Vatican official praises 'Modern Family' for raising family issues

Ines San Martin
Crux
April 15, 2015

Politics has no monopoly on making strange bedfellows, as a senior Vatican official paid tribute to Hollywood on Thursday for raising the profile of family issues, specifically citing the American sitcom “Modern Family,” a show that features two married gay men who adopt a baby, plus an older divorced dad who remarries a woman half his age.

Along with writings of Pope Francis and other Vatican initiatives, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia told the United Nations on Thursday that thanks to “phenomena like the media production ‘Modern Family,’ or same-sex marriage initiatives in a significant number of jurisdictions, the family has become the subject of increasingly intense interest and discussion.”

Paglia is head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family, the office organizing a “World Meeting of Families” in Philadelphia in September that Pope Francis is scheduled to attend.

Unfortunately, Paglia said during an event to mark the UN’s annual “Day of the Family,” discussion about the family has become “unproductively ideological.” It centers too much on definitions of the family unacceptable to one political current or another, and on economic considerations.

“It is important to realize that the family is not an ideology,” Paglia said.

Instead, he said, family is a complex of human relationships characterized by love, fidelity, commitment, sacrifice, trust, conflict, joy, fruitfulness, nurture, respect, celebration, protection, memory and faith.