Jubilee 2025: World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly

 In 2021, as the world began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, the first World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly was marked by Pope Francis. It is a celebration that reflects something of Pope Francis' charism of appreciation for the more everyday aspects of the living of the Christian life. He had a particular sense of the role that grandparents can play in the life of their families, in relation to their children and in relation to their grandchildren. He spoke optimistically of the wisdom that the older generation could share with the younger generation, especially with regard to the handing on of the Catholic faith. Perhaps Pope Francis had an awareness of a generational gap in terms of catechesis and practice of the faith that affected parents, and saw in grandparents a resource to bridge this gap; perhaps he was speaking from a cultural background that still retained a lived experience of family life less affected by the disruption of family break up of some more developed countries. 

In his message for the first World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, Pope Francis referenced the words of Pope Benedict XVI during a visit to a home for the elderly. Pope Benedict was visiting a "casa-famiglia", or "family home" of the St Egidio Community, where he described himself as "an old man visiting his peers" and insisted that "it is beautiful to be old!".

From the outset the Community of Sant’Egidio has supported so many elderly people on their way, helping them to stay in their own living milieus and opening various “casa-famiglia” in Rome and throughout the world. Through solidarity between the young and the old it has helped people to understand that the Church is effectively a family made up of all the generations, where each person must feel “at home” and where it is not the logic of profit and of possession that prevails but that of giving freely and of love. When life becomes frail, in the years of old age, it never loses its value and its dignity: each one of us, at any stage of life, is wanted and loved by God, each one is important and necessary.

 As people grow older and become more infirm, I think it is good that they maintain independence in living and in sustaining a social life as long as that is possible. But I think it is also valuable to recognise the point at which the help of others becomes necessary, and to then accept that help with graciousness rather than with resentment. That graciousness represents a gift of the person who is infirm towards the person who cares for them, and is a sign of regard for the person who, by caring, expresses a key dimension of their own dignity as a person. Pope Benedict XVI touched on this idea during his visit with the elderly:

Dear friends, at our age we often experience the need of the help of others; and this also happens to the Pope. In the Gospel we read that Jesus told the Apostle Peter: “when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go” (Jn 21:18). The Lord was referring to the way in which the Apostle was to witness to his faith to the point of martyrdom, but this sentence makes us think about that fact that the need for help is a condition of the elderly. I would like to ask you to seek in this too a gift of the Lord, because being sustained and accompanied, feeling the affection of others is a grace!

 In the Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee 2025, Pope Francis indicated that the elderly and grandparents might be shown particular signs of hope (n.14):

The elderly, who frequently feel lonely and abandoned, also deserve signs of hope. Esteem for the treasure that they are, their life experiences, their accumulated wisdom and the contribution that they can still make, is incumbent on the Christian community and civil society, which are called to cooperate in strengthening the covenant between generations.

Here I would also mention grandparents, who represent the passing on of faith and wisdom to the younger generation. May they find support in the gratitude of their children and the love of their grandchildren, who discover in them their roots and a source of understanding and encouragement.

And Pope Leo XIV reminds us, in his message for the fifth World Day of the Elderly and Grandparents, to be marked on 27th July 2025, that the Jubilee indulgence can be obtained under the usual conditions for a visit to the elderly who are alone:

[Pope Francis] wanted the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly to be celebrated primarily through an effort to seek out elderly persons who are living alone. For this reason, those who are unable to come to Rome on pilgrimage during this Holy Year may “obtain the Jubilee Indulgence if they visit, for an appropriate amount of time, the elderly who are alone... making, in a sense, a pilgrimage to Christ present in them (cf. Mt 25:34-36)” (APOSTOLIC PENITENTIARY, Norms for the Granting of the Jubilee Indulgence, III). Visiting an elderly person is a way of encountering Jesus, who frees us from indifference and loneliness. 

The dangers of not defining the term "love"

 In times when the word "love" is often used in an ill-defined way, it is tempting to assimilate the teaching of the Gospel at Mass today (30th Sunday of the Year):

You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.... You must love your neighbour as yourself.

to the mantra of those who advocate for same-sex marriage:

We should be free to marry whoever we love.

Among Christians in general, the ability to answer this incorrect assimilation is undermined if there is no clear definition of what is meant by the term "love", and so there is a slide into an almost passive acceptance of same-sex unions through a lack of confidence as to how to argue against them.

