“The ancient, organic, and timeless design of man and woman has been revered across all cultures throughout human history. There is a singular wisdom and beauty of this complementarity that ‘fits’ with the universe. The family, founded on marriage, is our first school in what it means to be human, how to love, to seek communion with and be a gift to another person: man for woman, and woman for man. This relationship between man and woman—including their sexual union and its fruits—is the very ‘grammar’ of society.”
—Summary of the first video of the Humanum series
Released in conjunction with the Humanum colloquium was a series of six extraordinarily moving videos, each approximately 15 minutes long, with captivating footage of families in Nigeria, Lebanon, Mexico, Argentina, France, Scotland, and the United States, as they interpret their own cultural experiences of the beauty of family life.
One of those involved in the production said that the purpose of the videos was to show complementarity as being “not about cultural elites proclaiming the rigid form of marriage” but “rediscovering an ancient ecological wisdom which has spanned through all of time and history.”
Chinese-American doctoral student Tongxin Lu, for example, sits in a lovely garden as she opens one of the videos. “The Chinese understanding of the family is traditionally like a garden,” she explains. “Husband and wife are cultivating this ‘garden of love’…This garden is not isolated; it is connected to older generations and passed on to younger generations…”
Luminaries like Fr. Robert Barron, Dr. Peter Kreeft, and N.T. Wright also carry the narrative of timeless truths displayed in personal and heartfelt ways.
“What Fr. Barron’s CATHOLICISM series did for the Church’s beauty,” said Brandon Vogt, content director of Fr. Barron’s Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, “this series does for marriage and the family.” Each of the videos addresses a particular aspect of marriage, including the family as “cradle of life and love”; marriage amid hardships; and marriage, culture and civil society.
Damon Owens, executive director of the Theology of the Body Institute, said of the series, “As a speaker for the last twenty of my 21 years of marriage, I have prayed and searched for the grace and words to convey the sublime beauty of love, masculinity, femininity, marriage, family, sexual union, and all the sexual powers given by God. So imagine my joy when that transcendently beautiful vision is captured and conveyed with all the best that the medium of film has to offer.” The videos are available on the Humanum website at https://humanum.it/en/videos/#humanum and on Youtube.
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