I will never forget that November 3, 2012, when, in the cathedral of Valencia, during the first National Congress of Youth Ministry, organized by the Spanish Episcopal ConferenceI gave a lecture entitled ".Evangelization of young people in the face of affective emergencies". The subtitle of the talk specified in more detail the content of the reflection: "Narcissism, pansexualism and mistrust, the three wounds to be healed".. As soon as I finished my talk, a priest came up to me and said: "Are you aware that you have described in your talk, not only the wounds of the young people of our days, but those of the priests themselves?". To which I replied: "And also the wounds of the bishops, of married couples and of society as a whole! The problem is not generational, but has reached us all".
The impact of a conference
Throughout my 18 years as bishop, I have given hundreds of reflections on topics related to evangelization and the spiritual life, but none has reached such an echo as the reflection on the "affective emergency". The explanation was simple: we had put our finger on the sore spot; and it turned out to be not only the crest of the wave, but the underlying problem. We were still at the beginning of the pontificate of Pope Francis, and the denunciation of the educational emergency already made by Benedict XVI was now manifesting itself, in all its crudeness, in the affective emergency generated by the loss of meaning in a secularized society.
But, obviously, it would be of little use to make a diagnosis of the evils, if it were not accompanied by concrete proposals to heal our wounds and to reach human maturity. The basic answer has a name: Jesus Christ. This is what I wanted to emphasize in the sentence with which I concluded my speech in Valencia: "The heart does not belong to the one who breaks it, but to the one who mends it! That is to say, the heart of the young man is of the Heart of Christ.". This statement has become particularly topical following the recent publication of the encyclical Dilexit Nosin which Pope Francis asks us to interpret his previous magisterium from the key of the Heart of Christ. Indeed, the Heart of Jesus is not only the human school of divine love, but also the divine school of human love. In other words, Jesus not only teaches us that God is love, but also teaches us to love. This is a practical example of how the Christian message integrates the natural and the supernatural.
A proposal
Among the concrete proposals I made in that presentation, I emphasized the need to coordinate family, educational and youth pastoral care in order to implement affective-sexual education in full harmony with Christian anthropology and Catholic morals. Many steps have been taken, but we are still far from a generalized implementation of affective-sexual education in all our environments. Incredible as it may seem, we still see Catholic-owned institutions that place this training in the hands of public administrations.
When it comes to affective-sexual education, there is no doubt that it is important to take into account the emotional dimension, but perhaps today we are facing the risk of an excessive psychologization of education. It is a mistake to focus all affective-sexual education on how we feel, forgetting the importance of moral responsibility for our actions, in coherence with the vocation to love that the revelation of Jesus Christ reveals to us.
Bishop of Orihuela-Alicante