The parish newsletter in the parish where I go to Mass opened with the following commentary on the words of the Gospel:

We are all surely familiar with these words. The question is, do we understand them, and do we live them? Before we can consider the three elements of this summary of the law (love of God, neighbour and self) we need to understand what love is, for we often mistake other things for love. Love is not just a feeling, though feelings certainly form part of it. Nor is it mere instinct or attraction, though these too play a part. Love, ultimately, is an act of the will – a choice. A choice for the good of another person, that takes priority over our own feelings, and is made without any thought to self -interest or personal gain. Put like this it sounds daunting, impossible even, but this kind of love is something we grow into, with God’s help, and our lives on earth are principally a preparation and training ground for the life of perfect unalloyed love which is heaven. 

The full newsletter, with its further commentary on the Gospel, can be found here - note that it will not be a permanent link, as the parish website only keeps recent newsletters. 

The homily I heard at Mass (from a priest covering from a neighbouring parish) was also interesting. In answering the question as to why it was love of God that was the first commandment, rather than love of neighbour, Father suggested that it was our need to experience love first that then enabled us to act in love towards others. As we come to appreciate and know just how much God has loved us, before we have loved him, then we grow in our ability to love others. 

But these words also have a resonance at the ordinary human level which Father did not develop.  Young people who do not have an experience of love in its true sense from their family backgrounds in their turn find it much harder (though it is not impossible) to love their neighbour, and to love a spouse and children in marriage. And we see this consequence in our societies today.

The commentary from the parish newsletter came to its conclusion with the following:

It is easy to overlook the last part: ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. Loving ourselves means accepting ourselves as God’s beloved son or daughter, and seeking our own good just as God does – that ‘good’ being a share in his life for eternity. Cut adrift from God and the notion of absolute truth and absolute values, many people in society today feel that it is necessary to affirm every choice as equally ‘good’. But God, as a good and loving father knows that not every choice is good for us. It is because God loves us, that he wants us to choose what is good whilst respecting our freedom to make good and bad choices. He affirms us but not every choice we make! Since God loves us, we can and must love ourselves. The three loves Jesus speaks of – God, neighbour, and self – are not in competition, for our supreme good, that of our neighbour, and God’s will, all coincide. 

The Sleep of Reason

The novel entitled The Sleep of Reason is the penultimate novel in C P Snow's sequence Strangers and Brothers. It is set around the trial of two young women, living in what we would now call a same-sex relationship, who had kidnapped a young boy from a city play area to a country cottage one weekend and subjected him ill treatment before killing him. The crime appears clinically planned, and the two women are duly found guilty of murder. The central point at issue in the trial is not the events of the crime themselves, but the question of the responsibility of the two women for their actions, as their defence lawyers argue for a diminished responsibility that would mean they were guilty of manslaughter rather than murder.

The question of responsibility for actions, and particularly responsibility for actions of a most evil kind, is therefore a theme of the novel. It particularly reflects back to an earlier novel in C P Snow's sequence, George Passant. I have yet to read that novel, but George would appear to have been the centre of group of young people encouraged to reject all societal limitations and live in a complete freedom from any constraints whatsoever. The two women on trial in The Sleep of Reason were around the edges of a later generation in this group, a group with which Snow's narrator, Lewis Eliot, was associated in his younger days. The narrative of The Sleep of Reason speculates as to whether or not Cora and Kitty would have behaved differently if they had not had the association with George Passant's group, whether that association with a lifestyle lacking in any constraint could have any causal link to their actions against the boy they kidnapped. The insistent answer given is that one could never know one way or the other, though Lewis asks himself whether one of the two might have been the leader of the other.

The novel gains its title from the following passage, towards the end, when the protagonists are reflecting back on the outcome of the trial:

Reason. Why had so much of our time reneged on it? Wasn't that our characteristic folly, treachery or crime?

Reason was very weak as compared with instinct. Instinct was closer to the aboriginal sea out of which we had all climbed. Reason was a precarious structure. But, if we didn't use it to understand instinct, then there was no health in us at all.

Margaret said, she had been brought up among people who believed it was easy to be civilised and rational. She had hated it. It made life too hygienic and too thin. But still, she had come to think even that was better than glorifying unreason.

Put reason to sleep, and all the stronger forces were let loose. We had seen that happen in our own lifetimes. In the world: and close to us. We couldn't get out of knowing, that it meant a chance of hell. [Both at the time of C P Snow's writing and in the setting of the novel, this reference includes the events of World War II.]

