The Fundamental Good of Complementarity | John Paul Shimek | Catholic World Report
Dr. Helen Alvaré on why understanding the complementary relationship between man and woman is vital to understanding God and true love.
understanding the complementary relationship between the man and the woman is key to helping us understand the identity of God, God’s relationship with his people, and how we are to love one another.
John Paul Shimek
With multiple degrees in theology and law, and experience with a vast spectrum of public forum issues Professor Helen M. Alvaré is one of the leading Catholic voices in the United States on pro-life issues, marriage and the family, and the role and mission of the laity.
At George Mason University School of Law, Dr. Alvaré teaches Family Law, Law and Religion, and Property Law. She has published on a wide variety of matters concerning marriage, family, parenting, and the First Amendment religion clauses. Outside the classroom, she is a consultant to ABC News on women in the Catholic Church, religion in the public square, and the papacy. Her expertise in these fields has been lauded by the Holy See. Since 2008, she has been a consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Laity at the Vatican. Previously, she served the National Conference of Catholic Bishops as the Director of Planning and Information for the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.
This past November, she served as the Vatican’s media representative for Humanum, a three-day international inter-religious colloquium on the complementarity of man and woman, held in Rome and sponsored by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and co-sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. Although the conference participants returned home long ago now, and other Church-related news is filling the airwaves, the Humanum conference set a course for future intra-ecclesial (and, indeed, extra-ecclesial) discussions about issues at the forefront of today’s culture. The conference hall might have emptied out several weeks ago, but the fruit that will come of this conference is only beginning to ripen.
Dr. Alvaré recently spoke to CWR about her experience at the Humanum conference and its impact on future discussions of marriage and family.
CWR: Professor Alvaré, it is a real honor to have this chance to talk about Humanum, the international conference held at the Vatican between November 17-19, 2014. First of all, what was the conference about and what are the planners and participants hoping comes from it?
Dr. Alvaré: The Humanum conference was an attempt to engage the world in a serious consideration of the foundational good that is the relationship between the man and the woman. As I wrote in America [after the conference], we think we talk about men and woman all the time, but we are usually just peering into their sex lives or talking about their problems with relationship formation or dissolution. The fundamental good of their complementary union is too rarely considered.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the other Vatican offices hosting the conference hope to surface ways of thinking about and expressing this relationship that effectively convey both its natural and divine significance to observers world-wide. The movies and the papers and the video-talks are intended to have a long shelf life.
CWR: Later this year, high-ranking churchmen will once again gather in Rome for the Fourteenth General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. The theme of their meeting will be the “Vocation and Mission of the Christian Family in the Church and the Contemporary World.” Some of the prelates who chaired sessions of the Humanum conference will be there for that synod. While the Humanum conference was independent of the synodal path, will it help to keep the conversation going?
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