The World Meeting of Families 2018 – A Reflection
AMORIS LAETITIA – The Joy of Love - is the title of the document written by Pope Francis concerned with family at its widest understanding. It is this document that lies behind the exciting prospect of the coming of The World Meeting of Families to Ireland from August 21st to 26th 2018. The World Meeting of Families is an international meeting and not an Irish meeting per se. It encourages us, from its inception, to look outwards not inwards. While everyone is clear that this is a celebration of the family within the international family of the Roman Catholic Church, it has been from the outset ecumenical and open to a much wider understanding of the family of the churches in Ireland. Why Ireland? The World Meeting of Families takes place every three years somewhere in the world. Pope Francis, it is understood, decided on Ireland this time for a number of reasons. He wishes to speak to Northern Europe where he feels that the structure of the family is not being supported sufficiently. He is also very conscious of the wide and almost unending range of issues around immigrants and immigration and these too are where the world meets its neighbours and its wider family. Direct Provision remains a human and a social scandal in Ireland. The impact that immigration has on the various de nitions of the family is unending, whether this be the individual immigrant family unit or the family of the church or mosque or temple or gurdwara where this family eventually arrives, or the family of the state responsible for the wellbeing of migrants Another consideration for Pope Francis is that Ireland is seen to have a strong family culture, though one that in many ways has become more elastic and creative than it was once. The correlation between family and education is something the Meeting would hope to draw out. This is one of the points of pressure in a secular state which accepts religious patronage in both education and healthcare. The air shown by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland in organising and running the International Eucharistic Congress in 2012 may also have been a factor in papal thinking. Ireland has shown that, while remaining rmly in the Roman Catholic tradition, it can be appropriately ecumenical and international.
* Full article available in printed copies.
Michael Geoffrey St Aubyn Jackson
is Archbishop of Dublin and Bishop of Glendalough.