On 27 April 2017, the third anniversary of the canonization of John Paul II took place. The canonization process of the Polish pope was one of the shortest in the modern history of the Church. During the canonization Mass, Pope Francis named Pope John Paul II the “Pope of the Family” (“il Papa della famiglia”) to point out the remarkable contribution of John Paul II to the contemporary Church’s reflection on marriage, family, understanding of human sexuality, gender and fertility. Unfortunately, this great legacy is no longer – and perhaps never was – accepted by the whole Church.
On 25 May 2015, at the Jesuit Gregorian University in Rome, an international conference entitled “The Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and in the Contemporary World” was held. The conference was organized by the chairmen of three European episcopates: French, German and Swiss. Its purpose was to prepare for the Ordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family, which took place in October 2016. As was highlighted by the presentations published on the websites of the three episcopal conferences, the main purpose of the conference was to present an alternative theology of marriage and family as that presented by John Paul II.
During the conference, there were calls for the revision of the teaching of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, which was so important for the theology of marriage of John Paul II. Such proposals appealed to the idea of creative conscience and the proportionality argument – both theories were described and rejected as erroneous in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor by John Paul II. Some of the lecturers called for the elimination in the Catholic theology of marriage some biblical images of marriage: marriage as imago Trinitatis or marriage as an image of the love of God (Christ) to His people (the Church). Such images, according to participants in the conference, present an ideal that speaks little of the reality of Christian marriages. In the same context – of the rejection of the ideal for the benefit of courageous confrontation with gray, everyday reality – an argument appeared stressing that conjugal love as a gift of self is a burden that cannot be carried by modern young people. The uncritical reception by the conference participants of the proposal of giving Holy Communion to divorced and remarried persons was accompanied by proposals of ethical rethinking of such behaviors as sexual intercourse before marriage and sex out of wedlock or homosexual acts, hitherto considered as sinful.
The Church is like “the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old” (Mt 13:52). The Church in her teaching is never obstinate in holding on to her past accomplishments; new times always ask new questions and require a creative approach to the legacy of the Church. However, the teaching of the Church should not be treated as “unnecessary ballast”, which must be forgotten in confrontation with current challenges. This particularly applies to the teaching of John Paul II on marriage and family – the teaching of the “Pope of the Family”. Churches, with their catechesis of marriage based on the teaching of John Paul II, can attest to the ongoing timeliness and attractiveness of this teaching.
Fr. Jarosław Kupczak OP
associate professor at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Cracow
and top expert at John Paul II’s theology of the body.