Glorifying unreason. Wanting to let the instinctual forces loose. Martin said - anyone who did that, either hadn't much of those forces within himself, or else wanted to use others' for his own purpose. And that was true of private leaders like George as much as public ones.

(Were others thinking, as I did, of those two women? Was it true of one of them?)

To move to a different context, one wonders whether, since the legalisation of marriage between people of the same sex, those who have praised the consequent freedom to "marry the person they love" have really considered the relationship of reason to the life of passions and emotions. How does the readiness of the great and good to use the word "love" in a way that lacks substantial definition compare to a reasoned study of the affective life such as that proposed by the recently produced programme of the Pontifical Council for the Family, for example? Have we, in this context, also put reason to sleep?

Something the Synod said (2) ......

Continuing my reading of the relatio from the recent Synod on the family, from the Italian text and aided by Bishop Campbell's working English translation.

From n.4 of the relatio, which introduces the part in which the Synod Fathers discuss the situation of the family in the world of today (Bishop Campbell's translation, with some adjustments, added emphasis mine):

.... The family founded on the marriage of a man and woman is the splendid and irreplaceable place of the personal love which transmits life. Love is not reduced to an illusion of the moment, love is not an end in itself, love seeks the trustworthiness of a personal “you”. In the mutual promise of love, in good times and in bad, love desires continuity of life, right until death. The fundamental desire to form networks of love, sound and inter-generational within the family presents itself in a constant and significant way, over and above cultural and religious limits and social changes. In the liberty of the free “yes” exchanged life-long between a man and a woman, the love of God is both present and experienced. For the Catholic faith marriage is a sacred sign in which the love of God for his Church becomes effective. The Christian family is consequently a lived part of the Church: a “domestic Church”.

The couple and life in marriage are not abstract realities, they remain imperfect and vulnerable. For this reason the will to conversion is ever necessary, to forgive and to begin again. In our responsibility as Pastors, we are concerned for the life of families. We wish to listen to the reality of their life and their challenges, and to accompany them with the look of love which comes from the Gospel....

Can you notice the clear assertion of marriage as being between a man and a woman; and that this marriage is the foundation for the family? And that it is asserted as a life-long "yes", even until death?

And this introducing the part of the relatio that looks at the situation of the family today.

"Unprotected sex" constitutes assault?

It was interesting to here a BBC radio news report of singer Nadja Benaissa's trial on charges of causing grievous bodily harm, and attempted grievous bodily harm. It glibly referred to "unprotected sex" and "taking precautions", by which I read (sorry, heard) it as referring to not using, or using condoms. Of course, the mortal sin in today's world is not that Ms Benaissa appears to have undertaken some "loose living", as one might say, but that she hasn't "taken precautions" whilst doing so. Now, it isn't right for others to adopt a superior, moralising tone about this, as we should all acknowledge our own sinfulness; but, on the other hand, it is not wrong to point out the re-orientation of moral values that has taken place here. I think we should reflect on the moral value of Ms Benaissa's actions here, independently of the question of the transmission of the HIV virus, rather than just ignoring the question of moral valuing that attaches to them. From the point of view of Catholic teaching, for example, they would be seen as morally wrong, a view that I think would be shared by some who are not Catholics.

I wonder what the situation would be if Ms Benaissa had used condoms, but one of her sexual partners had still become infected? I haven't yet come across a prosecution in this situation - if a reader out there knows of one, please let me know. Would it still be seen as constituting grievous bodily harm? The BBC report does question the appropriateness of prosecutions such as that of Ms Benaissa, pointing out that life expectancy after HIV/AIDS infection in developed countries is now very good. AIDS campaigners are concerned about the stigma attaching to HIV/AIDS as a result of laws and prosecutions of this kind.

One can readily see a wisdom in suggesting that the appropriate course of action of a person who is HIV positive is to remain celibate. This represents a generous choice, made in the genuine interest of the other person involved.

But that is perhaps too much for today's society, sponsored by Durex et al, to take....

Gordon Brown at the Brighton Conference

Like Tony Blair's speech to the Rimini Meeting, I believe that Gordon Brown's Labour Party Conference speech is worthy of some careful analysis. The full text can be found here, though it is the prepared text marked with those cautious words warning journalists to "check against delivery".

