Exclusive Interview with Mons. Juan Antonio Reig Pla, Bishop of Alcala de Henares (Spain)
Unofficial transcription of the Interview: "We fight evil - the prince of evil"
Introduction:
Humana Life International and the World Apostolate of Fatima, among other associations, organized in Fatima, (Portugal) from October 2-7, 2015, the VII World Prayer Congress for Life, “So that they may have life” (John 10, 10). The organizers of the congress invited the bishop of Alcalá de Henares Msgr. Juan Antonio Reig Pla to give a lecture titled, “The family, sanctuary of life”. (EV 92)”. We welcomed this opportunity to conduct the following interview.
1. Your Excellency, you defend the right to life, marriage and family, and you speak with clarity. Why is this not usually frequent?
When I speak, I try to make my words resonate with the voice of the Lord saying, "Be those who say yes or those who say no." It is the way that Jesus taught us. I do not pretend to compare myself with anyone, not even my brother bishops whom I love and esteem. The faithful need to hear in these complex times simple words that can reach their hearts. Words that have been put on our lips by the very gospel, the preaching of Jesus and the Church who is our mother. I simply intend to continue the tradition of the Catholic Church, explain the truths of faith, never condemning anyone, but just showing with affection what the Lord has taught us, because what is at stake is our own salvation. The words of the bishop must always be words of the shepherd who leads with love, who leads with patience and love those who are born through Christ in baptism and are entitled to hear from bishops and pastors the truth of Gospel.
2. Currently, the Catholic Church’s proposals are not accepted in western countries. Some think the solution lies in concentrating only on social and ecological issues. How can a new springtime be promoted in which the world accepts Christ and his Church?
The new spring time in the Catholic Church always and in every generation and in every moment of history comes from the holiness of her children. The holiness of the children makes the truth that is personal, that is Jesus Christ living in us by the Holy Spirit, shine, and also when truth shines it makes mistakes stand out in contrast, it's like the light that dispels the darkness and makes all the shadows disappear. The Church has to fight evil, it must be continually proposing the way of Jesus Christ to the faithful, that means it has the mission to denounce prophetically many times as Jesus did those things that harm her children and can take them on the road to perdition. It is not about a fight against anyone, we fight evil, we fight him who as prince of evil can fool so many people, but with infinite love, with very great mercy for all people and in a particular for those who duped by the devil can follow paths of perdition. Therefore, yes to a prophetic denunciation and a condemnation of evil, and yes to an ever greater love like Jesus Christ for those who could have been deceived and might have been falling into sin or ways that do not lead to peace of the heart.
The new spring for the Church and the world always comes from the hand of God. God created the world, the universe, or even what we now call the universes, and is a work of his magnificence and of his magnanimity. God truly is rich in love and mercy, which is why He has created so many planets and galaxies that don’t even fit into our head. We must have a great appreciation for the work of creation because it is the work of God, which is also important because it is the first book that God has given us; the book of nature where we see the imprint of God the Creator. Beyond the work created in this set of beautiful realities He wanted to put man, male and female, at the apex of creation. At the apex of creation and so be the voice of those same creatures and all universes in a song of praise to the Creator.
Sexual diversification, man-woman, responds to God’s loving plan. Along with creation, man-woman, the Lord said: " he will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh", the Lord then blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply." That is the will of God and therefore the couple, looking always to the creative intention of God, must open themselves generously to life. "Cultivate the earth and master it." Many times these words have not been well understood, but Pope Francis warns us as Benedict XVI and the same John Paul II, that caring for the earth and subduing the earth is nothing but putting it at the service of the needs of creation, because you have to take care of the common house, as man and woman which are at the pinnacle of creation. It is not a question of destroying but cultivating creation, caring for it so that it can meet the goals that have been designed by the Creator. Therefore, everything that comes along that way, is a good path. But, I insist, the most important thing in the person is what is specifically human which is the unity of body-spirit, or what Benedict XVI called, the ontological consistency of the soul. That is that the Lord has created the soul and instilled it in each of us, it is that He has made us participate in his very reality, hence the greatness of what is human.
