Focus on family

The
Catholic Weekly
Online

Sydney
15 February 2004

Birthday wishes for Aloysius

SA parishes merge

Focus on family

Gregorian Schola offers singers big chants

Gibson’s Passion ‘work of faith’, says cardinal

How to help create a ‘culture of peace’

Pregnant pause: The joy of showing our baby the way

There is a doctor in the house

Wollongong diocese buys site for high school

Boree log bush bash

Work in Catholic education brings honour for four

Bishop launches ‘significant’ new faith courses

$80,000 boost for drug fight

Editorial: Greatest story

Letters: Something special

Conversation: Fr Aiden Kelly, prison chaplain - Helping souls in a captive Congregation

On a walk with God ...

A credible Jesus

A biblical-based Mary

A life of Mercy with music

Care, prayer still very much in order

The Polding legacy

‘Catholic-only’ order denied

US-bound on the pitcher’s mound

Focus on family

Cardinal George Pell, Ron and Mavis Pirola (of the Family Working Group of the Bishops Committee for Family and Life), and Bishop Eugene Hurley, chairman of the committee.

The importance of marriage and family will be reinforced at the second National Catholic Family Gathering, to be held in Sydney in April, says the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell.

Dr Pell and Bishop Eugene Hurley of Port Pirie, chairman of the Bishops’ Committee for the Family and for Life, have invited families from across Australia to attend the conference which is described as a “celebration of family life, with all its ups and downs, joys and struggles”.

It will be held at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill, from April 16-18.

Entitled Living the Dream, it follows on from Dare to Dream, the first National Catholic Family Gathering, which was held in Melbourne three years ago.

Cardinal Pell says it will “reinforce the commitment that marriage and family are and the importance of that, perhaps especially when marriage and family aren’t perfect”.

And, he says, “it will help us to be convinced ourselves of the importance of family and to spell out to others the importance of family – man and woman, united in marriage and open to new life.

“We have this massive task of explaining what the family and marriage are about, especially to our young people with so many other siren voices around them.

“I pray that God will bless this initiative of the Bishops’ Committee for the Family and for Life and it will be a great conference and waves of goodness, peace and understanding will spread out from it.”

Bishop Hurley also spoke about the importance of families and said the conference would be a wonderful chance to celebrate families, even in all their messiness, noisiness and struggles.

“The ultimate reality for all of us is that families constitute the society in which we live.

If families are in good shape, society follows and if not, society also follows,” he said.

Bishop Hurley said that families were a constant source of inspiration and sustenance for him.

“We explain the theology of it – you live it out. It’s your sacrament. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect, but it’s in the striving to live it out that we meet Jesus Christ.”

The Living the Dream program features speakers including Cardinal Pell and Bishop Anthony Fisher who was founding president of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, in Melbourne.

Other speakers include Christopher West, the US authority on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.

Topics will include The Church’s vision for families; Parenting and passing on the faith; When

relationships fail; Divorce and beyond – healing and growth; the vocation to be single; spirituality and sexuality; and interdenominational marriages.

The conference will also feature a Youth Fest for teenagers and young adults, with challenging speakers, such as Christopher West and Bishop Joe Grech as well as great music and good fun.

For more information phone 02 9349 1834, visit www.familygathering.com.au or email info@familygathering.com.au