Catholics from around the world will gather in Dublin, Ireland this August for the Catholic Families conference to promote the church’s constant and unchanging teaching on marriage and family life. It coincides with the liberal leaning World Meeting of Families (WMOF).
“A Conference of Catholic Families” will be hosted by the Lumen Fidei Institute, and will use Pope Pius XI’s encylical “of chaste wedlock,” as its starting point.
The parallel scheduling of the Catholic Families conference and the WMOF, both taking place in Dublin, is not by chance.
The WMOF is using material that is based upon Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The controversial document has been a source of widespread concern and division in the Church since its April 2016 distribution due to its apparent inconsistency with the Church’s moral teaching.
The concern that the WMOF draws upon AL drew considerable concern from many Catholics when it was discovered last fall that the program material for the “catechesis and faith education” period in the run-up to the event this August explicitly portrayed homosexual couples as an appropriate form of the Christian family.
The material featured an image clearly conveying a lesbian couple in an embrace in the section of the program titled, “The Christian Vision for the Family.”
The material had also stated – just above the photo of the lesbian couple, “While the Church upholds the ideal of marriage as a permanent commitment between a man and a woman, other unions exist which provide mutual support to the couple. Pope Francis encourages us never to exclude but to accompany these couples also, with love, care and support.”
While all can agree to be welcoming all people into the church, the bishops have since reissued the booklet without the pro-homosexual.
But there have been additional homosexual-affirming elements in the WMOF promotional material as well
A video recently put out by the Irish bishops to prepare families for the event contains an interview with an LGBT activist who said she’s “upset” with the bible’s teaching on homosexuality.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin told America that he hopes the World Meeting of Families will “renew confidence in the family as an institution vital for humanity today and to give renewed confidence to Christian married couples to understand the nature of their vocation of witnessing in their lives to the tender loving care of our God revealed in Jesus Christ.”
Pro-family leaders in Ireland who have been watching the Irish Bishops’ direction are not surprised to see the program’s videos contain a ‘nod and a wink’ towards the LGBT agenda.
The critical need to reinforce Church morality for Catholics and others is what led Lumen Fidei to organize it own conference.
The non-profit Catholic lay association is engaged in cultural and educational issues, working to support, among other church principles, its teaching on marriage.
Lumen Fidei has produced a video to convey the magnitude of the offensive targeting marriage and family today.