Therefore, it all has to go in the same direction: care for the common house, but care for the goods of the person, and the goods of the person within a hierarchy of values, the main ones being those of the Spirit. Therefore, the culture has to respond to the desire for what is proper to the life in the Spirit, what we call inner life, and that now is a deficit in our midst, and the answers are not found only in the care for the common house, care for the environment, the human habitat, but also the care of, in the language of Pope John Paul II, the "true human ecology". That is, the habitat in which man, man and woman, can develop and respond. What is the true human ecology? “True human ecology is the family”. That is how John Paul II manifested it in his encyclical Centessimus annus, 38-39. Therefore the family is what we should take care of right now, and what has culturally come more into crisis, or is darkened. To be able to take care of human ecology, man as a person, man and woman, which is protected in the love in the family, we need to look at the man himself, to the same Jesus Christ, who is the true Man. The Constitution Guadium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council says in nº 22 that: the Incarnate Word reveals to man the mystery of man. And what has been revealed as the mystery to man? The real Man is Jesus Christ. It is the plan of God the Creator, which is only accomplished in the gift of self, therefore the vocation to love, and that comes from the root of the spirit, or that which has been called by Benedict XVI, the ontological consistency of the soul. Without it, it is impossible to make the unity body -spirit, a gift which is made visible, as we have said before, both in virginity and conjugality peculiar to marriage. So yes to the care of the common house, yes to cultivating and making those goods that install us in this world prosper, but never detract us from or stop cultivating that which is specifically human, that which we call human ecology, and within human ecology, spiritual goods which are those that are only present in the person and that have to do with his inner life, with his life in the Spirit.
3. What do you think about the thesis that one should not oppose civil recognition of unions between people of the same sex, but only avoid calling them “marriage”?
The plan of God for his people, is a plan that responds to what is his will. God has created man in his image and likeness, and He has made him male and female. Being made in his image and likeness does not exhaust itself saying that human beings are intelligent and are free, this is part of being in the image of God, but in being sexed, male and female, and having a primary vocation which is to love. And this is the main imprint that the Trinity has left in us. We have all been thought and wanted for love, and to love with a spousal vocation, from the first covenant which is creation, God has thought of spousal love between a man and a woman. God wanted sexed diversification, man- woman, to walk the path of mutual reciprocity and gift. He has created us male and female precisely to put in us the vocation to love. This is the vocation to the gift of oneself of the very person. This is the loving plan of God. Everything that goes beyond that does not respond to God's will. And once the love of God in Jesus Christ is known, the love that He has shown us on the cross, we can know the mystery of what virginity for the sake of the kingdom of heaven means which is also a spousal love, a love which is a full consecration of body and spirit to Him who calls someone for the sake of the kingdom of heaven to live in virginity. These are the two ways in which we live the primary vocation to love.
People who are joined “conjugally” when they have their own sex are not fulfilling the loving plan of God. They do not follow the propose of diversification sexed by the two meanings that the Lord wanted to put in the human body. The diversified human body, male and female, has the two meanings of the dimension we call unitive and procreative. You can only have that unitive and procreative dimension in sexually differentiated love between man and woman which is what constitutes the reality of marriage and openness to life and the wider communion we call the family. Two people of the same sex can never reach sexual complementarity, they can never achieve what is the principle of procreation that God wanted to put into the human gesture of union between a man and a woman.
4. You were pressured with legal proceedings, which thank God were rejected by the Spanish justice tribunals, for teaching that sexual acts between people of the same sex were “intrinsically disordered”. Which were your alleged crimes?
My position is never to criticize anyone. My intention is just to show what I received as a son of the Church, what I received as a priest, what I received as a bishop. So, my focus is never on critizing people, but on what the loving plan of God is, on what the very plan of God is for people. We must distinguish clearly between what is criticism of what we understand to be a disorder or evil or sin itself from the people themselves. I think it's the same attitude of Jesus. Jesus looked lovingly at all sinners and ate with them. He looked at the sinful woman with special affection, but then, that gaze transformed the heart of the sinful woman, transformed the hearts of those who heard him and ate with Him and He said, go and sin no more. Therefore, I insist once again, love and mercy to all people regardless of their living situation, regardless of their mode of behavior, and regardless of their way of thinking, but also the same force to shed light on what sin means, that disorder can lead people to live realities that do not lead to their own perfection. I think that what the church has do is to accompany people by shedding light on the path as Jesus did on the road to Emmaus, to open up the scriptures to be able to know the truth. My experience tells me that when people know the truth, immediately, there rises in their hearts a desire to embrace it, so that it is the truth that saves, falsehood never saves. What the Catholic Church does is promote the explanation and the splendor of truth, which is not an abstract truth; it is a truth that is personal, Jesus Christ who has shown us the path to reach Life.
