Being one in Christ: gift and task of the logic of family love

The conference "Pastoral Practices, Life Experience and Moral Theology: Amoris Laetitia Between New Opportunities and New Paths" opened this morning, May 11, at the Pontifical Gregorian University, organized by the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and the Family. Both institutions accepted the invitation of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life to respond to the call of the Year "Family Amoris laetitia" with some initiatives that, at the international level, could stimulate academic reflection on the relationship between moral theology and pastoral praxis in relation to marriage and the family.

The welcoming address was entrusted to Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, who expressed his thanks for initiating such an important academic event that aims to deepen the critical nodes, suggestions, provocations and insights offered, in order to progress in theological-moral reflection, in the awareness that the Apostolic Exhortation continues to have a programmatic significance for the theology of marriage and the family - and ultimately, for moral theology - that has not yet been sufficiently explored.

"I hope that through these days of work you can contribute to the development of an intelligence of integral love, capable of involving not only people's feelings or reason, but the whole person, always open to the transcendent," Cardinal Farrell said, recalling that "the logic of love is not dialectical, but unitive, within the person himself and between persons. If unity is safeguarded, oppositions are overcome, even those that today seem insuperable between reason, heart and faith." In conclusion, the Prefect of the Dicastery added, "The Church needs to be renewed, but the starting point can only be the integrity of the person: to be one in Christ. This is the gift and the task that falls to each one."