From 11 to 20 July, the CEI Office for Family Pastoral Care promoted the Advanced Training Course for Family Pastoral Care Operators Family care with the collaboration of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. Under the guidance of Father Marco Vianelli, director of the CEI Office and with the scientific direction of Professor Livia Cadei, professor of pedagogy at the Catholic University, the course, now in its second year, has offered dozens of couples, but also priests, seminarians, and religious men and women, the opportunity to delve deeper into the meaning and method of accompanying, educating and caring for the family at a pastoral level. The course has offered a proposal for a systematic in-depth study of the life of couples and families, not only on a theoretical level, but also on an experiential level, integrating theological and pedagogical aspects. In the background, the central indications of The joy of loveon the opportunity to form consciences by offering non-random criteria regarding the acceptance of the fragilities of the couple, the accompaniment, the integration of the various relational modalities in the Christian community. Of great interest, in addition to the academic proposals of the teachers, were the workshops in which all the couples had the opportunity to deepen and put to good use the theoretical indications by comparing them with the experiential aspects and with the good practices of listening and accompaniment.
On the meaning and objectives of the laboratories we host two contributions. The first by Livia Cadei, the second by the spouses Emma Ciccarelli and Pier Marco Trulli, referents of the Advanced Training Course of the National CEI Office for Family Pastoral Care
Livia Cadei
Accompanying someone means “neither preceding, nor showing the way, nor pulling him forward because we would risk showing him our path instead of his. It is not even a question of following him by pushing him because we would risk having no other objective than making him advance, without knowing where” (M. Vial, N. Caparros-Mencacci, Professional support? Method for use by practitioners exercising an educational functionDe Boeck, Brussels, 2007, p. 35).
The theme of accompaniment distinguishes the path of this year of the Advanced Training Course. For family pastoral workers, it is a matter of undertaking a training structured in useful insights to acquire skills not only at an academic level, but cognitive and concrete tools to accompany the couples and families they meet during the mandate entrusted to them in their dioceses.
For the benefit of the subjects to whom the family pastoral care is addressed, they can operate with the aim of increasing people’s vision of reality, of considering new hypotheses, of reflecting on the validity of their actions, their analyses and their projects. The participants in the advanced training course are engaged in knowledge, but they are also operators who demand concreteness. They are all people who are already experts with whom it is possible to start processes of comparison and sharing; committed to the service and equally attentive and eager to grow in the first person, as well as a married couple.
The laboratory system on the theme of accompaniment was entrusted to operators of family counseling centers, for the specific expertise and quality of the service offered by these territorial facilities. Some representatives of the network of Christian-inspired Family Counseling Centers (CFC) and the Union of Italian Premarital and Matrimonial Counseling Centers (UCIPEM) jointly designed and implemented the path.
The four afternoon workshops were designed to offer participants the opportunity to explore and reflect on the value, meaning and practice of a relational process in which life paths are supported by the presence of another who accompanies. Accompaniment uses the educational device that allows those who are accompanied to renew their own dynamics of action, with the aim of defining itineraries of existential planning and mutual humanization.
Specifically in the proposed path, it was possible to share reflections on the qualities of the accompanying dynamics, not to be confused with some close meanings such as guiding, conducting, advising, orienting… and of the companion, neither coach, nor tutor, nor peer… to gain awareness of the ability to become companions and take part in a process, but also of the risk to be taken without the certainty of the result, which requires considerable flexibility to accommodate the perspectives, requests and needs that families bring.
It was also a matter of approaching the practice of accompanying couples and groups, experimenting with postures aimed at recognizing, confirming and listening to the other. The one who accompanies does not put himself in the foreground but even if he remains discreet, ‘modest’ because he does not direct the one he accompanies, however, he is not in a position of inferiority. At the same time, the accompanied is at the center of the action, since he is the beneficiary of the accompaniment and since it is he who will choose the goal and the path. The companion does not exercise authority in the choice and elaboration of the path, but places himself at the service.
It was also important to dedicate the time and attention needed to become aware of one’s service as an accompanying couple, able to stand alongside other couples, not with the dynamics of taking charge, but with the concreteness of those who know how to complete a part of the journey together, without ignoring their own fragilities and struggles. Equally significant was recognizing the relational styles that circulate within a group and the grammars of group leadership.
