Family Life

All members of the family, each according to his or her own gift, have the grace and responsibility of building day by day the communion of persons, making the family “a school of deeper humanity”. This happens where there is care and love for the little ones, the sick, the aged; where there is mutual service every day; when there is a sharing of goods, of joys and sorrows. - St. John Paul II, On the Family Apostalic Exhortation 

The Family is a “school of love” where the virtues necessary for the building of a just and peaceful society are taught, developed, and put into practice in the concrete reality of daily life.  For this reason, the Church recognizes in the family, the fundamental building block of society. 

In the family we discover a good that can only be realized within a relationship of love with another.  Such relationships are not always easy, and very often range from the inconvenient to the downright demanding.  We find ourselves coming face to face with the just needs and demands of the other as well as with one another’s faults and failures. And so family relationships are often difficult. 

Parish clergy and lay leaders in the Archdiocese of Portland are painfully aware of these problems in our parishes, our city, and in the world.  Hope for the future of society, we are convinced, is rooted in the renewal of the family.