Contents
Letter to Pope Leo to Assist In His October Conference with Bishops Worldwide
With deep gratitude, we thank all those who took the time to share your personal family experiences, concerns, and challenges with Pope Leo and with the Presidents of Bishops’ Conferences from around the world. Your willingness to speak honestly about the realities of family life today is an important contribution to the Church’s ongoing conversation about how best to support families.
The challenges families face today are significantly different from those many of us experienced growing up. The family life once portrayed in television programs such as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver reflected a very different cultural and social reality from the one families navigate today. Programs such as Modern Family, Will & Grace, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager illustrate how profoundly family structures, relationships, sexuality, parenting, and the pressures facing young people have changed.
Whatever our individual experiences or perspectives, one thing is clear: Families today are living in a new reality.
Our Church must therefore continue to listen carefully to the lived experiences of families and discern how its pastoral guidance can respond to the questions, struggles, and hopes they encounter today. The purpose is not to abandon the wisdom of our tradition, but to ensure that the Church’s guidance speaks meaningfully to families where they actually are—not simply to the families of another generation.
Your stories matter. Your experiences matter. And your willingness to share them creates an opportunity for the Church to listen more deeply, understand more fully, and accompany families with the compassion, wisdom, and pastoral care they need.
Thank you for helping make that conversation possible. And a special thanks to Dr. Charles Gibson for the well-researched background information you have provided below to the Episcopal Conference Presidents.
Letter to His Holiness
Pope Leo XIV
Re: Vatican consultation with
Presidents of Bishops’ Conferences worldwide
Dear Pope Leo,
As our gift to you, we have gathered the responses of families from various countries around the world who’ve shared the issues they face in today’s world and where church leaders could be of help to them. It is their hope and ours that you will find this beneficial in your coming meeting October 7 – 14. The consultations show a common desire for a Church that listens more deeply, accompanies families beyond the wedding day, responds to practical needs, protects vulnerable people, and adapts its pastoral ministry to changing family realities. Across different cultures and contexts, families are asking not only for teaching, but also for presence, understanding, practical assistance, and ongoing accompaniment.
Families, the Church, and the Crisis of Moral Credibility
Background Information for Episcopal Conference Presidents
Introduction: Why Moral Credibility Matters
This reflection is written by someone who loves the Catholic Church, even with all its “spots and wrinkles.” I believe a thoroughly reformed Catholic Church can be one of the greatest forces for justice, peace and reconciliation in our world. The world needs a credible, Jesus-centered Church—one capable of bringing its social teaching, its millions of faithful and its moral voice to the work of building a more just and compassionate human community.
Yet the Church faces a growing crisis of moral credibility.
Through conversations with Catholics, as well as surveys and the work of theologians and social scientists, a widening gap can be seen between many official Church teachings and the beliefs, experiences and moral decisions of Catholics themselves. Some of the Church’s most serious failures—particularly the cover-up of clergy sexual abuse—have begun to be confronted. Other issues remain unresolved.
The movement toward synodality, initiated by Pope Francis and strongly continued by Pope Leo XIV, offers an important response. A synodal Church seeks to move from a predominantly hierarchical model toward a more participatory Church in which all the baptized have a genuine voice in discerning the movement of the Holy Spirit and in shaping the life and mission of the Church.
This is a profound opportunity. It is also understandable that such a change encounters resistance, because synodality challenges deeply established patterns of authority and clericalism. The slow adaptation of canon law to a genuinely synodal model is another concern.
But synodality is not fundamentally about changing doctrine. It is about asking how the Church listens, discerns truth and exercises authority.
That brings us to the central issue of this paper:
Moral credibility requires trust. Trust requires truth. And truth requires that our beliefs and actions correspond as closely as possible to reality.
The New Testament itself gives special importance to faith. The Greek word pistos conveys not only belief but trust and faithfulness. A Church that asks people to trust its moral teaching must itself demonstrate that it is willing to seek truth wherever truth is found—including in Scripture, history, human experience, science and the lived experience of its own people.
Pope Leo XIV has provided an important example in Magnifica Humanitas, where he explicitly acknowledges the grave immorality of slavery that had been sanctioned by elements of the institutional Church. Such acknowledgment matters. It demonstrates that recognizing institutional error does not destroy the Church. Rather, honestly acknowledging the truth can strengthen its credibility.
The Church has changed important teachings and practices before. Among the historical examples that deserve consideration are the Doctrine of Discovery, the belief that there was no salvation outside the Church, slavery, torture, the Inquisition, religiously sanctioned warfare, and earlier opposition to freedom of conscience, religious liberty and separation of Church and state.
These changes do not prove that every current teaching is wrong. They do demonstrate something important: the Church has the capacity to recognize that an earlier understanding was inadequate and to develop its teaching in response to deeper understanding of the Gospel and reality.
The question before the Church today is whether it can do the same regarding the status of women and sexual and reproductive morality.
I. The Growing Gap Between Official Teaching and Catholic Experience
The credibility gap is especially evident in questions concerning women, sexuality and reproduction.
Increasing numbers of Catholics appear to be making moral decisions independently of official Church teaching. This is not necessarily because they have abandoned faith. Many continue to pray, attend Mass, raise their children Catholic and seek to live morally. Rather, they increasingly believe that their own experience, conscience, relationships and knowledge of the world must be considered when making moral decisions.
