Vatican event explores meaning of discernment in families (jesuit alert)

Crux ^ | April 22, 2021 | Elise Ann Allen

[Marchmain]

Since the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis has gone out of his way to push the concept of “discernment” – a much-beloved process in Jesuit spirituality – as key to the spiritual life, yet according to one expert, while the term is used often, not many people actually know what this means.

“For me to discern means to decide in the sense of taking on one’s own responsibility, that which we cannot or should not leave to others,” Jesuit Father Miguel Yañez told Crux.

“In life, we are continually discerning, perhaps without realizing that we are ‘making a discernment,’” Yañez said. “It’s just that we are not always attentive to the extent of the decisions we make, which then have further consequences in our personal life or that of others.”

Every person’s life consists of the relationships they have, he said, so knowing how one’s own actions impact social and interpersonal relationships, especially family relationships, and knowing how to make good decisions is not only good but essential.

Yañez, director of the Diploma in Family Ministry offered by the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, is on the roster of speakers for a two-day virtual forum on “Discernment in the Family Sphere,” which is being organized by the Vatican department for Laity, Family, and Life as part of the wider year of “Amoris Laetitia Family,” based on Pope Francis’s 2016 exhortation on the family bearing the same name.

[Marchmain]

"While discernment is a common word in Catholic parlance, Yañez said he believes there is a lack of it when it comes to “responsibly making decisions on family life.”"

[viewfromthefrontier]

“In concrete life there will always be grays, and it is from these grays that we must ask ourselves what is good there and how could progress be made for good in that particular situation, even if it was not according to what the norms prescribe,” he said.

[LadyDoc]

discernment: Meaning you are allowed to chose evil if your “conscience” thinks it’s okay.

[caww]

Discernment is the process of ‘determining God’s desire’ in a situation or for one’s life or identifying the true nature of a thing, such as discerning between truth and error, right and wrong.