Dr. Haas will also be attending the annual assembly of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care for Healthcare Workers, for which he serves as a Consultor.
Dr. Haas is providing daily reports of the proceedings of both those meetings for the benefit of those who are visitors to our website and social media sites. We will provide regular updates to you here on the Blog this week!
Click here to read about Day 2 of the Colloquium
Click here to read about Day 2 of the Colloquium
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Dr. John Haas on HUMANUM:
The Complementarity
of Man and Woman
An International
Interreligious Colloquium
Vatican City
November 17 – 19,
2014
What led to this Colloquium were obviously the tremendous
set-backs the institution of marriage and family have suffered recently in many
economically advanced countries, especially the United States. Unions have been legally recognized as
marriages when they do not at all conform to the reality of marriage. No-fault divorce has led to almost 50%
divorce rates in many of these countries.
So-called reproductive technologies have led to “rental wombs” and the
engendering of children in Petri dishes using gametes, or sex cells, that have
been donated or sold so that children have no knowledge of or personal bonding
with their biological fathers and sometimes not even with their mothers. The Church is rightly alarmed by these
developments since they will not, in the final analysis, lead to healthy, sound
societies or human happiness. I was
fortunate to be invited to attend this conference and to bring with me the
insights and work of The National Catholic Bioethics Center.
Before 8:00 in the morning on Monday, participants lined up
outside the Palace of the Holy Office which houses the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, the dicastery principally responsible for the
colloquium. The morning was overcast and
cool but spirits were high. Our
credentials had to be checked by the Rome police and then again by the Swiss
guards who had lists of the invited guests.
We made our way inside the Vatican to the Paul VI Aula which can
accommodate thousands for audiences with the pope and special events. We proceeded to the second floor of the
building where there is a modern, well-equipped auditorium that can hold about
400 people. There is theater-style
seating and video screens across the front of the auditorium on which are
projected the speakers and slides if they have them for their
presentations. The auditorium was
packed. Everyone had to be in their
seats by 8:45 since the Holy Father was to address the participants promptly at
9:00. Much to my surprise, the Holy
Father actually arrived on time and made his way to the stage as everyone stood
and applauded.
As might be expected, Pope Francis gave a strong defense of
the value of marriage and insisted on it as an objective reality. He said it was the principal place where we
can aspire to greatness because of the formation in love that we receive
there. Pope Francis has often spoken of
our contemporary “throw-away” culture that even influences our treatment of
human life. He spoke of our living in a
culture of the “temporary”. However, he
pointed out that in marriage the basic roles of men and women are “fixed” and
cannot simply be manipulated however some in society may want. He said that the culture of the temporary has
brought spiritual devastation and a host of social ills and that those who have
suffered the most are women, children and the elderly. He said children have a right to grow up in a
family with a mother and a father. He
said the Church has been somewhat slow to realize the extent to which our basic
social institutions have been put at risk.
He said the permanent commitment to fruitful love actually corresponds
to the deepest longings of the human heart.
Almost to stress the objective nature of the reality of marriage and the
family, he departed from his text and looked at the participants and said, “A
family is a family!” And then he
repeated, “A family is a family!” In
other words, don’t mess with reality!
And then to the delight of the Americans there, especially
the Archbishop of Philadelphia, he said, “I wish now at this time to confirm
that I will come to Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families”.
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| Our Holy Father at the Humanum Colloquium |
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| Pope Francis addresses the audience at the Colloquium |
As he left the auditorium he went to the front rows to greet the various representatives of other Christian bodies and other religions. And of course, I witnessed a trick used to stop a Pope in his tracks which my wife and I had used about thirty years earlier with St. John Paul II. Someone came up with their baby and held him for the Pope to kiss and bless! It worked thirty years ago with our infant son and it worked today!
I wanted to write these daily reports to share the riches
being provided at the colloquium.
However, there were twenty presenters today, and you would weary of
reading just as I would surely grow weary of writing it all up! So I will try to share some high points and
some particularly interesting insights.
The Opening Presentation was given by Cardinal Gerhard
Mueller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In terms of the theme of complementarity the
Cardinal pointed out that none of us can complete ourselves. Alone we are incomplete. The truth of this is seen in Genesis where
creation culminates in the creation of man and woman, for the sake of one
another. They are called outside of
themselves and in this way God actually manifests himself. Sexual differentiation is not simply
diversity; each understands oneself through the other. Only in the union with the other does one
become perfected. The Cardinal pointed
out that Greek myths thought that the differentiation between male and female actually
was a punishment from the gods, and that men and women sought union with one
another so that the differentiation could be overcome.
