By Joshua J. McElwee
Pope Francis is asking the Catholic Church not to see families as a kind of workshop to try out different pastoral strategies but as a "privileged place" where God is alive and at work in the world, Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich said Oct. 5.

At a first-of-its-kind conference for U.S. bishops and theologians to consider how to better implement Amoris Laetitia, Francis' 2016 apostolic exhortation on family life, Cupich said the pope focuses on how "God has chosen to reveal the divine reality in the privileged place of family life."

"How true that is, if you look at the opening chapters of Genesis, all the way to the final scene in the Book of Revelation," Cupich said. "The context is always families, people coming together as families."

"That it is the privileged place that God has chosen in order for us to come to know who God is," he said. "It is not so much that we are treating families as a kind of a laboratory in which we do pastoral practice or theology, but rather it's a privileged place that we are graced to be a part of ... to see where God is active, where God is alive and God is doing something new."

Cupich is co-hosting the conference at Boston College with Jesuit Fr. James Keenan, a theologian at the university. During the two-day event, two cardinals, 12 bishops and 24 other invited participants are discussing what organizers call the "new momentum" Amoris Laetitia (in English, "The Joy of Love") gives local bishops to renew their pastoral practices toward families.

The opening of the event included five panel discussions among some of the country's most prominent prelates, theologians and canon lawyers. Discussions on the first day have focused on how the apostolic exhortation has been received in different communities across the U.S. and how priests and seminarians in formation understand its teachings.

Much of the language in the panel discussions carried common themes centered on the respect Amoris Laetitia shows toward the ability of families to discern and take decisions about what is best for them.

The Oct 5 conference focused on how Francis’ apostolic exhortation is being received by Latino and black Catholic communities in the US.

Natalia Imperatori-Lee, a theologian at Manhattan College, said Latino reception of Amoris Laetitia "cannot be understood" outside the historical legacy of the colonial system in the Americas.

Imperatori-Lee said that in Francis' call for better respect of decisions laypeople make in their lives, Latinos see the pope "pointing to the infantilization of laypeople and families that is so commonly a feature of colonization."