My dear friends, I
thank you for the warm welcome you have given me to your beautiful country. As
you know, I am here to join with our friends in the World Conference of
Families during their annual international meeting. Not long ago when we talked about Families we
meant Father, Mother and children born of this
union of man and woman. But today - and this is one of the changes in
our lives many of us may find difficult
to accept - we recognise a Family as a group of people who are bound together
by love of each other and the promise to love each other until death and in
such a family there may be members who love each other within the whole
spectrum of love from heterosexual to homosexual and all the subtle and
beautiful grades of love in between. Today I am asking that we all recognise
the reality of what is happening and give our respect and love to those who
have the generosity to give each other such a pledge of love for life. This is
no easy change to make in our attitude and in our friendships. But through many
centuries there have been changes we
could never have foreseen, changes we welcomed, changes we did not welcome, changes which in the end we
accepted because we knew that we, as
Catholics, as Christians, and as people of spiritual and intellectual strength
we had the power, the ability, the
desire to live with generosity towards
all our people, in whatever way our lives developed. I have no need to tell you
good friends that we, the Church, and we
the friends of the church, have often not only avoided but have opposed
change. Sometimes we were right, sometimes we were wrong, even gravely wrong. I, Pope
Francis make no claim to an infallibility that can say with absolute certainty
what is right and wrong in any given
time in history. I can say what
our learning, our traditions, our mind and spirit have told us was right and
proper for the age we lived in.
But there is another age, another time. And so I ask you today
to look with honesty on what we have created for ourselves and for our children.
What has been done wrong is only too
clear. There are even some of us who seem to despair of things being any different.
They can be different. But not if you are working for change by yourselves and I
am working for change by myself -- even
though the changes we want are the same. There is little use saying - Pope Francis, good for you, you are going the right
way, what are you going to do for us
next? No. the right question is -
Pope Francis, if what you are doing is good, what can we do to help, if
what you are you doing is wrong or useless or sinful, what can we do by using our influence, small or
large, to rebuke and make right what is wrong ? Please do not think that I as pope can do whatever
I want to do; no, I am surrounded, just
as you are, by people some of whom will say Yes and No but do nothing or
continue as before. So let us understand not just our strength but our weakness,
your's and mine. You must create a world in which goodness, generosity, recognition
of the dignity of children, women and
men is fully respected no matter what the pope says or does; the pope must
reach out, not dominate, call upon the wisdom and experience of the whole people, not rely on an
infallibility which he himself does not claim for more than perhaps half per cent
of what we believe in and stand for.
There have been many times in history when it seemed that criminals had
seized on the very heart and soul of our church. We have never been without
conflict and struggle for the recognition of the dignity of all God's people. Nowadays
the struggle is just as intense as ever, but it is a conflict of a different kind,
of greater, much greater intensity. Please do not think the Pope can change evil
into good by some magical power that he does not have ; but be certain that he,
like you, can be an instrument of change - provided that you and he and those
inside and outside the fellowship of the church are struggling together and
openly, either in open agreement or open disagreement according to conscience.
Please do not keep saying "Too
little too late" in all this ebb
and flow of failure and success. What is done is little, it may be late, but
it is never too late. That is, provided we are united in our work to make the
world worthy of our children and all of us.
I have already said to you in my video message : "Young people are the future . It is
very important to prepare them for the future , preparing them today in the
present but also rooted in the past ". So I want you to know that there is
one thing very close to my heart that I must ask you to do. I promise here and now to lead the way and I promise that I shall demand it of every person with
whom I have influence. It is this: We
have placed too great a burden on our children. We have provided for them a
religious and moral education we thought
suitable for their needs and their
development. But we made mistakes in this as we made mistakes in so many other things. The worst of them was that some of the very people who should have
been enriching the children's learning
and life became their predators and destroyers .
We educated the children and
told them to bring the Faith with them into their adult world. It would
have been far better to do what Jesus Christ did - speak to mature adults , speaking in the open
and in private, speaking to each other as adults in our houses and our places
of work and worship with a message that
is not fit just for children but fit for revolution in a world that dearly and
deeply needs revolution based upon our maturing knowledge and generosity. While the children
listen and learn.
Our Catholic church community at all levels should be the
source and nourishment of lifelong learning - enlightened and wonderful, visionary and
practical for all our people, lifelong learning about what our Faith means,
about what our world needs in this world that is forever changing, evolving physically,
intellectually, spiritually. So our children, seeing this, will ask their own questions
in their own way, and we, all of us, will be able and willing to share a Faith
with them that is real, not with childish answers but showing them a wonderful vision of life and how to protect
themselves against those who would selfishly corrupt both
them and their Faith.
Never be afraid to contest anyone who corrupts the vision
and beauty of your children , talk openly about it if it happens, and if it happens, demand of your church , your schools,
your workplaces , your government , your pope, everyone, that they must
match your open and courageous way of life showing your families and your
children how to protect themselves long
before they have to ask help from
others, even from a pope.
My dear friends, you have heard
the old saying, "Charity begins at home" . Indeed it does. And so
does the protection of your dignity and that of your children. The first
witness to any violation of the child is the child. So the first line of defence
must be with the child. It is for the rest of us to be attentive, respectful,
determined. An institution can make rules and laws, contracts and treaties,
but it is in the hearts and souls of real people that real change begins. We are a people in transition, in time of
change so rapid that we sometimes seem to prefer stagnation. We need not let
that happen. Don't be afraid again. We have had enough of fear, entering a new
phase of personal and family responsibility.
As I leave your beautiful country
in a few days time, let your thought be, not "the Pope has given us
strength", but rather, "We have given our Pope and ourselves all the strength we
need by recognising his dignity and ours, his weakness and ours, his place in
our world and our place in his.
May God bless us all as we bless
each other.
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