The surveys cited in this paper illustrate the extent of this change.
For example, the percentage of Catholics saying that the Church should permit birth control has risen dramatically over the decades. A 2024 Pew survey reported approximately 83 percent support. Other surveys show substantial majorities of Catholics supporting women’s ordination, allowing priests to marry, permitting IVF and allowing greater inclusion of people in nontraditional family situations.
A 2025 Pew survey found that approximately 60 percent of Catholics favored making the Church more inclusive even if that required changes in some teachings, while 37 percent preferred maintaining traditional teachings even if that resulted in a smaller Church.
The differences are also evident in questions concerning moral authority. Data from the American Catholic Laity Survey indicate that, between 1987 and 2017, Catholics increasingly identified the individual rather than Church leaders as having the final say in matters of sexual morality.
For example, regarding artificial birth control, the percentage identifying the individual as having final authority increased from 64 percent to 68 percent, while the percentage identifying Church leaders decreased from 13 percent to 9 percent.
For same-sex relationships, the shift was much more dramatic: those identifying the individual as having final authority increased from 43 percent to 58 percent, while those identifying Church leaders declined from 36 percent to 13 percent.
The lesson is clear: Catholics are already exercising moral responsibility in ways that do not depend exclusively upon hierarchical teaching.
The question is not whether this reality will disappear. It will not.
The more important question is whether the Church will listen to this experience and enter into genuine dialogue with its people.
II. Women: From Inequality to Full Equality
Women constitute more than half of the Catholic community and have always played an indispensable role in transmitting the faith to succeeding generations. They are mothers, caregivers, teachers, theologians, parish leaders, administrators, catechists and ministers of countless kinds. Much of the daily work of the Church depends upon them.
Yet women remain unequal under Church law in a fundamental respect: they cannot be ordained to the diaconate, priesthood or episcopacy.
This disparity has become increasingly difficult for many Catholics to reconcile with the Church’s proclamation of the equal dignity of women and men.
The historical argument that women have never exercised ordained or sacramental ministry in the Church also deserves renewed examination.
The early Church did not begin with the fully developed sacramental and hierarchical structures that characterize Catholicism today. The ministries described in the New Testament developed over time. The meaning of terms such as presbyter and episcopos evolved, as did the understanding of laying on of hands and ministerial authority.
The New Testament itself names women who exercised significant leadership in the early Christian communities. Paul refers to women such as Phoebe, Prisca and Junia. The historical evidence concerning the precise nature of their ministries remains debated, but it is increasingly difficult to sustain an account of early Christianity in which women were simply passive members of the community.
There is also archaeological and documentary evidence concerning women officeholders and women associated with Eucharistic and other forms of Christian ministry in the early centuries.
The Church’s understanding of ordination itself developed over time. The requirement that an ordained minister preside at the Eucharist was not expressed in its present form in the earliest Christian communities.
These historical developments should encourage rather than frighten us. Tradition is not merely the preservation of every historical practice. Tradition also includes the Church’s continuing discernment of what is faithful to Christ.
Scripture offers a powerful theological foundation for this discernment. Paul declares:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
This does not settle every question concerning ministry, but it establishes a fundamental principle: baptismal identity in Christ transcends distinctions that human institutions have often used to establish hierarchy.
In the twentieth century, the question of women’s ordination received renewed biblical examination. The Pontifical Biblical Commission’s work in the 1970s is significant because its members did not find a clear scriptural prohibition against women being ordained to priestly ministry. Nevertheless, Pope Paul VI and subsequently Pope John Paul II maintained that the Church did not have authority to confer priestly ordination on women.
John Paul II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis therefore represents a major point of contention.
One theological argument has been based on the concept of complementarity: women and men are understood as fundamentally different, with distinctive roles. Another has emphasized the priest acting in persona Christi, with Christ being male.
These arguments deserve serious theological consideration. But they also deserve examination in light of contemporary understanding of human nature and equality.
The question must be asked: Does a person’s biological sex determine his or her capacity to represent Christ?
Christ is represented not by one’s genitalia but by one’s conformity to Christ.
The Church’s treatment of women also has consequences beyond ordination. Women increasingly live in societies in which equality is assumed in education, government, business, medicine, law, and virtually every other sphere. When the Church simultaneously teaches the equal dignity of women while maintaining institutions in which women are excluded from ultimate sacramental leadership, many women experience an unresolved contradiction.
The disengagement of women from active participation in Church life should therefore be taken seriously.
Trust this Church because it seeks the truth.
That is the Church the world desperately needs.
Kathleen Sprows Cummings of the University of Notre Dame summarized the danger succinctly: “If you lose the women, you lose the children.”
Women have historically played a primary role in the religious formation of children. If women increasingly conclude that the Church does not regard them as full participants, the consequences will extend well beyond women themselves.
The issue is therefore not simply whether women may be ordained.
It is whether the Catholic Church can credibly proclaim the equal dignity of women while maintaining a system of governance and sacramental ministry in which women remain structurally subordinate to men.
A renewed Church should seek full equality of women and men in dignity, participation, leadership, and ministry.
