The Cana Movement, Caritas Malta, and the Diocesan Family Commission, will be holding a national conference on the need of re-creating a culture of healthy marriages. The conference will be held on Saturday, 27 October, from 9am to 1pm in the hall of St Monica School, Gzira (near the national swimming pool).
The presence and active participation of parliamentarians, politicians, journalists and media people, priests and other professional people, and especially of young people and married couples, is greatly urged.
The keynote speaker will be Samantha Callan, who will deal with the theme: For a marriage-friendly future. On Thursday, 25 October, Dr Callan will meet journalists and media people, and will discuss with them ‘Marriage in Europe since 1969: can the recent past suggest a friendly future?’ The day after, on Friday, 26 October, Dr Callan will be at the University of Malta to discuss with students and staff members, ‘Does the present give a future to marriage? (European Youth and Marriage: trends under a lens)’.
But who is Dr Samantha Callan?
Dr Callan is recognised as an expert in the field of family relationships and work-life integration. She provides research services to voluntary sector organisations and industry, and advises politicians and policy-makers from across the political spectrum on family issues.
She chairs the Family Breakdown Working Group of the UK Conservative Party’s Social Justice Policy Commission and has recently published two major reports for them. She works, inter alia, with Care for the Family, a major UK charity, and with international family agencies as a consultant researcher.
She has been married since 1988, and has two children. Although she is not a Catholic, she has been appointed member of the Marriage and Family Catholic Commission.
What was Samantha’s reaction to her invitation for this National Conference on Healthy Marriages in Malta?
“I was delighted to be approached by the Cana Movement and Caritas in Malta and asked to speak at their National Conference. The research I have done has persuaded me that marriage is an essential social institution which is statistically far more likely to produce a stable and protective environment for the raising of children. However, no one wants to live in an institution or be ‘just a statistic’. People want to have relationships which are safe havens for themselves as well as their children; they want to grow old with a partner who appreciates them, brings out the best in them and makes them feel as if they are special and important. Sociologists say that we have never had such high expectations of our marriage partners.”