MENEVIA FAMILY LIFE MINISTRY

1. Report Summary

2. Whatever happened to Listening 2004?

Last year the Bishops of England and Wales asked families to talk about what life is really like for them: their joys and sorrows, their hopes. Over 15,000 families responded. Every diocese listened to them in one way or another. So what did families say?
 

“Not Easy But Full of Meaning”
What Did Families Say During Listening 2004?
 

Family Life in a Changing World

Families are under a lot of pressure: too little time, too much to do just living, working and caring for each other, not enough understanding, help and appreciation from society or the church. We heard a lot about loneliness and not being welcome. Materialist values portrayed on TV and in the newspapers don’t help. But families said that faith in God and a prayer life does. So too do patience, humour, tolerance and good family communication. Families are grateful for today’s health, social and educational benefits. But their greatest blessing by far is that of simply being together as a family.

“There are 3 and now 4 generations to cope with: elderly parents often need more help when the younger family needs help.” “The main difficulty? Competing demands on our time: from work, children, leisure, even church!”

The full report covers five important areas:

• Values: media, materialism and peer pressure

• Balancing family, work and home

• Changing family structures

• Mobility and communications

• Hurting families

 
Family Life and Living the Faith

Families talked a lot about faith in God and how it provides structure and strength, meaning and hope in their lives. But they also said that faith and religious practices are difficult areas, especially where families disagree, children reject the faith and family members are excluded from full participation in the Mass.

“Families are the best thing on earth. It doesn’t matter if you break up, if you are a different skin colour or how people are, it just matters that you love them.”

“The friends we have at church enrich our lives, and give us spiritual support for the right choices.”

“An awful lot of young people see the Church as irrelevant - not just those who have not been taught or brought up properly.”

“If only the Church could free us of the constant question ‘Where did we go wrong?’”

“It is God who has called us to a Christian marriage, who supports us and helps us to grow as persons in our family life, and who in and through our family relationships draws us into communion with God, Father, Son and Spirit.” “I feel unable to talk about religion or church matters. My children ridicule my prayer life.”

The full report covers six important areas:

• Valuing faith in God

• Communicating faith in God

• The lost generations

• Sharing faith in God at home

• Family spirituality

• Family faith at home and in the parish

 
Our Beliefs and Pastoral Practices

Church teaching, especially on divorce and remarriage, was talked about. Some families requested greater generosity, forgiveness and welcome from the church. Others asked for more information and clearer teaching. Most recognised the importance of the parish as the place where we should all be known, loved and welcomed for who we are, where different experiences of family life are respected and where moral and practical support is available.

“We should be as forgiving in the broader Church as we are at home with our own families. We shouldn’t let our values slip but be honest with people. We have to offer acceptance and challenge.”

"It is difficult and stressful to bring our autistic child to church, both for us and him."

“Family life will always seem second best when celibacy is held up as the ideal.”

 “As a single person, I find nothing applicable to my circumstances in this form.”

“We have been unable to have children and feel such a failure at Mass.”

The full report covers seven important areas:

• Engaging with ‘real’ or ‘ideal’ families?

• Valuing difference

• Consistency of pastoral practice

• Gender, sexuality and fertility

• Single people

• Inter-church families

• Divorce and the Eucharist

 
What next?

Families had many practical ideas. Local action was a priority, though it needed support. Many volunteered to be part of the follow-up. So in April 2005 the Bishops of England and Wales agreed a plan to meet families’ needs in three stages over the next three years:

Welcoming, family-friendly parishes (2006)

• to offer understanding, friendship and support

• to be a source of help in times of need

• to encourage and celebrate all family life whether married, widowed, single, divorced, separated, with children or without

“The challenge is to build highly loving supportive communities within our parishes for all of us, including our families.”

Marital and family spirituality (2007)

• to share the holiness of our homes as places of life, love, service, teaching, fellowship, witness and prayer
• to celebrate the presence of God as love in all loving family relationships

“A broader understanding of marital and family spirituality among both clergy and laity will be fundamental to the success of any future work by the church in support of family life.”

Helping parents and grandparents to passing on faith in God (2008)

• to provide more support, tools and resources

• to respect the role of the home and to see where it fits in with the school and the parish

• to provide comfort and healing when necessary

“Parents expressed a need for more help in raising their children in the Faith, both in terms of deepening their own understanding and being able to integrate it into the life of the home.”

The Bishops of England and Wales would like to thank everyone who took part in any way in Listening 2004: My Family My Church

Read the full report at www.catholicchurch.org.uk or order a hard copy from the Catholic Communications Service: price £3.99.