III. Sexual and Reproductive Morality: Listening to Experience
The deepest credibility gap may exist in sexual and reproductive morality.
Sexuality is a gift of God. It can express intimacy, love, commitment, and openness to new life. Yet throughout much of Church history, sexual morality developed through an increasingly elaborate system of rules concerning sexual acts.
Jesus said relatively little about sexual morality compared with the enormous body of later Catholic teaching. His principal recorded teachings concerned marriage, divorce, adultery, and the dignity of human relationships.
Much later teaching was developed through interpretations of natural law.
Natural law itself need not be rejected. The question is how it is understood.
A natural law approach rooted in reality should begin with human experience: What behaviors enable people and relationships to flourish? What behaviors cause unjust harm, exploitation, coercion, manipulation, or destruction?
Moral discernment should therefore draw upon Scripture and tradition, but also upon the lived experience of married couples and single people and the findings of the biological, psychological and social sciences.
This is particularly important when the people making the rules have little or no direct experience of marriage, sexual intimacy or parenthood.
The Church should not simply ask, “What does the rule say?”
It should also ask:
Does this teaching promote human flourishing? Does it protect dignity? Does it strengthen love, fidelity and responsibility? Does it correspond to reality? Does it bring people closer to Christ?
The work of Jesuit moral theologian James F. Keenan is relevant here. He argues for a Catholic sexual ethic that understands sexuality as a gift rather than a curse and notes how historically severe and absolute some sexual teachings became.
This historical development deserves careful consideration. Sexual morality did not emerge fully formed from the teaching of Jesus. It developed over centuries, influenced by cultural assumptions, ascetical practices and understandings of human sexuality that have themselves changed.
A more constructive framework is offered by Margaret Farley, RSM, in Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics.
Farley’s approach asks whether sexual relationships embody justice. She proposes seven norms:
- Do no unjust harm. People must never be exploited, manipulated, deceived or treated merely as objects.
- Free consent. Genuine consent requires freedom from coercion.
- Mutuality. Both persons should participate freely and desire the relationship.
- Equality. Relationships should respect equality, including equality of power.
- Commitment. There should be a meaningful desire for union, intimacy and mutual knowledge.
- Fruitfulness. Fruitfulness includes procreation and the nurturing of children, but also the capacity of relationships to contribute to the good of others.
- Social justice. Sexual relationships exist within a community and should contribute to the well-being of that community.
These principles offer a possible foundation for a renewed Catholic sexual ethic—one centered not merely on the classification of individual sexual acts but on the quality and justice of human relationships.
IV. Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage
The Church’s teaching on marriage also illustrates the need to consider Scripture, tradition and human experience together.
Jesus strongly affirmed the permanence of marriage. Yet Scripture itself contains provisions that recognize difficult circumstances.
Matthew includes an exception concerning porneia, while Paul addresses situations in which a Christian is married to a nonbeliever who refuses to live peacefully with the Christian.
The biblical tradition therefore includes not only “binding” but also “loosing”—the discernment that a rule may not apply in precisely the same way in every circumstance.
The Church has exercised this kind of discernment throughout its history.
Margaret Farley challenges the idea that an absolute commitment can remain morally binding regardless of circumstances. A commitment can be genuine while the conditions that made the commitment possible can change profoundly. Abuse, abandonment, betrayal and other circumstances can destroy the very relationship that a commitment was intended to sustain.
Vatican II also brought an important development in Catholic understanding of marriage. Gaudium et Spes described marriage as an “intimate partnership of life and love,” emphasizing mutual self-giving rather than treating procreation as the sole or primary purpose to which the other dimensions of marriage were subordinate.
This development illustrates an important principle: Catholic teaching can deepen without abandoning its tradition.
The Church should therefore continue to examine whether its present treatment of divorced and remarried Catholics fully reflects the mercy, compassion and pastoral realism of Jesus.
V. Sexual Relationships Outside Marriage
Catholic attitudes toward sexual relationships outside marriage have also changed substantially.
Survey evidence indicates that Catholics increasingly believe that moral judgment cannot be based solely upon marital status. Increasing numbers evaluate relationships according to qualities such as love, fidelity, responsibility, commitment and mutual respect.
This does not mean that every sexual relationship is morally acceptable.
Casual sexual encounters, exploitation, coercion, manipulation and relationships lacking genuine concern for the other person may fail Farley’s criteria of justice.
But it does suggest that the Church should distinguish between relationships that are destructive and relationships in which two people are genuinely committed to one another and seeking to live responsibly.
The moral question should be more than:
“Are these people married?”
It should also be:
“How are these people treating one another?”
VI. Birth Control and the Crisis of Humanae Vitae
Perhaps no Catholic teaching has done more to damage the Church’s moral credibility in the modern era than the prohibition of artificial contraception in Humanae Vitae, issued by Pope Paul VI in 1968.
The decision was particularly painful because it followed years of discussion and the work of the Papal Commission on Birth Control.
The development of modern contraception, particularly the birth-control pill, forced the Church to reconsider earlier assumptions about reproduction and marital sexuality.
The Birth Control Commission eventually included lay people, theologians and bishops. According to the historical account presented here, the overwhelming majority favored changing the Church’s teaching. Their deliberations were influenced especially by the testimony of married couples, including women, who described the practical realities of responsible parenthood.