Thus, in the path undertaken by about 40 operators, we seem to be able to grasp the relevance of an accompaniment model that offers stimuli for family pastoral paths based on reciprocity and the recognition of otherness.
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Emma Ciccarelli and Pier Marco Trulli
Shemà Israel! (Listen, O Israel! Dt 6:4) is the daily Jewish prayer, repeated continuously to prepare the mind and heart to listen to God. For the Bible, the true believer is the person who opens himself to listening, who welcomes this word and then responds to this invitation. Paul says to the Romans that “faith comes from listening” (Rm 10). If faith is born from listening, the most serious danger for us becomes not listening, not having listening as a methodology of Christian life.
The ability to listen actively is a fundamental requirement not only to build solid and meaningful interpersonal relationships, but also to improve the quality of our professional relationships, it is the premise for knowing the Word of God better and for making good discernment.
We cannot think of being of help to others unless we first learn to help ourselves and experience what it means to be helped by others.
Understanding what our resources and limits are, and verifying how we live them in a particular and intense relational experience such as that of marriage and parenting, is a necessary prerequisite for all those who put themselves at the service of the family.
The family, in fact, is the school of relationships, and the parental couple is the model that shapes relationships in the family: from the style with which parents love and give to each other, children draw by osmosis, acquiring an emotional baggage that will accompany them throughout their lives.
The workshops designed for the first-year participants of the Advanced Training Course promoted by the National Office for the Pastoral Care of the Family of the CEI, in collaboration with the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, aimed to offer each participant the opportunity to focus and become aware of the state of health of their relationships and the quality of their active listening.
This work of awareness and self-determination was guided by experts in family issues, and in particular by some family counselors, who helped the participants (couples, but also priests, seminarians and individual diocesan collaborators) in this experiential and emotional journey. Facing one’s own fragilities, recognizing that even our relational approach can be improved, understanding that every family universe must be approached by “taking off one’s sandals” and adopting a respectful and non-judgmental attitude was the path taken by the first-year students.
The workshops each touched on an aspect of the couple’s relationship and generational and family dynamics, with the support of a methodology already tested in various accompaniment experiences.
In the first workshop, in particular, the various ways in which spousal relationships are experienced within the couple were addressed, recovering in addition to the passionate and loving dimension also the less obvious aspects such as friendship and brotherhood between spouses and deepening the dynamics of the marital pact. This first workshop, in essence, allowed an initial monitoring of the couple’s life to measure the temperature of the relationship, to grasp its state of health and the causes of any ailments.
The second workshop, instead, focused on recognizing the influence and legacy of families of origin in our marital and relational behaviors, in terms of approaches, behaviors, sensitivity. This work required a reflection on what were the characteristics of one’s parents and grandparents, not separated from a critical examination of the behaviors detected.
In the third workshop we started from a self-assessment of one’s behaviors and habits starting from a detailed declination of the deadly sins, to then access a couple’s discussion on these aspects, also aimed at specific work on these points.
Finally, in the fourth laboratory, couple relationships were examined starting from aspects related to the quality of reciprocity in the couple in order to identify any unconscious attitudes of control and dominance of one of the two over the other.
The students greatly appreciated the workshops, living them with great participation and immediately identifying specific commitments of personal and couple improvement to implement in order to make the relationship more authentic and functional. The adhesion and personal involvement in the proposal contributed to the success of the experience.
In conclusion, the workshops have allowed us to acquire greater awareness of ourselves and the state of our relationships, so that we can make the best use of the relational skills we have acquired. The service in family pastoral care is demanding and requires availability, theoretical preparation, concrete experience and attention to personal experience, empathy and the ability to welcome unconditionally. It requires knowing how to tiptoe into the mystery of each family and accompany without judging, listening and welcoming even when the experience of the other does not belong to us or we are unable to understand it.
Starting from accepting one’s own experiences and limitations is the first important building block for tackling the formative steps of the subsequent years of the Advanced Training Course in Family Pastoral Operators.