World Mission Philippines - December 2016

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This issue is dedicated to family life. Bishop Gilbert Garcera, chairman of the Episcopal Commission of Family and Life and participant in the Synod of Bishops on Family Life in 2015, analyzes some of the the problems that affect today’s families in the Philippines versus the Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). This latest document on family life based on the two Synods of 2014 and 2015 sheds some light into the main issues that deal with families. It is a matter of implementing its recommendations and pastoral advises. Christmas is the biggest fiesta in the Philippines that gathers the family in an atmosphere of celebration and deep affection. The Christmas season certainly strengthens the country’s family spirit. On the other hand, in China, families have been forced by the government to bear only one child for the past 40 years. After four decades of one-child policy, 400 million pregnancies have been terminated, men now outnumber women and the old have become more numerous than the young. Recently, therefore, a two-child policy has been put in place to correct these effects but it remains to be seen if balance and harmony will ever be restored.