The Commission concluded that artificial contraception should not be regarded as intrinsically evil and that responsible parenthood required couples to be able to regulate births according to their circumstances.
Yet Humanae Vitae retained the prohibition.
For many Catholics, the result was a profound crisis of trust. The Church appeared to many to have asked ordinary married couples to accept a moral rule that did not sufficiently take into account their lived reality.
The issue is not simply whether contraception is morally right or wrong.
It is a question of how moral authority is exercised.
A couple must make decisions about whether and when to have children. Those decisions involve health, economics, psychological readiness, existing children, family circumstances and the capacity to provide loving care.
Responsible parenthood requires serious moral discernment.
A credible Church should accompany couples in that discernment rather than simply impose a universal rule that many cannot reconcile with their experience.
The continuing gap between official teaching and Catholic practice is enormous. Survey after survey demonstrates that large majorities of Catholics do not accept the prohibition of contraception.
The question therefore becomes: What has the Church learned from this experience?
One lesson should be that changing or developing teaching after careful listening does not necessarily destroy authority.
Sometimes the refusal to acknowledge that a previous position may have been inadequate damages authority far more.
VII. Natural Family Planning and the Question of Reality
The Church has traditionally distinguished artificial contraception from natural family planning.
Whatever one’s theological assessment of that distinction, the effectiveness and practical use of family-planning methods should be considered honestly and in light of contemporary evidence.
The original document cites research indicating a significant difference between perfect-use and typical-use effectiveness of natural family planning methods.
The larger point is more important than any statistic:
Moral teaching should never be separated from reality.
If couples are expected to practice responsible parenthood, the Church should engage honestly with the methods available to them, the evidence concerning their effectiveness and the circumstances in which families actually live.
VIII. HIV/AIDS and the Responsibility to Protect Life
The experience of HIV/AIDS in Africa and elsewhere provides another painful example of the consequences that can arise when moral teaching is separated from public-health realities.
The Church has made enormous contributions to caring for people living with HIV/AIDS. At the same time, its opposition to condoms has generated serious controversy, particularly in communities where HIV transmission has been widespread.
The moral question must be approached with the protection of human life as a central concern.
If a particular teaching or pastoral practice contributes to preventable death or disease, the Church has an obligation to examine that teaching honestly.
The goal should not be to assign blame but to ask what a Church committed to the sanctity of life should do when scientific evidence, pastoral experience and public health raise urgent questions.
IX. What the Church Can Learn From Its Own History
The history of Catholicism demonstrates that teachings and practices once regarded as settled have changed.
The Church once tolerated or sanctioned slavery. It supported forms of religious coercion. It accepted torture in certain circumstances. It endorsed religious warfare. It restricted freedom of conscience and religious liberty. It developed understandings of Church-state relations that are difficult to reconcile with contemporary Catholic teaching.
The Church eventually changed.
Those changes did not destroy Christianity.
They allowed the Church to move closer to the Gospel.
This history should make Catholics neither cynical nor despairing. It should make us humble.
If the Church has changed its teaching on slavery, religious liberty, democracy, human rights and the relationship between Church and state, then the claim that every existing teaching must remain unchanged simply because it is traditional is historically unsustainable.
The real question is:
What does fidelity to Christ require of the Church now?
X. Toward a Church of Truth, Trust and Moral Credibility
The Church does not need to choose between tradition and reform.
It needs to recover the best of its tradition.
A genuinely Catholic reform begins with Scripture, the person and teaching of Jesus, the wisdom of the Christian tradition, the experience of the faithful and the continuing work of the Holy Spirit.
It also requires humility.
The Church must be willing to say:
We were wrong.
Such a statement is not a defeat. It can be an act of profound Christian courage.
The Church should therefore listen more intentionally to those most affected by its teachings:
- married couples;
- women;
- young people;
- divorced and remarried Catholics;
- LGBTQ Catholics;
- single people;
- parents;
- theologians and Scripture scholars;
- scientists and social scientists;
- people who have left the Church;
- and those who remain Catholic but struggle with particular teachings.
Synodality provides an extraordinary structure for doing this.
But listening must be more than consultation. If people are invited to speak but their experience has no influence on discernment or decision-making, synodality will become another form of clericalism.
The Church must move toward a model in which the baptized genuinely participate in discerning and shaping the Church’s life and mission.
That requires transparency, accountability and a willingness to change.
Conclusion: A Credible Church for a Changing World
The Catholic Church remains one of the world’s greatest potential forces for justice, peace, reconciliation and human dignity.
But that potential depends upon moral credibility.
And moral credibility depends upon trust.
Trust depends upon truth.
Truth requires the courage to look honestly at reality—even when reality challenges long-held assumptions.
Rather than fear the experiences of its people, we need our Church to welcome them as part of the discernment process.
The experiences of women challenge the Church to move from formal equality in dignity to full equality in service and ministry.
The experiences of married couples challenge the Church to reconsider how sexual and reproductive morality is developed and applied.
The experience of divorced and remarried Catholics challenges the Church to distinguish the permanence of Christian love from rules that may fail to recognize the complexity of human relationships.