5. European parliaments approve laws that criminalize criticizing the so called “homosexual” agenda. How should Catholics who live in those countries with limited freedom behave?
This is a new situation that has been generated because there is, we could say, a global agenda in all five continents where more and more laws are proposed that go against the dignity, the sanctity of human life, the beauty that is in marriage between a man and woman, and the greatness and social good of the family. The situation of the Catholic Church in the midst of this global agenda, is an increasingly delicate one, but we have put all our hope in God, all our hope in Jesus Christ and therefore cannot fail to continue to promote the good, the beauty and the greatness of the dignity of human life, as well as that of marriage and the family. It is true that we are often in conflict with this New World Order or the agenda that is now being developed in many many countries and in particular where I come from, Spain. But we must be like the first apostles. They did not want the apostles to preach Jesus Christ, what’s more, they were, imprisoned, what’s more, they were beaten, but they came out happy to have suffered for Jesus Christ, and said that they could not keep quiet about what they had received. Today, the complexity of this new situation creates a shortage of religious freedom, so we have to continue with the same courage, with the same courage of the apostles. We cannot be like those who are silent, like those who look the other way, but following the route of so many confessors and many martyrs who have marked with their holiness every moment of the history of the Church. We must now continue the same path and encourage the laity and Catholic organizations themselves to know how to defend what is one's own freedom of conscience, what is religious freedom itself knowing that we do no harm by it, but simply promote the good that is in every person who has in his heart a desire for God because we are constitutively religious. Wanting to abolish the religious dimension or wanting to hide or veil it with laws, that would be, let’s say, a reductionism of what is the very person. We all desire God, we desire infinity, so if we are constitutively religious, we have to announce religion with freedom, in this case the truth of Jesus Christ. To not do it is to promote pseudo religious forms of religion, which are contaminated and that do not meet the expectations of the human heart. As a Catholic, I understand that the truth of Jesus Christ is the fullness of truth that gives the heart everything it needs.
6. It seems that the Synod on the Family has fomented doctrinal dissension even among bishops and cardinals. Has the Church become a kingdom divided against itself?
There have been many times in history in which a certain division has occurred, even schisms within the Church. If we look historically at the most important councils, I'm thinking right now of the Council of Nicea, the Council of Ephesus, there was a great divide between those who were debating the issues of faith , which we could say were basic or substantial: the divinity of Jesus Christ, or the non-divinity of Jesus Christ, for example. Those moments seemed difficult, the prayer of all the holy people of God, the prayer of so many anonymous people who raised their cry to the Lord redirected all these councils, and then, finally, in both the Nicene Council and that of Ephesus, the true Catholic faith came out, that which is promoted by the Evangelical writings and in the apostolic letters. Today we are here at Fatima precisely when the synod has begun to raise with the Catholic people a prayer, a prayer to Our Lady of Fatima to make the same happen, so that the discussions the Synod Fathers can be illuminated by the same light of faith and can have a wonderful opportunity to delve into the real needs of marriage and family right now. I understand that a number of issues have been raised after Familiaris Consortio, a few issues that are new issues. I propose as an analogy what happened in the time of Pope Leo XIII. He wanted to raise his voice to defend the workers at that time against the industrial revolution which generated worldwide what we call the proletariat. Well now, we also need that the Synod Fathers and the Pope, the successor of Peter, raise their voices in defense, first of children who sometimes are not allowed to be born by the scourge and crime of abortion, and defend with joy God's plan for women and men to join in holy matrimony and recover the sacred dimension of marriage. There should be a good sexual affective education of adolescents so that they can then be open to authentic and true love that does not rest in feelings but in the will that makes the human person a gift to the other, and a gift which when they join in marriage, receiving from the sacrament the grace of Jesus Christ and the gift of indissolubility, is love that is forever. I have not met anyone, man or woman who does not want a true and lifelong love. The Church, as mother and teacher, must teach teenagers and young people to prepare well to receive the gift of the Sacrament of Marriage which will give them nothing less than the very love of Jesus Christ on the cross where He has loved his Wife in an exclusive love to the extreme unto death. These are the big issues that should be discussed in the synod. And then in this complex moment, in this serious cultural crisis, it would be a decadence of the spirit not to encourage Catholics to generously open themselves to life. The Catholic family must be encouraged so it can fulfill its own mission, which is none other than to simply be joined in faithful love for life, so that conjugal love and devotion can generously be open to life, embracing Humane Vitae from the heart so that many families can come to fill this demographic winter that the West is now suffering. The Church must promote that life may flourish in marriages and spouses truly be helped to fulfill their mission of fathers and mothers, which is not only procreation in cooperating with God, but the education of children in both the virtues and transmission faith so that they can live with the hope that they have come into this world to enjoy God in heaven with all the saints.
