Ks. Lech Wołowski
In this article we address one of the most important current problems concerning the future of the family in the XXI century: how to prepare young people to the family life? Due to the complexity of the problem and obvious limits of a short article we do not aim to study the problem in an exhaustive way. Instead, we first outline some of the most important principles regarding the role of the family in this context and then we point out to some of the recent trends which can be observed in the teaching of the Church and in its reception among young people.
The article is based on three main sources and is divided into three corresponding parts. The first one, which focuses on pedagogical, psychological and sociological issues, regarding the problems of the educational role of the family, is based on the article of M. Ryś, who has studied the problem in her article: The role of the family in the preparation of children and youth for marital and family life. We focus on defining the tasks which await parents who want to prepare, in a conscious, systematic and constructive way, their children to become in future good spouses and good parents, able to form a healthy family.
In the second part we examine some of the new trends in the field introduced in his teaching by Pope Francis, who always prefers to teach in terms of examples and encouragements, instead of prohibitions and injunctions. We present this aspect of his style considering two concrete examples, which can be very helpful for parents and for Catholic educators in their everyday educational effort. The first one comes from the address of the Pope to a group of 20 couples for which he was celebrating the sacrament of marriage in St. Peter’s Basilica in 2014. The other example is taken from his recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
Lastly, in the third part, we concentrate on a very interesting phenomenon of a renewed reception among young people of the teaching of Pope John Paul the Great. As an example we consider his famous “golden thought” affirming that: “One does not live, does not love, does not die, for a try”. This sentence, once almost forgotten, nowadays become ever more popular among young people, to the extent that some of them take it as the motto of their life. The other example which we touch is the idea of the World Youth Day. The two phenomena seem particularly interesting, taking into account the fact that his pontificate has ended more than a decade ago. Nonetheless, his teaching, his words, and his message is still current and inspires young people to discover the beauty of their faith and the beauty of their vocation to the marriage and to the family life.
Ks. Lech Wołowski
In this article we address one of the most important current problems concerning the future of the family in the XXI century: how to prepare young people to the family life? Due to the complexity of the problem and obvious limits of a short article we do not aim to study the problem in an exhaustive way. Instead, we first outline some of the most important principles regarding the role of the family in this context and then we point out to some of the recent trends which can be observed in the teaching of the Church and in its reception among young people.
The article is based on three main sources and is divided into three corresponding parts. The first one, which focuses on pedagogical, psychological and sociological issues, regarding the problems of the educational role of the family, is based on the article of M. Ryś, who has studied the problem in her article: The role of the family in the preparation of children and youth for marital and family life. We focus on defining the tasks which await parents who want to prepare, in a conscious, systematic and constructive way, their children to become in future good spouses and good parents, able to form a healthy family.
In the second part we examine some of the new trends in the field introduced in his teaching by Pope Francis, who always prefers to teach in terms of examples and encouragements, instead of prohibitions and injunctions. We present this aspect of his style considering two concrete examples, which can be very helpful for parents and for Catholic educators in their everyday educational effort. The first one comes from the address of the Pope to a group of 20 couples for which he was celebrating the sacrament of marriage in St. Peter’s Basilica in 2014. The other example is taken from his recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
Lastly, in the third part, we concentrate on a very interesting phenomenon of a renewed reception among young people of the teaching of Pope John Paul the Great. As an example we consider his famous “golden thought” affirming that: “One does not live, does not love, does not die, for a try”. This sentence, once almost forgotten, nowadays become ever more popular among young people, to the extent that some of them take it as the motto of their life. The other example which we touch is the idea of the World Youth Day. The two phenomena seem particularly interesting, taking into account the fact that his pontificate has ended more than a decade ago. Nonetheless, his teaching, his words, and his message is still current and inspires young people to discover the beauty of their faith and the beauty of their vocation to the marriage and to the family life.