The experience of LGBTQ Catholics challenges the Church to examine whether its language and pastoral practices communicate the unconditional love of Christ.
The experience of Catholics who use contraception challenges the Church to reconsider whether its understanding of natural law adequately reflects responsible parenthood and human flourishing.
And the experience of millions who have disengaged from the Church challenges all of us to ask why.
The answer cannot simply be that people have become less faithful.
Perhaps some have.
But perhaps many are telling the Church something important.
Perhaps they are saying:
We love the Church, but we need the Church to listen to us.
We want a Church whose teachings reflect the mercy of Jesus.
We want a Church that recognizes the equality of women.
We want a Church that respects conscience and human experience.
We want a Church that is willing to learn.
We want a Church whose moral authority is earned through truth and trust rather than demanded through institutional authority.
That is not a rejection of Catholicism.
It may be a call to recover something essential to Catholicism.
The Church’s future will not be secured by defending every historical position. It will be secured by remaining faithful to Christ while having the courage to discern what must change.
A truly synodal Church can become such a Church.
A Church that listens.
A Church that learns.
A Church that acknowledges its mistakes.
A Church that honors the equal dignity of women and men.
A Church that takes seriously the lived experience of families.
A Church that engages science rather than fears it.
A Church that welcomes rather than excludes.
And ultimately, a Church whose teachings and actions once again make it possible for people to say:
We trust this Church when she seeks the truth.
That is the Church the world desperately needs.
Dr. Charles Gibson
Auburn, California
September 7, 2026
FAMILY CONSULTATIONS 2026:
Country-by-Country Summary
1. Australia
Key issues
i. Inclusion of Divorced and Remarried Catholics: Uncertainty about their place in the Church and their full participation in parish life, including blended families.
ii. LGBTQ+ Inclusion: Experiences of judgment or exclusion and the need for greater respect, welcome, and pastoral care.
iii. Pastoral Support for Families: A desire for clearer, compassionate, and welcoming guidance that recognizes families’ diverse circumstances.
iv. Financial Challenges: Economic difficulties affecting families and their well-being.
v. Faith and Family Responsibilities: Limited understanding of faith, marriage, and family responsibilities.
vi. Family Planning: Questions and concerns about birth control, family size, and responsible parenthood.
vii. Gender Inequality and Violence: Misogyny, gender inequality, domestic violence, and femicide.
viii. Wider Social Challenges: Climate change, inflation, and political divisions affecting families and communities.
Recommendations on how the Church Can Help
i. Provide clearer pastoral guidance and accompaniment for divorced, remarried, and blended families.
ii. Encourage priests and parishes to create welcoming and non-judgmental environments.
iii. Offer respectful pastoral accompaniment for LGBTQ+ people and their families.
iv. Provide marriage education and ongoing support for families.
v. Strengthen faith formation and teaching on family life.
vi. Promote equal participation of women and men in the Church.
vii. Address gender-based violence and promote social justice.
viii. Support families facing economic and environmental challenges.
2. India
Key issues
i. Marital and Family Breakdown: Family separation caused by migration for livelihood and Pressure on marriage, parenting, and care for children and elderly family members.
ii. Parenting and Intergenerational Relationships: Differences between parents and young people concerning education, careers, marriage, technology, and personal autonomy.
iii. Addiction and Related Social Pressures: Alcohol, gambling, drugs, and digital dependency affecting families. Also, exposure of adolescents to harmful digital content, including pornography.
iv. Weakening Faith Transmission Within the Family: Faith formation increasingly centered on parish and school activities.
v. Lack of Accessible and Competent Family Counselling: Uneven access to professional counselling and pastoral accompaniment.
vi. The Gap Between Listening and Action: Limited visibility of what happens after consultation and discernment.
vii. Accountability and Transparency in the Synodal Process: Absence of clear records of decisions, responsibilities, and implementation. Also, Limited communication with the People of God about outcomes.
viii. Pastoral Competence and Co-Responsibility: Lack of adequate formation, resources, and clear responsibilities
ix. Indian Social, Cultural, and Economic Context: Caste and socioeconomic vulnerability influencing family experiences.
Recommendations on how the Church Can Help
i. Strengthen Marriage and Family Accompaniment: Provide marriage preparation, ongoing support, and family support groups, address separation, migration, and diverse family needs.
ii. Promote Parent–Young People Dialogue: Encourage intergenerational communication and conflict resolution. Involve young people in developing family pastoral programs.
iii. Address Addiction and Social Pressures: Provide pastoral support, referrals, and digital safety education.
iv. Strengthen Family-Based Faith Formation: Encourage family prayer, Scripture sharing, and faith reflection. Also promote use Small Christian Communities to support family faith formation.
v. Provide Accessible Counselling Services: Train pastoral workers and establish professional referral systems. ensure confidential and specialized support for families.
vi. Turn Consultation into Action: Develop clear action plans and communicate implementation progress and explain decisions and report on outstanding recommendations.
vii. Promote Accountability and Transparency: Assign responsibilities, document progress, and share outcomes. And also apply the 5R Reality Check to evaluate existing initiatives.
viii. Strengthen Pastoral Competence and Co-Responsibility: Train clergy, religious, and lay leaders. Promote collaboration with qualified lay professionals and service providers.
ix. Rebuild Trust in Synodal Listening: Show how consultation findings influence decisions and actions. Avoid repeated consultations without reviewing previous recommendations.
x. Develop Context-Sensitive Pastoral Responses: Adapt family ministry to India’s cultural, social, and economic diversity. Address caste and socioeconomic vulnerabilities through locally appropriate solutions.
