{"id":8942,"date":"2025-03-04T17:47:18","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T17:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/?p=8942"},"modified":"2025-03-12T23:06:01","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T23:06:01","slug":"no-such-thing-as-a-perfect-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/no-such-thing-as-a-perfect-family\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;No Such Thing as a Perfect Family&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One way or another, I&#8217;ve been part of a family all my life: as a child, as a husband and father, as a grandfather. The experience has never been perfect. But I think Pope Francis is right. We do, occasionally, have &#8220;tremendous joys&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also think the pope&#8217;s March prayer intention is a good idea:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vaticannews.va\/en\/pope\/news\/2025-03\/pope-march-prayer-intention-for-families-in-crisis-2025.html\">Pope&#8217;s March prayer intention: &#8216;for families in crisis&#8217;<\/a>&#8221; <br>&#8220;Pope Francis releases his prayer intention for the month of March 2025, and invites everyone to pray for &#8216;families in crisis,&#8217; as he acknowledges that no family is perfect, but that when we forgive our family members, we can rediscover peace.&#8221; <br>Deborah Castellano Lubov, Vatican News (March 4, 2025)&#8230;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;&#8230; &#8216;We all dream about a beautiful, perfect family. But,&#8217; Pope Francis recognized, &#8216;there&#8217;s no such thing as a perfect family,&#8217; for each family &#8216;has its own problems,&#8217; &#8216;as well as its tremendous joys.&#8217;&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve embedded the video that went along with that article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SkqR7ReJuNI?si=Yi_3RtYL0ebRBczV\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My prayer routine won&#8217;t change because of this. I already &#8220;&#8230;offer [my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day] for the intentions of our bishops and of all the apostles of prayer, and in particular for those recommended by our Holy Father this month&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;ll be different this month is that I know what the pope&#8217;s prayer intention is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As for what &#8220;intention&#8221; means in this context \u2014 the way I&#8217;ve seen the word used, a prayer intention is a specific request. Which, in this case, is help for families who are going through rough patches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That makes sense to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve talked about families and rough patches before, and have posted something our parish priest said about families and celebrating life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/early-diagnosis-tardy-treatment-and-a-gimpy-hip\/\">Early Diagnosis, Tardy Treatment, and a Gimpy Hip<\/a>&#8221; <br>(January 25, 2025)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/healing-a-deaf-mute-purpose-families-and-celebrating-life\/\">Healing a Deaf Mute, Purpose, Families, and Celebrating Life<\/a>&#8221; <br>Guest post: Father Greg Paffel (September 14, 2024)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/health-and-surfside-condo-collapse-siloam-scenarios\/\">Health and Surfside Condo Collapse: Siloam Scenarios<\/a>&#8221; <br>(June 26, 2021)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/another-death-in-the-family\/\">Another Death in the Family<\/a>&#8221; <br>(December 28, 2019)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/miscarriage-stillbirth-and-hope\/\">Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Hope<\/a>&#8221; <br>(October 9, 2016)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One way or another, I&#8217;ve been part of a family all my life: as a child, as a husband and father, as a grandfather. The experience has never been perfect. But I think Pope Francis is right. We do, occasionally, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/no-such-thing-as-a-perfect-family\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Families in crisis: prayer intention for March, from Pope Francis. A link to the Vatican News article, and an embedded video. Sounds like a good idea.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"No Such Thing as a Perfect Family","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,192],"tags":[84,234,91],"class_list":["post-8942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-being-catholic","category-journal","tag-family","tag-pope","tag-prayer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Dwtw-2ke","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8942"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8962,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8942\/revisions\/8962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}