In the Jewish and Christian tradition, however, the
differentiation of male in female is the crown of creation. It is necessary to pass on the image of
God. Male and female reveal the presence
of our Creator, and we reflect Him in that we have a relational identity as He
Himself does. The overflow of the
spouses’ love is the child. And then the
Cardinal said, “The state cannot love children!” The family can never be replaced.
The big surprise of the colloquium was the showing of extraordinarily
high quality videos that were produced on the theme of the conference, each
lasting perhaps ten minutes. The first
one, “The Destiny of Humanity”, was shown following Cardinal Mueller’s
presentation.
After the video there were four presenters from a wide
variety of backgrounds who “witnessed” in their comments to a common awareness
the beauty and the good of complementarity.
First was Wael Farouq, President of the Tawasul Cultural Center in
Cairo. He quoted passages from the Koran
pointing to complementarity in God’s creation.
Aware of the terrible crisis in the Middle East, he insisted that the
unspeakable brutality of the ISIS fighters resulted from their not following the Koran and from the
fact that they most likely an inadequate Islamic formation in their families!
Pastor Johann Christoph Arnold of the Bruderhof Communities,
who live in great simplicity with large families, gave a very personal witness
to his 50 years of marriage and the blessings of children and grand
children. A handsome young Spaniard,
Ignacio Ibarzabal, Executive Director of Grupo
Sólido said the members of his group are “launching a rebellion against promiscuity
and infidelity”! The next speaker, Dr.
Harshad N. Sanghrajika, a Jainist Hindu, showed that even their polytheistic
religious beliefs acknowledged the complementary character of reality itself
and of the family.
The coffee break provided great opportunity for mingling,
sharing business cards, and speaking about future projects. I was able to visit with two of the board
members of the NCBC are present at the Colloquium: Archbishop Charles Chaput
and Mr. Gene Zurlo.
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| Dr. John Haas with NCBC Board Member, Archbishop Charles Chaput |
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| NCBC Board Member, Mr. Gene Zurlo at left. |
The speaker after the break was Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the UK and the Commonwealth. He established great rapport with the audience by saying that we were actually gathered as a great extended family in defense of the family. He attributed the survival of Judaism and its ability to survive the most horrific of persecutions to the fact that their religion is based in the family. Every week at sundown they celebrate the Sabbath together in the home. He had some interesting observations, such as that the meeting of opposites generates diversity which is good for society, and that pair bonding was necessitated by human offspring who, among all mammals, need care and nurture from both parents for a considerable period of time. When he finished he received a standing ovation from the participants. After everyone was seated again, Cardinal Mueller leaned over to him and said with great humor, “I thought my presentation was the best one today until I heard yours!”
Two more presentations of witness followed. The first was quite scholarly and more than
mere “witness”. Sister Mary Prudence
Allen, RSM, a scholar of the thought of St. John Paul II spoke of his
development of the concept of an integral complementarity. She used the occasion to denounce the distortions
of the new gender politics which would deny, unbelievably, a biological basis
for identity insisting that gender is simply culturally determined. She said she preferred to speak of gender
reality and its biological foundations.
The following speaker was a Bhuddist from Japan who claimed
that society today is suffering from the loss of a knowledge of true
marriage. He insisted that maternal love
is an absolute reality which flows from the mother. Unfortunately he used technical Bhuddist
terms for various schools of thought without clarifying them which made it
quite difficult to follow the lecture.
Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for
Promoting Christian Unity, presided over the afternoon session. He pointed out that there is no such thing as
an isolated “human being”. We only
encounter human beings in relation, most fundamentally human beings as man and
woman. God Himself chose to enter the
world in the context of a family where He was born and educated as a
child. Because the family is the primal
institution of society, the future of the world itself revolves around the
family.
Following the presentation by Cardinal Koch Dr. Janne
Haaland Matláry, former Secretary of State of Norway, addressed the topic of
“The Family – Still the Basic Unit of Society”.
She pointed out that she now deals with security and defense issues for
the Norwegian government which, she said, were much easier to deal with than
gender and family politics in Scandinavia!