3. Indonesia
Key issues
i. Economic hardship, unemployment and changing social expectations place pressure on families. Financial insecurity and changing expectations about marriage, work and family roles are making family life more difficult for many people.
ii. Domestic violence, emotional abuse and gender inequality. These problems can remain hidden when families fear stigma or do not know where to seek confidential assistance.
iii. Young adults are delaying marriage because of economic uncertainty, mental-health concerns and fear of repeating unhealthy family patterns. Many young people are carefully considering whether they can build a healthier family than the one they may have experienced growing up.
iv. Single parents, widows/widowers, separated people and people from broken families can feel excluded. Such families may need greater assurance that they remain valued members of the Church community.
v. Families want to be listened to rather than judged. This was a particularly important pastoral message: people often need a safe person who will hear their story before offering advice or solutions.
Recommendations on how the Church Can Help
i. Provide ongoing marriage accompaniment covering communication, conflict resolution, finances, parenting and abuse awareness.
ii. Establish safeguarding and confidential referral systems.
iii. Create men’s, women’s, couples’, parenting and family-support groups.
iv. Provide practical support for families experiencing poverty.
v. Listen seriously to young people and accompany those delaying marriage.
vi. Use SCCs as spaces for prayer, healing, peer support, and practical assistance.
4. Ireland
Key issues
i. Belonging and meaningful participation in the Church.
ii. Greater involvement of lay people, women, and young people.
iii. Family diversity, poverty, housing insecurity, and mental-health challenges.
iv. Healing from clerical and institutional abuse.
v . Alienation of LGBTQ+ people, divorced and remarried Catholics, and other marginalized groups.
vi. Need for transparency in the synodal process.
Recommendations on how the Church Can Help
i. Publish the working-group reports so that families can see how their contributions were received and interpreted.
ii. Ensure transparency in the National Assembly, including clarity about how delegates were selected and how representative they are.
iii. Ensure that difficult and marginalized voices are not excluded or diluted during the process of developing final proposals.
iv. Strengthen the participation of women, young people and lay people in Church leadership and decision-making.
v. Create more inclusive pastoral approaches for LGBTQ+ people, divorced and remarried Catholics, and other families who feel excluded.
vi. Prioritize healing and accountability for people affected by clerical and institutional abuse.
vii. Address practical family challenges, including housing, cost of living, mental health, isolation, migration and family breakdown.
viii. Move from consultation to action, ensuring that the concerns already expressed by families lead to concrete changes in Church life.
5. Kenya
Key issues
i. Financial hardship, unemployment, dowry and the high cost of church weddings: Economic difficulties make marriage feel increasingly inaccessible to many young people. The costs associated with establishing a home, meeting family expectations around dowry, and celebrating a church wedding can discourage couples from marrying or create financial strain from the beginning.
ii. Domestic and gender-based violence: Violence within families remains a serious concern, with victims needing both immediate protection and longer-term counselling and support.
iii. Infidelity, gambling, alcohol abuse and family conflict: These problems often reinforce one another and can lead to mistrust, financial instability, emotional distress and the breakdown of relationships.
iv. Young people fear marriage because of financial pressures, past family trauma and uncertainty: Many young adults have witnessed difficult marriages or experienced broken families themselves. As a result, they may associate marriage with suffering rather than with companionship, stability and hope.
v. Cultural and tribal differences create challenges, particularly in intercultural marriages: Couples may struggle with different traditions, expectations, languages and family practices, especially when extended families have strong influence over the marriage.
vi. Social media and technology are affecting communication within families: Technology can bring families together, but excessive use, online relationships and reduced face-to-face communication can also create distance, mistrust and conflict.
vii. Single mothers and divorced or separated families can experience stigma and exclusion: Some families feel that Church communities do not always provide a welcoming space for those whose family situations do not fit traditional expectations.
viii. Questions around LGBTQ+ people and their place within the Church also emerged: The consultations indicate a need for respectful pastoral dialogue that takes seriously the experiences of individuals and families while helping communities respond with dignity and compassion.
Recommendations on how the Church Can Help
i. Provide marriage preparation and long-term accompaniment, including after the wedding.
ii. Make church weddings more affordable through simple, community-based or mass weddings.
iii. Establish regular marriage and family counselling.
iv. Speak clearly against GBV and create referral systems for survivors.
v. Offer financial literacy and parenting programs.
vi. Create spaces where young people can discuss relationships and marriage without judgment.
vii. Make SCCs stronger as places of practical family support.
viii. Promote greater inclusion of single parents, divorced people and families experiencing difficulties.
6. New Zealand
Key issues
i. Importance of family life and homemaking.
ii. Lack of recognition of homemaking as valuable work.
iii. Diversity of family structures, including blended, multigenerational, and -parent families.
iv. Some families feel excluded from Church life.