7. The Church will not survive based only on the number of clergy; it is vital to pray and work so that God grants us many young and saintly Catholic families generously open to the gift of life, but such families are rare. What can be done?
It is true that we have suffered in all five continents a great crisis of vocations to both the priesthood and the consecrated life and this is truly substantial to the Church. The Catholic Church needs priests and must be continually inviting our young people to listen, first to the call of God. God is calling, as I think He has done in every moment, in a truly urgent need because of the lack of priests and also of witnesses of consecration to God in religious life. Young families do not have many children and live in contrast, especially in Spain where there are many families with many children. There are many families in contrast to large number of people who have only one child, or don’t even want children. Today the deepest crisis is that there is a low rate of marriage, people do not want to marry, but because they lack faith in true love. The great revelation that the synod can present at this time is to again make shine with splendor the greatness of married conjugal love and grandeur of coming out of the trap of an obsessive consumerist society that wants to put the hearts of people in things, wants put the hearts of the people even in elements that are less important as having a pet or caring for animals, which is worthy and legitimate. I think they can be good company particularly for the elderly. But greatness is in the vocation to fatherhood and motherhood, because God has thought and made us to promote human life and to beget children in love preparing boys and girls to be people so that this cultural desert can one day, because of the witness of so many children of Catholic families, may be transformed into a garden. Now we have a very complicated, very difficult time. It seems that we live in a cultural desert and a desert of faith, but other times we have also gone through such situations. I am convinced that if we look at Jesus Christ, the desert can become a garden.
Introduction:
Humana Life International and the World Apostolate of Fatima, among other associations, organized in Fatima, (Portugal) from October 2-7, 2015, the VII World Prayer Congress for Life, “So that they may have life” (John 10, 10). The organizers of the congress invited the bishop of Alcalá de Henares Msgr. Juan Antonio Reig Pla to give a lecture titled, “The family, sanctuary of life”. (EV 92)”. We welcomed this opportunity to conduct the following interview.
1. Your Excellency, you defend the right to life, marriage and family, and you speak with clarity. Why is this not usually frequent?
When I speak, I try to make my words resonate with the voice of the Lord saying, "Be those who say yes or those who say no." It is the way that Jesus taught us. I do not pretend to compare myself with anyone, not even my brother bishops whom I love and esteem. The faithful need to hear in these complex times simple words that can reach their hearts. Words that have been put on our lips by the very gospel, the preaching of Jesus and the Church who is our mother. I simply intend to continue the tradition of the Catholic Church, explain the truths of faith, never condemning anyone, but just showing with affection what the Lord has taught us, because what is at stake is our own salvation. The words of the bishop must always be words of the shepherd who leads with love, who leads with patience and love those who are born through Christ in baptism and are entitled to hear from bishops and pastors the truth of Gospel.
2. Currently, the Catholic Church’s proposals are not accepted in western countries. Some think the solution lies in concentrating only on social and ecological issues. How can a new springtime be promoted in which the world accepts Christ and his Church?
The new spring time in the Catholic Church always and in every generation and in every moment of history comes from the holiness of her children. The holiness of the children makes the truth that is personal, that is Jesus Christ living in us by the Holy Spirit, shine, and also when truth shines it makes mistakes stand out in contrast, it's like the light that dispels the darkness and makes all the shadows disappear. The Church has to fight evil, it must be continually proposing the way of Jesus Christ to the faithful, that means it has the mission to denounce prophetically many times as Jesus did those things that harm her children and can take them on the road to perdition. It is not about a fight against anyone, we fight evil, we fight him who as prince of evil can fool so many people, but with infinite love, with very great mercy for all people and in a particular for those who duped by the devil can follow paths of perdition. Therefore, yes to a prophetic denunciation and a condemnation of evil, and yes to an ever greater love like Jesus Christ for those who could have been deceived and might have been falling into sin or ways that do not lead to peace of the heart.