The report from the Diocese of Menevia is available at

www.catholic-ew.org.uk/listening2004/index.htm

Click on 'Listening 2004 in your diocese' on the left.

May 2005
 

August 2005:-  Whatever happened to LISTENING 2004?

Bishops’ Conference initiative judged great success

It’s in your Parish now? A full-colour leaflet which sets out a brief, but detailed analysis of the responses you sent in after last year’s distribution of questionnaires.

In answer to the question ‘What did families say during ‘Listening 2004?’, the Bishops of England and Wales say… “In 2004, we asked families to talk about what life is really like for them, their joys and sorrows, their hopes. Over 15,000 families responded. Every Diocese listened to them at specially convened meetings. So what did families say?

You can read the full details in the leaflet, which you will find in your Parishes from this Sunday. Here is a flavour of what YOU said . . .
 
Family Life in a Changing World
‘Families are under a lot of pressure: too little time, too much to do just living, working and caring for each other, not enough understanding, help and appreciation from society or the church. We heard a lot about loneliness and not being welcome. Materialist values portrayed on TV and in the newspapers don’t help. But families said that faith in God and a prayer life does. So too do patience, humour, tolerance and good family communication. Families are grateful for today’s health, social and educational benefits. But their greatest blessing by far is that of simply being together as a family.
Family Life and Living the Faith
Families talked a lot about faith in God and how it provides structure and strength, meaning and hope in their lives. But they also said that faith and religious practices are difficult areas, especially where families disagree, children reject the faith and family members are excluded from full participation in the Mass.
Our Beliefs and Pastoral Practices
Church teaching, especially on divorce and remarriage, was talked about. Some families requested greater generosity, forgiveness and welcome from the church. Others asked for more information and clearer teaching. Most recognised the importance of the parish as the place where we should all be known, loved and welcomed for who we are, where different experiences of family life are respected and where moral and practical support is available.

What were the principle areas covered by your responses?
Again, full details are in your leaflet (or, better still, why not invest in a copy of the full report? ** see below for how to get one). Here are some of the key points:
Asked to comment on ‘Families in a changing world’, you mentioned problems of media and materialism, of balancing family work and home and hurting families.
‘Family life and living the faith’ produced comments covering six important areas, including ‘valuing faith in God, the lost generations, family spirituality and family faith at home and in the parish’.
The last section of the questionnaire dealt with ‘Our beliefs and pastoral practices’. Your comments in 7 specific areas picked out valuing difference, single people, inter-church families and divorce and the Eucharist, amongst others.

Bishop John Hine, of Southwark, who led the project, in an interview with the Catholic Herald, said; ‘I and my fellow Bishops have listened hard and we are going to do something about it’.
 
So, what next? What are they - and we - going to do about it?
 
Once again, the published leaflet gives full details, but here is the nub of the main proposals. Starting NOW, there is to be a 3-year programme, each year of which will feature a key, critical stage.
 
Year One (starting in the Autumn) will focus on ‘welcoming, family-friendly parishes’, so as to ‘build highly loving and supportive communities for all within our parishes’. Some will say, ‘but we’ve already got a welcoming parish!’ Of course, but some are more ahead than others. We can all learn, we can all improve and there will be a joint learning process across each diocese, which will benefit all.
 
Similarly, Year Two will feature ‘marital and family-life spirituality’, with the same objective of spreading good and common practice across our Diocese.
 
Finally, Year Three will home in on ‘helping parents and grandparents to pass on the faith’.
How many of us are wont to lament the loss of the knowledge and practice of our wonderful faith, the gift of which we were privileged to have passed to us by our parents? Well, this will be our chance to do something about it!

WHAT NEXT then?
What are we at Menevia Family Life going to do about it?
Well, first of all, ample supplies of the full-colour leaflet will be available in your parish from this Sunday; secondly, you can obtain a copy of the full report from this office for half-price, two pounds, postage paid and delivered; thirdly, plans are actively afoot to stage a launch conference early in November, in two locations, Swansea and Haverfordwest.

The key question is: what are YOU going to do about it.
The whole thing has to be a collaborative effort between Priest and People. To paraphrase the immortal words of Lord Kitchener: ‘Your Church needs you’. Let’s face it, last year’s efforts have only now been translated into an action programme. Now, we are at the end of the beginning.

Will you help to make ‘LISTENING 2004’ and its results become a reality?

Peter Macpherson

Celebrating Family 2005  :   Everybody's Welcome 2006   :   Home is a Holy Place 2007