Pope Francis has warned against marriage being reduced to “mere association”, and said that there is a “crisis” in the family, which is being “beat up from all sides.”
Speaking to members of an international Marian movement, the Pope said, “The family is being hit, the family is being struck and the family is being bastardised,” the Catholic News Agency reports.
In a question-and-answer session at his audience with the Schoenstatt movement, the Pope said that contemporary society has “devalued” the sacrament by turning it into a social rite, removing the most essential element, which is union with God.
He warned against the common view in society that “you can call everything family, right?”
“What is being proposed is not marriage, it’s an association. But it’s not marriage! It’s necessary to say these things very clearly and we have to say it!” Pope Francis stressed.
He lamented that there are so many “new forms” of unions which are “totally destructive and limiting the greatness of the love of marriage.”
From both a Christian and a sociological point of view, he said “there is a crisis in the family because it’s beat up from all sides and left very wounded!”
“So many families are divided, so many marriages broken, (there is) such relativism in the concept of the Sacrament of Marriage!”
Noting that there are many who cohabitate, or are separated or divorced, he explained that the “key” to helping is a pastoral care of “close combat” that assists and patiently accompanies the couple.
His comments follow the conclusion of the first session of the Catholic Church’s Extraordinary Synod on the Family, which will resume next October.