Let me start with the following passage (other passages, which are open to more positive evaluation, will follow, I hope):

And for all those mums and dads who struggle to juggle work and home, I am proud to announce today that by reforming tax relief we will by the end of the next Parliament be able to give the parents of a quarter of a million two year olds free childcare for the first time.

And I do think it’s time to address a problem that for too long has gone unspoken, the number of children having children. For it cannot be right, for a girl of sixteen, to get pregnant, be given the keys to a council flat and be left on her own.

From now on all 16 and 17 year old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed in a network of supervised homes. These shared homes will offer not just a roof over their heads, but a new start in life where they learn responsibility and how to raise their children properly. That’s better for them, better for their babies and better for us all in the long run.

We won’t ever shy away from taking difficult decisions on tough social questions.

Because we have to be honest – its not just bankers and politicians that have lost the people’s trust. Even though there is so much that is amazing about Britain, if you ask your neighbours or your workmates how they feel right now in this fast changing world, they will probably talk about their sense of unease.The decent hard working majority feel the odds are stacked in favour of a minority, who will talk about their rights, but never accept their responsibilities.

In a faster changing more mobile world of communities where family breakdown is more common, where children are at risk on the internet, where elderly people are too often isolated in their communities, the new society must be explicit about the boundaries between right and wrong- and about the new responsibilities we demand of people in return for the rights they have. And I stand with the people who are sick and tired of others playing by different rules or no rules at all.

First paragraph: in the interests of fairness, should not those families where the choice is that one parent not work in order to look after the children have access to equality of funding? If citizens are being increasingly encouraged towards choice in accessing public services, why can't that choice exist in childcare, and include the option to not work so as to care?

Second paragraph: doesn't the sense of this paragraph depend on where the emphasis lies? If sixteen is the age of consent, then surely Government has no right to say that girls of sixteen should not be allowed to conceive children; but if the emphasis in the sentence is on the question of appropriate access to social housing, then it is quite different.

Third paragraph: if this works out in practice as it looks, it is un-objectionable. However, as some media coverage today labelled it - "workhouses for pregnant teenagers" - if it works out in practice, or indeed in perceptions, as just making life harder for young mothers, will this end up simply being a driver towards abortion? And, indeed, will the "responsibility" that is promoted to these young people, along with all its positive and helpful aspects, include the promotion of contraceptive use and abortion in relation to the possibility of future pregnancy? It's not in the speech, and we can rightly say that such an intention can be denied by the Prime Minister; but for practitioners on the ground in this field, promotion of contraception and abortion is part of normal practice [Denials received in the com box will be welcome, and will be posted].

Sixth paragraph: in the same paragraph there is reference to increasing family breakdown, and the need to be explicit about boundaries between right and wrong. But is there any willingness to apply judgements of right and wrong to marital structures and to divorce? Do we not shy away from difficult decisions on a tough social question if we do not see divorce as a moral issue, a question that has a right and wrong about it? [This is not to suggest that couples experiencing breakdown in the sociological sense should be forced to stay together - but it is to suggest that the subsequent choice to move on and marry another, in the kind of serial monogamy that is not unusual now, should be the subject of a moral evaluation that is reflected in law.]

Word of Life ... but don't try this yourself?

This month's Word of Life is "He loved his own in the world, and he loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1).

As part of her commentary on these words of Scripture, first written as a Word of Life in April 1981, Chiara Lubich tells the story of a young girl who engaged in a bit of "marriage counselling" with her friend's mother. The story is quite striking .... but I am not sure I would advise anyone to try it themselves!

A Catholic family life is possible ...

... but it isn't easy.

An moving post here at Diakonia.

Teacher union conference motion on "social dysfunction"

The following motion appears in the agenda of my trade union's annual conference, due to take place in the week before Easter:

Impact of social dysfunction and family breakdown

17 THAT Conference urges the Executive Committee to press the Government to recognise fully the extent to which social dysfunction and family breakdown are damaging the educational attainment of children and the performance of schools and colleges.

I suspect that the concern lying behind this motion is that schools and teachers are being marked down during inspections/self evaluation processes when the real cause of the underachievement of pupils does not lie with the work of the schools and teachers themselves. But it will be interesting to see what definitions of "social dysfunction" and "family" are used in the debate. What the union will expect Government to do in order to deliver the "recognising" called for in the motion defeats me - particularly since the present Government has done plenty to remove those fixed reference points, both social and ethical in nature, that would support stability in the home lives of children.

The full agenda for the Conference can be downloaded in pdf format from www.atl.org.uk.