ROME, October 28, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis’ announced merger of three independent dicasteries responsible for the laity, the family and life has sparked a debate among Catholics leaders as to the merits and intentions of the move.
Prominent marriage counsellor Rick Fitzgibbons, for example, believes it can only harm efforts to strengthen the family while his friend Christine Vollmer, herself a longtime member of both the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Academy for Life, says the reorganization could be a good thing. “Wait and see. It will all depend on who the Vatican puts in charge of the new dicastery,” she told LifeSiteNews.
Earlier this week Pope Francis announced that the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Academy for Life were being joined with the Congregation for the Laity into a single dicastery as part of his campaign for greater efficiencies.
But while some took the pope at his word, some were skeptical. As LifeSiteNews reported last week, Steven Mosher, head of the Virginia-based Population Research Institute, said his own experience with bureaucracies led him to see the move as a demotion of both family and life issues. John Smeaton of Britain’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children portrayed it as part of “world war” on both family and the unborn both by world leaders and by forces within the Vatican.
On the other hand, Henry Capello, head of Caritas in Veritate International, an alliance of Catholic youth organizations, took the move at face value. He believed the consolidation of the three would help co-ordinate their efforts and avoid duplication.
Now a second round of inquiries among lay Catholic leaders shows again that the reviews are mixed. Judie Brown, founder and head of American Life League and a former member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, is, like Capello, hopeful about the change. “As someone who worked in the Vatican for 15 years, I can tell you it has so many bureaucrats it is unfathomable. If it is about streamlining, then I agree with the Pope.”
But Mrs. Brown has reservations. “I just hope that protection of life does not get buried. That’s the fear. At least that’s my fear.” She added that, while the just-concluded Synod on the Family looked like a “nightmare,” the public was viewing it through the lenses provided by the news media. “There’s the Synod of Bishops and there’s the synod of the media,” she said. “I have every confidence Pope Francis will not change doctrine.” But she wasn’t so confident, she admitted, that the Pope would issue a clarifying statement on some of the issues he has raised.
Christine Vollmer, the founder of the Latin American Alliance for Life, is also positive about the consolidation. “I have always felt the Academy for Life should be closer to Family than to Health Care Workers. You can’t separate Life and Family. In regard to combining Family and Laity, Family should always come first. It is a fact that the laity are the product of a family. And most laity apply what they learn by having families.”
Vollmer noted that Pope Saint John Paul II elevated the department responsible for family issues to full council-status because “he felt it was too important to just be a department.” Prior to that, “Family was a sub-department of laity, which did not make sense. For family and laity to be together is sensible, but it’s got to be with the emphasis on family.”
Asked about a rumour that family might again be placed under laity in the new dicastery, Vollmer replied: “That would be a direct reproach to John Paul II because that is how it was [before he changed it]. Family is what produces good Catholics. Family is what produces vocations.”
Vollmer added a cautionary note: “It all depends on who they put to head it. There are some very, very good people in the Church. There are some fabulous leaders. If they pick the right one we are going to go from good to better.”
Vollmer further suggested that those critical of the merger were assuming “that those who put together the Synod [on the Family] will put this together too. We don’t know that…yet.”
But yet another critic of the merger is Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons, a psychiatrist, marriage counsellor, founder of the Institute for Marital Healing, and a former consultant to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy. “Given the extremely severe problems that face Catholic marriages and families I believe that it is essential that we follow the lead of St. John Paul II and support a separate Pontifical Council for the Family,” he told LifeSiteNews. “Merging the PCF will weaken the ability to address these critical issues in the Church, many of which were ignored by the leaders of the Synod.”
Dr. Fitzgibbons added that the family is under serious attack in many ways and the Church needs to address this with the efforts of a full council. Instead the council is being demoted, but these attacks have been “overlooked” by the just-concluded Synod of Bishops. “These issues include: the severe harm that has been caused by the contraceptive mentality in the Church, the divorce epidemic and the need for divorce prevention which will not occur until the truth is taught about sexual morality in marriage; the massive retreat from marriage with only 150,000 U.S. marriages in 2013 compared to 425,000 in 1969.”
Dr. Fitzgibbons told LifeSiteNews that Pope Saint John Paul II has laid the groundwork for a defence of marriage but his work is now being ignored. Meanwhile, the forces within the Church seeking to bring into full communion those who divorce and remarry run counter not only to the work of John Paul II but of modern social science which indicates that many failing marriages can be saved with hard work.
Joining Fitzgibbons in his concerns is Mary Ellen Douglas of Canada’s Campaign Life Coalition. “The family and the lives of the unborn are under such terrible attack that it just seems a strange time to hodgepodge these councils into something vague with the laity.” Keeping the three areas separate would allow the Church “to better respond to these attacks.”