The new spring for the Church and the world always comes from the hand of God. God created the world, the universe, or even what we now call the universes, and is a work of his magnificence and of his magnanimity. God truly is rich in love and mercy, which is why He has created so many planets and galaxies that don’t even fit into our head. We must have a great appreciation for the work of creation because it is the work of God, which is also important because it is the first book that God has given us; the book of nature where we see the imprint of God the Creator. Beyond the work created in this set of beautiful realities He wanted to put man, male and female, at the apex of creation. At the apex of creation and so be the voice of those same creatures and all universes in a song of praise to the Creator.
Sexual diversification, man-woman, responds to God’s loving plan. Along with creation, man-woman, the Lord said: " he will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh", the Lord then blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply." That is the will of God and therefore the couple, looking always to the creative intention of God, must open themselves generously to life. "Cultivate the earth and master it." Many times these words have not been well understood, but Pope Francis warns us as Benedict XVI and the same John Paul II, that caring for the earth and subduing the earth is nothing but putting it at the service of the needs of creation, because you have to take care of the common house, as man and woman which are at the pinnacle of creation. It is not a question of destroying but cultivating creation, caring for it so that it can meet the goals that have been designed by the Creator. Therefore, everything that comes along that way, is a good path. But, I insist, the most important thing in the person is what is specifically human which is the unity of body-spirit, or what Benedict XVI called, the ontological consistency of the soul. That is that the Lord has created the soul and instilled it in each of us, it is that He has made us participate in his very reality, hence the greatness of what is human.
Therefore, it all has to go in the same direction: care for the common house, but care for the goods of the person, and the goods of the person within a hierarchy of values, the main ones being those of the Spirit. Therefore, the culture has to respond to the desire for what is proper to the life in the Spirit, what we call inner life, and that now is a deficit in our midst, and the answers are not found only in the care for the common house, care for the environment, the human habitat, but also the care of, in the language of Pope John Paul II, the "true human ecology". That is, the habitat in which man, man and woman, can develop and respond. What is the true human ecology? “True human ecology is the family”. That is how John Paul II manifested it in his encyclical Centessimus annus, 38-39. Therefore the family is what we should take care of right now, and what has culturally come more into crisis, or is darkened. To be able to take care of human ecology, man as a person, man and woman, which is protected in the love in the family, we need to look at the man himself, to the same Jesus Christ, who is the true Man. The Constitution Guadium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council says in nº 22 that: the Incarnate Word reveals to man the mystery of man. And what has been revealed as the mystery to man? The real Man is Jesus Christ. It is the plan of God the Creator, which is only accomplished in the gift of self, therefore the vocation to love, and that comes from the root of the spirit, or that which has been called by Benedict XVI, the ontological consistency of the soul. Without it, it is impossible to make the unity body -spirit, a gift which is made visible, as we have said before, both in virginity and conjugality peculiar to marriage. So yes to the care of the common house, yes to cultivating and making those goods that install us in this world prosper, but never detract us from or stop cultivating that which is specifically human, that which we call human ecology, and within human ecology, spiritual goods which are those that are only present in the person and that have to do with his inner life, with his life in the Spirit.
3. What do you think about the thesis that one should not oppose civil recognition of unions between people of the same sex, but only avoid calling them “marriage”?
The plan of God for his people, is a plan that responds to what is his will. God has created man in his image and likeness, and He has made him male and female. Being made in his image and likeness does not exhaust itself saying that human beings are intelligent and are free, this is part of being in the image of God, but in being sexed, male and female, and having a primary vocation which is to love. And this is the main imprint that the Trinity has left in us. We have all been thought and wanted for love, and to love with a spousal vocation, from the first covenant which is creation, God has thought of spousal love between a man and a woman. God wanted sexed diversification, man- woman, to walk the path of mutual reciprocity and gift. He has created us male and female precisely to put in us the vocation to love. This is the vocation to the gift of oneself of the very person. This is the loving plan of God. Everything that goes beyond that does not respond to God's will. And once the love of God in Jesus Christ is known, the love that He has shown us on the cross, we can know the mystery of what virginity for the sake of the kingdom of heaven means which is also a spousal love, a love which is a full consecration of body and spirit to Him who calls someone for the sake of the kingdom of heaven to live in virginity. These are the two ways in which we live the primary vocation to love.
