Congress of the European Institute for Family Life Education, 4 and 5 October 2013
Mgr Eric de Moulins-Beaufort
During the protestation marches of November 2012 and of January, March, and April 2013 in France against the draft bill extending marriage to persons of same-sex couples, the observers saw young people more numerous and more determined than the most optimistic would have expected. Their mobilisation, the seriousness of their thinking –if not the audacious and calm freedom of expression of their convictions--, their creativity, their humour, and their ability to move in the world of the social webs to organize, coordinate, and group have aroused the admiration of many of their close friends or families, if not, that of the analysts. The parents of these young people felt that a new generation has taken over the engagement in the public life of our country. Becoming adults, these children has transmitted to everyone the will to make their voice heard in our society without moving back and without doubting about their ability to take with them a great number of their contemporaries from various horizons. They discovered that, from the debate on marriage and filiation and from other current or future debates, the « idea » of the man on whom the society is to be built was at stake. This challenge has renewed their way of participating in the public debate.
In coming today to greet you in this congress, on behalf of Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris, and myself, I am sure that, even if the theme of your congress has been chosen before the size of the above-mentioned protest marches was known, you know perfectly that your reflection about the dynamics of behaviour change and family education is going to be encouraged, strengthened, and made more urgent after these events. The young people I am talking about live within their generation. They are like prophets: certainly a few but who are promises for all who live around them. When Isaiah, a young aristocrat from the Kingdom of Judah, saw the glory of the Lord in the Temple and heard the call of God: « Whom would I send? », he first answered: “Woe is me; I am lost! For I am a man of impure lips and I live among a people of impure lips; yet my eyes have beheld the King Lord of Hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5). The young people who stepped up this year are fully conscious that they are sinner and that they belong to « a people with impure lips ». They belong to their generation, know that they live and will live within it, and that it is to this generation that they were sent. However, they have the desire –in the most strong meaning of this term—not a transient leaning but a impetus that surges from the deep of their humanity, from what makes them men and women, to penetrate and flood their will, their desire to live their human condition, including its physical and sexual aspects, with its highest degree of beauty.
Something comes from deep inside them and prevents them from being convinced that sexuality in humans is only an impulse and does not deserve to be deeply understood and integrated into a whole vision of the human being and his destiny. One may be astonished by the fact that such a desire be able to impose itself today when our Western societies offer to its members, especially the youngest among them, so many means to disconnect sexuality from all human challenges except that of public health. Beyond astonishment, we are amazed and recognize in this the marvels of God, especially that these protesters, as mentioned by the media, did not benefit from educations that would have protected them from the pains that families may undergo and even provoke.
These young people know they are penetrated by the spirit of their generation. They do not dream about being better than others. They are subject to the zeitgeist. But they know the mercy of Christ and have faith in his power of conversion, of reversal. They are ready to let their lips touched by the « hot coal » to be purified because they do not seek to testify about themselves but about Lord Christ and they are aware that they should let Him change their behaviour, renew from the inside their ways of thinking and acting that were sometimes those of their parents and that are always those of the culture in which they lived. They are convinced that many persons around them are also seeking the paths of a more human life and expect, even without encountering Christ, that a better way is always possible, certainly expensive, but who brings its own reward. It is very important to encourage their availability, confirm their desire, and support their determination.
I am glad, with others who are never sufficiently numerous, to see that the various actors of this congress work together to give these young people the practical tools with which they may direct their vital force, which is sexuality, toward a full deployment of life with alliance and its joy. Good will and courage are certainly not sufficient; method, clear route, good companions, and experimented guides are also necessary. A lot of work over decades has prepared various and unexpected tools for the present and next generations. The most remarkable is the great pattern of thinking of Pope John-Paul II; definitely original though it concentrates more ancient reflections already made before him. Much energy is spent on its understanding, dissemination, and development. Its most decisive aspect is the constant link between nature and person, between what is to be received and accepted and the free commitment that can never be stopped. Realizing this is never easy; linking these dimensions together requires already the constant attention of the thinker; putting this into action and living it concretely, day after day, against the flow of passions, impulses, and tensions, is even more demanding. Teaching tools should be developed, groups should be established where people support one another and benefit from the advance of everybody. John-Paul II has stated that living sexuality in a fully human way should not stop at the stage of a technical speciality carefully cultivated for its own sake; it should concern an overall vision of existence, of the humans and their place in the cosmos, of their relationships with the others and with their own bodies. Such a vision, such an « idea » should not be considered only as a doctrine that well written books may explain in a few pages. We Christian know that this vision stems from the contemplation of Christ, of the mystery of His Incarnation, from the mystery of His Cross and of His Resurrection, from the great Act fully spiritual and fully physical by which He ventured everything and won even more for the sake of salvation of everyone. Thus, it is true and good that each human life, with its bruises and tears, its joyful and insufficient achievements, be eternal, a contemplation of Christ himself to be renewed and deepened without anybody, at any era of the Church, would pretend to achieve. We also know, consequently, that every effort, every search for a more interior relationship of freedom and corporeity puts man, as far as he knows, on the path of the Lord. For a long time, sexuality was lived under the sign of fatality, of a force that men wanted to learn to master and direct but without finding for it a great meaning. Today, more than ever, we know to which degree it directs human moves, to which degree it is vain to pretend to constrain it, but, more than ever, we know also that it can be personalizing and contribute efficiently so that everyone, in assuming it truly, initiates and progresses into a great combat that allows everyone to become a person, an actor of the whole human destiny. This is why it is essential that married men and women train themselves to talk about it, make themselves able to tell the beauty of what they experience in marriage, learn to share with others the way they progress in the « body language », sustaining the seasons of life and the injuries of history and anticipating the promise of body resurrection.
Dear friends, you are all involved into research works that you are about to share during these few days. I would like to tell you the gratitude of the Church. It is the gratitude of the whole mankind that will understand some day, after the judgement, what it owes to all who considered it serious the greatness of man and women union. I would also like to underline that you are diverse groups with diverse backgrounds. This is delighting. Anthropology belongs to nobody. The « Christian anthropology », or at the least, the « Christian idea of man » is not a monopole. Being a man or a woman should make every man or woman able to reach the truth of his humanity through the rich resources that humanity has cumulated over millennia with much suffering given and received, much errors and horrors, but also with much devotion, forgiveness and shared joy. God bless the efforts of everyone and of all and let everyone progress with confidence and hope!
+ Eric de Moulins-Beaufort