Recommendations on how the Church Can Help
i. Welcome and support families regardless of their circumstances.
ii. Make the Church more inclusive, compassionate, and non-judgmental.
iii. Recognize the value of homemaking and family care.
7. Pakistan
Key issues
i. Domestic violence and abuse can become severe because of limited legal options for Christian couples seeking divorce. When people experiencing serious abuse have few safe legal avenues for separation, they may remain trapped in dangerous situations.
ii. Poverty, rent, medical expenses and unpaid bills place additional pressure on families. Financial insecurity can intensify family conflict and make it difficult for families to respond to emergencies.
iii. Difficulties obtaining official marriage certificates affect families. Lack of proper documentation can create problems when families need to access legal rights or government services.
iv. Christian women face concerns regarding inheritance rights. Questions about property and inheritance can leave women and children economically vulnerable, particularly after the death of a husband or parent.
v. Catholic/Christian family commissions and support structures are described as weak or non-functional. Families may therefore have few places within the Church where they can receive professional counselling, mediation, advocacy or practical assistance.
Recommendations on how the Church Can Help
i. Advocate for legal reforms that recognize cruelty, domestic violence, desertion and irretrievable breakdown.
ii. Establish parish-based counselling, mediation and family-support centers.
iii. Connect victims of abuse with legal aid, shelters and professional services.
iv. Provide emergency financial and humanitarian assistance to families in crisis.
v. Educate families about marriage law and their legal rights.
vi. Prioritize the safety and dignity of victims where reconciliation is unsafe.
8. Tanzania
Key issues
i. Work-related separation of spouses and prolonged parental absence: Employment opportunities may require one spouse or parent to live away from home for long periods, weakening family relationships and reducing parental involvement.
ii. Economic pressures make young people hesitant to marry: Young adults may want marriage but feel unable to take on the financial responsibilities associated with starting a family.
iii. Infidelity and declining trust are weakening marriages: Long periods of separation and poor communication can increase vulnerability to infidelity and make rebuilding trust difficult.
iv. Early marriage and some traditional practices create additional family difficulties: Some cultural expectations may place pressure on young people before they are emotionally, socially or economically prepared for marriage.
v. Bride-price expectations and lengthy processes for receiving the marriage sacrament can discourage young couples: Financial and administrative barriers may unintentionally make Church marriage appear difficult or inaccessible.
vi. Families need better guidance on relationships, reproductive health and parenting across generations: Parents and young people are seeking practical guidance for issues that affect family life but may not always be openly discussed.
Recommendations on how the Church Can Help
i. Strengthen marriage preparation and family-life education from childhood through young adulthood.
ii. Encourage employers to consider the impact of work arrangements on families.
iii. Provide financial education and assistance for young couples.
iv. Create seminars and workshops on communication, trust and family relationships.
v. Continue conversations with families before developing pastoral strategies.
9. Uganda
Key issues
i. Poverty and financial stress are major pressures on marriages and parent-child relationships: When families struggle to meet basic needs, financial problems can quickly become sources of conflict between spouses and can affect children’s education, health and wellbeing.
ii. Families need practical help with employment, school fees, medical costs and counselling: This suggests that families see the Church as more than a place of worship; they also look to it as a community that can help them navigate difficult circumstances.
iii. Grandparents are increasingly raising children because parents are absent or working long hours: This places additional responsibilities on older people and can create emotional and financial challenges for both grandparents and children.
iv. Young people are drifting away from the Church and need relevant engagement: Young people may feel that Church programs do not adequately address their realities, including employment, relationships, education, technology and their future.
v. Domestic violence and single parenthood are significant concerns: These situations can leave families vulnerable to poverty, emotional distress and social stigma.
vi. Families want more flexible and accessible Church programs: Busy work schedules, distance and financial constraints can make traditional parish programs difficult for families to attend.
Recommendations on how the Church Can Help
i. Establish Parish Family Support Desks connecting families with counselling, employment opportunities, emergency assistance and health resources.
ii. Create small neighborhood listening circles and transparent emergency-support funds.
iii. Develop men’s groups, grandparents’ groups and youth peer-mentoring programs.
iv. Provide affordable counselling and confidential spaces for people experiencing family crises.
v. Support single mothers through skills training, childcare and education assistance.
vi. Develop programs promoting responsible fatherhood.
10. United Kingdom
Key issues
i. Poverty, unemployment, rising living costs, and unaffordable housing.
ii. Mental-health challenges among children and young people.
iii. Soc ial media, the internet, and the negative effects of technology.
iv. Domestic abuse, Church-related abuse, and misuse of power.
v. Exclusion of divorced, remarried, LGBTQ+, and other families from Church life.
vi. Need for greater participation of lay people and women in Church leadership.
Recommendations on how the Church Can Help
i. Expand pastoral care and support for families facing poverty.
ii. Make the Church more inclusive and welcoming.
iii. Address abuse, clericalism, and inequality.
iv. Simplify the annulment process and reconsider restrictions on receiving Communion.
v .Promote synodality, transparency, and greater participation of parishioners.