People who are joined “conjugally” when they have their own sex are not fulfilling the loving plan of God. They do not follow the propose of diversification sexed by the two meanings that the Lord wanted to put in the human body. The diversified human body, male and female, has the two meanings of the dimension we call unitive and procreative. You can only have that unitive and procreative dimension in sexually differentiated love between man and woman which is what constitutes the reality of marriage and openness to life and the wider communion we call the family. Two people of the same sex can never reach sexual complementarity, they can never achieve what is the principle of procreation that God wanted to put into the human gesture of union between a man and a woman.
4. You were pressured with legal proceedings, which thank God were rejected by the Spanish justice tribunals, for teaching that sexual acts between people of the same sex were “intrinsically disordered”. Which were your alleged crimes?
My position is never to criticize anyone. My intention is just to show what I received as a son of the Church, what I received as a priest, what I received as a bishop. So, my focus is never on critizing people, but on what the loving plan of God is, on what the very plan of God is for people. We must distinguish clearly between what is criticism of what we understand to be a disorder or evil or sin itself from the people themselves. I think it's the same attitude of Jesus. Jesus looked lovingly at all sinners and ate with them. He looked at the sinful woman with special affection, but then, that gaze transformed the heart of the sinful woman, transformed the hearts of those who heard him and ate with Him and He said, go and sin no more. Therefore, I insist once again, love and mercy to all people regardless of their living situation, regardless of their mode of behavior, and regardless of their way of thinking, but also the same force to shed light on what sin means, that disorder can lead people to live realities that do not lead to their own perfection. I think that what the church has do is to accompany people by shedding light on the path as Jesus did on the road to Emmaus, to open up the scriptures to be able to know the truth. My experience tells me that when people know the truth, immediately, there rises in their hearts a desire to embrace it, so that it is the truth that saves, falsehood never saves. What the Catholic Church does is promote the explanation and the splendor of truth, which is not an abstract truth; it is a truth that is personal, Jesus Christ who has shown us the path to reach Life.
5. European parliaments approve laws that criminalize criticizing the so called “homosexual” agenda. How should Catholics who live in those countries with limited freedom behave?
This is a new situation that has been generated because there is, we could say, a global agenda in all five continents where more and more laws are proposed that go against the dignity, the sanctity of human life, the beauty that is in marriage between a man and woman, and the greatness and social good of the family. The situation of the Catholic Church in the midst of this global agenda, is an increasingly delicate one, but we have put all our hope in God, all our hope in Jesus Christ and therefore cannot fail to continue to promote the good, the beauty and the greatness of the dignity of human life, as well as that of marriage and the family. It is true that we are often in conflict with this New World Order or the agenda that is now being developed in many many countries and in particular where I come from, Spain. But we must be like the first apostles. They did not want the apostles to preach Jesus Christ, what’s more, they were, imprisoned, what’s more, they were beaten, but they came out happy to have suffered for Jesus Christ, and said that they could not keep quiet about what they had received. Today, the complexity of this new situation creates a shortage of religious freedom, so we have to continue with the same courage, with the same courage of the apostles. We cannot be like those who are silent, like those who look the other way, but following the route of so many confessors and many martyrs who have marked with their holiness every moment of the history of the Church. We must now continue the same path and encourage the laity and Catholic organizations themselves to know how to defend what is one's own freedom of conscience, what is religious freedom itself knowing that we do no harm by it, but simply promote the good that is in every person who has in his heart a desire for God because we are constitutively religious. Wanting to abolish the religious dimension or wanting to hide or veil it with laws, that would be, let’s say, a reductionism of what is the very person. We all desire God, we desire infinity, so if we are constitutively religious, we have to announce religion with freedom, in this case the truth of Jesus Christ. To not do it is to promote pseudo religious forms of religion, which are contaminated and that do not meet the expectations of the human heart. As a Catholic, I understand that the truth of Jesus Christ is the fullness of truth that gives the heart everything it needs.