Norway has only a 1% Catholic population and is very secularized,
providing an example of how far secularizing trends can take a country. Government policies are still heavily
influenced by Kinsey and gender ideology, and the country suffers from a 44%
divorce rate. She said it was a shame
there was even a need for conference such as this one where academic
presentations had to be made to state the obvious! This had all come about in the last twenty
years. Sperm donation has been legal in
Norway since 1930 but recently a law was passed that children have a right to
know who their biological father is. She
said this has led to its virtual disappearance but in Denmark it continues as a
thriving business. She pointed out that
in Sweden there are kindergartens in which male and female names and pronouns
may not be used with the children. They
want to deconstruct heterosexual hegemony and bring about a normless society.
Another gripping video followed her presentation: “The
Cradle of Life and Love: A Mother and Father for the for the World’s Children”. The next speaker was Archbishop Nicholas
Okoh, Primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria. It is rather well known that the Christians
in Africa tend to be quite conservative in their beliefs, practices and
interpretation of Scripture. He spoke of
the disorder of homosexual practices and their deviation from Scripture. He said the challenges facing Christian
marriage in Africa were unique because they had to deal with traditional
beliefs and practices, such as polygamy, on the one hand and secularizing
trends from the West on the other. Also,
marriages contracted in Africa tend to involve the extended families as well
and not just the couple who are marrying.
This has a stabilizing effect on the social order.
The next speaker was Dr. Rasoul Rasoulipour, Professor of
Letters and Human Sciences at the Kharamzi University. At these kinds of gatherings in Rome one
cannot help but be impressed by the reach of the Catholic Church and its
ability to bring together people of the most varied backgrounds. He began his address with the formal Muslim
invocation, “In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful”. He then brought greetings “on behalf of my
Shia colleagues in Teheran” which in some respects made one all the more aware
of their conflicts with the Sunni Muslims in the Middle East and with the
United States. But he was there to speak
of the family and only indirectly alluded to the turmoil in his region of the
world, saying that “In such crazy, mad times, it is good to have such religious
leaders as Pope Francis”. He quoted the
Koran attesting to the family as ordained by God. He said that the “family is the first
sanctuary of love” but then spoke of the fact that women may not attend public
prayers in Iran by pointing out that the “woman’s mosque is the home” and that
the “home is the greatest place for practicing the presence of God”.
Bishop Jean Lafitte, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for
the Family, presented a beautiful paper on “The Sacramentality of Human Love
according to St. John Paul II”. I first came to know Bishop Lafitte when he
was a priest working for the Pontifical Academy for Life. His presentation was
perhaps the most “spiritual” and “theological” of the day with his focus on
Ephesians 5 which speaks of marriage reflecting the sacrificial love of Christ
for His Church and the indissoluble bond between Christ and His Church. At the end of his talk he obliquely and
indirectly referred to the controversy which had been the center of much debate
at the recent Extraordinary Synod of the family, i.e., whether divorced and
remarried Catholics can receive communion.
At the end of the day there was a “Scholars’ Panel” presided
over with great verve by Professor Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School and
former Ambassador of the United States to the Holy See. Professor Glendon used to serve on the board
of the NCBC, and we were able to reminisce a bit about our former
collaboration. She did a masterful job
of summarizing and synthesizing what had been presented throughout the
day. She touched on a point raised many
times; our marriage culture is deteriorating and those who suffer the most are
the weak and vulnerable. She pointed out
that “marriage can’t go it alone” and needs the support of the state. What is currently happening is that the state
no longer offers such support but is actually placing the family increasingly
in jeopardy.
The scholars on the panel included a marriage law professor
from Brigham Young University, a Sephardic Jewish rabbi, a theologian, a Mexican
sociologist, and finally a physician/psychiatrist from the University of
California at Irvine. Of that final session
what struck me the most was the psychiatrist insisting that the claims of the
“Gender Movement” are simply repudiated by “Gender Reality”. One simply cannot deny the biological bases
of gender, from the affects of hormones to the structure of individual cells,
from the way men and women process face recognition to their awareness of
orientation. There was some animated
discussion which included reflection on how those who advocate “traditional
marriage” can once again engage the culture, perhaps using phrases such as
“Pro-family is pro-poor”, expressing succinctly that marriage and family are
the most effective means of overcoming poverty.
The colloquium adjourned at 6:30.
In the course of the day participants not infrequently
expressed incredulity that there would even be the need to organize such an
international conference in support of a reality, marriage and family, that was
basically unquestioned twenty years ago.
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