August 6, 2014 – Excerpted from “Put Out Into the Deep”, Bishop DiMarzio’s column in The Tablet:

Today, I am beginning a three-part series of articles based on the working document for the World Synod of Bishops entitled, “The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization,” to be held in Vatican City in October. In January of this year, we submitted responses from the Diocese of Brooklyn to the various preliminary questions proposed by the Office of the Synod. I will try in my explanation of the document to include the responses given by the Diocese, which include individual responses from over 600 individuals from Brooklyn and Queens.

Truly, the Synod on the Family has important consequences for the life of the Church, for the Church is a communion of families. The document begins by describing the Gospel of the Family, or the Good News of the Family, since the family is the means of evangelization when all is said and done. Remember the words of St. John Paul II when he said, “The Church goes by the way of the family.”

As the document enfolds, we hear about how we must communicate the Gospel of the Family in today’s world, because it is certainly God’s plan for marriage and the family that the Church proclaim to the world God’s plan in the family. It begins by remembering that in Genesis the human race is to cooperate with God’s work in transmitting life to its descendants. This is only possible when God’s love is at the center of the family. We cannot help but note that the document refers us to the marriage feast of Cana where Jesus sanctified human love and laid the basis for its sacramentality. The Second Vatican Council’s document, Gaudium et Spes, told us that, “Jesus, in assuming human love, also perfected it, giving man and woman a new manner of loving, which has its foundation in the irrevocable faithfulness of God.”

Read the full text of the Bishop’s column on The Tablet website.