Patriarchs and the Tribunal of the Roman Rota for the treatment of causes which legitimately arrive at the Roman Rota; and the timeliness of updating the relevant laws in the personal Statutes where they exist (cf. CCEO, cann. 99, § 1; and 1358).
Addressing the above concerns of canonical discipline will contribute to the communion of the Church in the Middle East, which all canonical discipline exists to safeguard and promote.
[00112-02.02] [IN068] [Original text: English]
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Intervention of Mons. Georges BOU-JAOUDÉ, Archbishop of Tripoli of Lebanon of the Maronites (LEBANON) |
The Instrumentum laboris barely mentioned the role of laity in the church and their relationship with the clergy and the bishops.
In the Maronite Church, the lay persons have always participated in the life of the church through the means of Marian brotherhoods.
At the same time, the laity was always entrusted with the management of the material goods and properties of the church; others, ordained as deacon assistants helped with the relations with civil authorities.
New movements were born, inspired by these foundations in the West. Some were inculturated in the Eastern Churches, and others not yet.
The World Youth Days gave birth to groups and commissions for youth in the dioceses.
A Congress of lay persons was held in 1997 in Lebanon, convoked by the Prefect of the Apostolate for the Laity in Rome. Another is being prepared today by decision of the Eastern Catholic Patriarchs.
[00096-02.03] [IN072] [Original text: French]
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Intervention of Mons. Joseph Jules ZEREY, Titular Archbishop of Damiata of the Greek-Melkites, Auxiliary and Protosyncellus of the Patriarchate of Antioch of the Greek-Melkites (JERUSALEM) |
Why do many of our families emigrate? Why do they live half-heartedly, crushed by greed coming notably from media, the pressures coming from all sides, political, social and material as well as those coming from other professions of faith or other religions? Why have so many lost their call to live like the first Christians, who, with the Apostles, lived an evangelical life, centered on Christ in prayer and in sharing?
I strongly state that many of our “so-called Christian” families have a vital need for re-evangelization and to personally embrace the forgiveness and mercy of God earned by the passion, the death and the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
During the past forty years, we have all witnessed the Holy Spirit evoking a renewal in the Church from which new movements and communities were born that live the missionary dynamic such as the great Apostles and great Saints (which we know), who during the centuries knew how to evangelize the heart of the Church and of the world.
These past years in our Arab countries and in other countries, I have met several families who truly live their Christian faith despite the enormous difficulties in their daily lives. These families burning with the Charity of Christ bear their Crosses with faith and Hope against all Hope.
These families cannot hold and cannot be missionaries unless through a personal tie, a deep love for Christ strengthened by daily prayer as well as the support of small fraternities or parish communities meeting each week around the Word of God. These “small Cenacles” will allow them to live in a more intense way the Sunday Eucharist.
These families live the presence of the Risen Christ among them, which vivifies them through His Holy Spirit and leads them to the Father.
An international center for family spirituality will be built in Nazareth very soon. This center will be at the service of the local Church and the Universal Church. I ask that it may shine over all the cities of the Holy Land, to help families not only face their daily problems and difficulties, but especially to encourage these families to become true missionary families, true hearths of Charity and Light.
[00058-02.03] [IN036] [Original text: French]
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