If my memory serves me correctly, my first administrative meeting for the World Congress of Families (WCF) was May 1998 in Rome, Italy. The WCF is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society and I was The Howard Center’s first executive vice-president. In other words, I was involved with the World Congress of Families from its early formation.
So it’s with some interest that I watch its most recent event here in Salt Lake City this week, especially how its critics treat it. Though I’m not involved in this event, I remain involved in the broader movement and, actually, I am the main person responsible for bringing the gathering to Salt Lake City and to the United States for the first time.
I know it intimately. I respect its inter-faith organizing model. I appreciate its inclusiveness. No doubt, the Salt Lake gathering would have been significantly different were I still overseeing it but, as an event, it will serve its traditional purpose in bringing together diverse people of orthodox faiths from around the world to celebrate the natural family.
Its critics always have been disingenuous and, very often, plain liars. The WCF exists to promote religious freedom, family structure, marriage, child bearing, child raising and the complementary role of men and women. Mostly, the WCF represents a child-centric view of a free society. This view, of course, is in contrast to an adult-centric view so prevalent throughout today’s hyper-secular culture. If you have any question about what those differing views look like, take Bernie Sanders word for it and compare Denmark with the United States.
Still, after nearly 20 years of working for and in behalf of the World Congress of Families, little has changed from its critics who continue to roll out one piece of nonsense after another to condemn it.
Most recently, The Salt Lake Tribune editorialized that the World Congress is useless – that modern society has somehow outgrown the benefits accrued from traditional marriage and a focus on children. The editorial’s author says the World Congress of Families has nothing to help his family. He writes that it has nothing to do with real family problems like the economy, health care, violence, and the environment.
I’m reluctant to rehash these specious arguments. So, in brief, here’s why the World Congress of Families is more relevant today than it was 20 years ago. Here is exactly how the World Congress of Families can help the Tribune critic: The degree to which the intact, two-parent, male/female natural family is respected and protected by law and culture is the degree to which every family has a chance to prosper – financially, emotionally, physically, educationally and spiritually.
There are reasons why Utah leads the nation economically, and in health and wellbeing – and those reasons look like involved, faithful and responsible moms, dads, children and extended family members…and more of them here than in any other state.
And, the opposite is true too. If your politics are adult-centric – if you place the individual as the fundamental unit of society – you’ll pay the price in broken families, out-of-wedlock and fatherless children, low wages, educational mediocrity, higher crime rates and disconnected people living in disconnected communities. My editor friend has a point. The World Congress of Families really is useless to his family – but that’s his fault.
