Dreams and fragility of the world of affection

Monseigneur Giampaolo Dianin, bishop

I have recently begun the 28th year of teaching family morality, first in the Theological Faculty of Northern Italy and now in the Theological Faculty of Triveneto. Every time I find myself in front of a large group of seminarian, religious and lay students, I feel a little uneasy about the awareness of teaching a difficult and uncomfortable subject, whose contents are very far from the way love relationships, marriage and family are felt and lived today. I look at my students and I know that they, too, live the many labors connected to the emotional world on their skin. This is true for everyone: for those who are preparing to give their lives to the Lord by choosing virginity and celibacy, and also for those who are engaged or married. I am aware that every time I start a lesson I am not only talking to their intelligence, but inevitably I touch their hearts, the eternal polarity between body and spirit, the dreams and frailties that inhabit and will always inhabit the world of affection. “In her teaching on the family, the Church is a sign of contradiction”: these are the words that open the sixth chapter of Amoris…