6. It seems that the Synod on the Family has fomented doctrinal dissension even among bishops and cardinals. Has the Church become a kingdom divided against itself?
There have been many times in history in which a certain division has occurred, even schisms within the Church. If we look historically at the most important councils, I'm thinking right now of the Council of Nicea, the Council of Ephesus, there was a great divide between those who were debating the issues of faith , which we could say were basic or substantial: the divinity of Jesus Christ, or the non-divinity of Jesus Christ, for example. Those moments seemed difficult, the prayer of all the holy people of God, the prayer of so many anonymous people who raised their cry to the Lord redirected all these councils, and then, finally, in both the Nicene Council and that of Ephesus, the true Catholic faith came out, that which is promoted by the Evangelical writings and in the apostolic letters. Today we are here at Fatima precisely when the synod has begun to raise with the Catholic people a prayer, a prayer to Our Lady of Fatima to make the same happen, so that the discussions the Synod Fathers can be illuminated by the same light of faith and can have a wonderful opportunity to delve into the real needs of marriage and family right now. I understand that a number of issues have been raised after Familiaris Consortio, a few issues that are new issues. I propose as an analogy what happened in the time of Pope Leo XIII. He wanted to raise his voice to defend the workers at that time against the industrial revolution which generated worldwide what we call the proletariat. Well now, we also need that the Synod Fathers and the Pope, the successor of Peter, raise their voices in defense, first of children who sometimes are not allowed to be born by the scourge and crime of abortion, and defend with joy God's plan for women and men to join in holy matrimony and recover the sacred dimension of marriage. There should be a good sexual affective education of adolescents so that they can then be open to authentic and true love that does not rest in feelings but in the will that makes the human person a gift to the other, and a gift which when they join in marriage, receiving from the sacrament the grace of Jesus Christ and the gift of indissolubility, is love that is forever. I have not met anyone, man or woman who does not want a true and lifelong love. The Church, as mother and teacher, must teach teenagers and young people to prepare well to receive the gift of the Sacrament of Marriage which will give them nothing less than the very love of Jesus Christ on the cross where He has loved his Wife in an exclusive love to the extreme unto death. These are the big issues that should be discussed in the synod. And then in this complex moment, in this serious cultural crisis, it would be a decadence of the spirit not to encourage Catholics to generously open themselves to life. The Catholic family must be encouraged so it can fulfill its own mission, which is none other than to simply be joined in faithful love for life, so that conjugal love and devotion can generously be open to life, embracing Humane Vitae from the heart so that many families can come to fill this demographic winter that the West is now suffering. The Church must promote that life may flourish in marriages and spouses truly be helped to fulfill their mission of fathers and mothers, which is not only procreation in cooperating with God, but the education of children in both the virtues and transmission faith so that they can live with the hope that they have come into this world to enjoy God in heaven with all the saints.
7. The Church will not survive based only on the number of clergy; it is vital to pray and work so that God grants us many young and saintly Catholic families generously open to the gift of life, but such families are rare. What can be done?
It is true that we have suffered in all five continents a great crisis of vocations to both the priesthood and the consecrated life and this is truly substantial to the Church. The Catholic Church needs priests and must be continually inviting our young people to listen, first to the call of God. God is calling, as I think He has done in every moment, in a truly urgent need because of the lack of priests and also of witnesses of consecration to God in religious life. Young families do not have many children and live in contrast, especially in Spain where there are many families with many children. There are many families in contrast to large number of people who have only one child, or don’t even want children. Today the deepest crisis is that there is a low rate of marriage, people do not want to marry, but because they lack faith in true love. The great revelation that the synod can present at this time is to again make shine with splendor the greatness of married conjugal love and grandeur of coming out of the trap of an obsessive consumerist society that wants to put the hearts of people in things, wants put the hearts of the people even in elements that are less important as having a pet or caring for animals, which is worthy and legitimate. I think they can be good company particularly for the elderly. But greatness is in the vocation to fatherhood and motherhood, because God has thought and made us to promote human life and to beget children in love preparing boys and girls to be people so that this cultural desert can one day, because of the witness of so many children of Catholic families, may be transformed into a garden. Now we have a very complicated, very difficult time. It seems that we live in a cultural desert and a desert of faith, but other times we have also gone through such situations. I am convinced that if we look at Jesus Christ, the desert can become a garden.