11. United States
Key Issues
i. Financial and economic pressures: The rising cost of living, particularly childcare, unemployment, and inadequate income, make it difficult for families to meet their basic needs and maintain family stability.
ii. Isolation and lack of community support: Many families, especially new parents and those who have become disillusioned or disconnected from the Catholic Church, experience loneliness and a lack of supportive community and pastoral accompaniment.
iii. Family and Church inclusion: Families face divisions and feelings of exclusion arising from Church teachings and practices, particularly concerning divorced and remarried families and families with LGBTQ+ members.
iv. Participation in Church life: There is a need for greater involvement of women, young people, lay people, and families in ministry, leadership, and Church decision-making.
v. Family life and relationships: Families face challenges related to divorce, changing family roles, limited family time, loneliness, parenting pressures, and maintaining strong marriages and family relationships.
vi. Church structures and pastoral practices: Concerns include rigidity, clericalism, exclusion, and practices that may leave some families feeling unsupported or disconnected from the Church.
vii. Faith formation and accompaniment: Families need meaningful catechesis, relevant homilies, opportunities for faith formation, counseling, and ongoing pastoral accompaniment.
vii. Practical support for families: There is a need for greater practical and pastoral support for struggling families, including parents, children, widows, and families experiencing financial or social difficulties.
Recommendations on how the Church Can Help
i. Listen more intentionally to women, young people, and diverse families.
ii. Promote acceptance, dialogue, and respect within families and parish communities.
iii. Increase women’s participation in Church leadership, ministry, and decision-making.
iv. Adapt pastoral care to contemporary family realities and human development.
v. Provide faith-based counselling and strengthen pastoral support.
vi. Organize family activities and shared meals to strengthen relationships.
vii. Encourage open dialogue on women’s roles, Church reform, and family diversity.
viii. Establish ministries to support widows and provide clothing assistance to young families.
ix. Build a more welcoming, compassionate, and Christ-centered Church.
Summary
In summary, across-the-country consultations, the main concerns were family unity, economic hardship, changing family structures, inclusion, women’s participation, abuse, faith formation, and the meaningful implementation of synodality.
Participants called for a Church that is welcoming, compassionate, inclusive, transparent, and responsive to the real needs of families.
One submission represented a broader global consultation rather than a single country where we received responses from more than 100 people. Its central concern was the gap between Church teaching or proclamations and what families experience at the local level. Families may hesitate to provide negative feedback because they fear being judged, ignored, or misunderstood. At the same time, clergy and Church structures may lack effective mechanisms for receiving, escalating, and addressing concerns.
This highlights an important pastoral need: the Church must not only speak to families but also create reliable ways of listening to them and responding to what they hear. Stronger listening mechanisms, feedback systems, and local pastoral structures could help translate Church teaching into more effective accompaniment.
Main Priorities Emerging Across Countries
i. Accompaniment before and after marriage
Families repeatedly asked for support that continues beyond the wedding day. Marriage preparation should be understood not as a one-time course but as the beginning of a longer journey addressing communication, finances, parenting, conflict resolution, spirituality, and support during difficult periods.
ii. Listening without judgment
Families want safe spaces where they can honestly discuss their struggles before problems become crises. Several consultations suggest that being listened to is itself a form of pastoral care. Families often need compassionate listening before they are ready to receive advice or make decisions.
iii. Protection from violence and abuse
Domestic and gender-based violence emerged across several contexts. The Church needs safeguarding systems, counselling, and referral networks that can connect survivors with professional, legal, and emergency services. Pastoral responses should prioritize the safety and dignity of victims, especially where reconciliation could place someone at further risk.
iv. Practical economic support
Poverty, unemployment, debt, school fees, healthcare, and wedding costs directly affect family life and relationships. The consultations therefore point toward a more practical pastoral ministry that can connect families with skills training, financial education, employment opportunities, emergency assistance, and other community resources.
v. Youth and intergenerational engagement
Young people need realistic guidance on relationships, marriage, technology, employment, and vocation. At the same time, grandparents and older family members increasingly carry significant responsibilities. The Church can create spaces where generations listen to and learn from one another rather than addressing each group separately.
vi. More inclusive and adaptable pastoral ministry
The Church is being asked to respond compassionately to divorced families, single parents, blended families, and other changing family circumstances while remaining attentive to the teaching and pastoral tradition of the Church. Families need pastoral approaches that are welcoming, locally appropriate, culturally sensitive, and responsive to real-life circumstances.
The consultations suggest that families are not simply asking the Church for more teaching about marriage and family. They are asking the Church to walk with them in everyday life—to listen, counsel, protect, accompany, and provide practical support when families are struggling.
A recurring message is that pastoral care becomes most meaningful when people experience the Church as present in their real lives, not only during celebrations such as weddings and baptisms or during moments of crisis. Stronger Small Christian Communities (SCCs), parish family-support structures, counselling services, listening circles, and practical referral networks could help make this accompaniment more concrete.
Your Donations Are Most Appreciated
YOUR GIFT – IN ANY AMOUNT – IS PRICELESS
When you make a donation to support our cause, you join with others who are investing in restoring our Church to what Jesus intended. The dollars we receive are used to run our programs and to reach a broad spectrum of the People of God. We are focused on reaching out to the Faithful, reform activists, young adults as well as those who feel abandoned by the Church, to mention just a few. Your personal contributions in offering your suggestions and your donations are most appreciated.
On behalf of the CCRI strategy team
Rene Reid, CCRI director
