The European Network of Family Institutes - REDIF, an IFCU sectorial group, was founded in Lyon on December 16, 1995. At the end of the third meeting held in Salamanca (Spain) from 9 to 10 May 1997, they adopted a Charter in which the spirit that animates it and the general objectives of it are indicated.
The institutes and founding centers of REDIF have in common:
Their presence in a university member of the IFCU
An object of study and teaching: the family
The Institutes and Centers members of the REDIF recognizing and identifying the family as an explicit and specific object of study and teaching, accept that this object has obvious relationships with other related topics such as education, bioethics, sexuality, etc …
A university statute
As university students, the Institutes and Centers members of REDIF have the concern of a rigorous and critical scientific approach to the family reality, striving to avoid relativism and dogmatism.
A multidisciplinary approach
The Institutes and Centers members of REDIF considering that, due to the complexity and its aims, the family reality deserves to be studied with a multidisciplinary approach, with the perspective of realizing the following objectives: describe, explain, understand and value family relationships. The requirement to think together the discipline and the practice, distinguishing them and connecting them.
The commitment to inform social actors
The Institutes and Centers members of the REDIF agree to contribute to the operators and agents, in their respective professional and associative fields and even to politicians and religious, the necessary elements for understanding and assessing family situations.
The Objectives of REDIF
In teaching, the Institutes and Centers members of REDIF have the following objectives:
What is stipulated for university teaching of the academic discipline related to the family;
Assistance in the organization and development of institutes and centers of the family, especially of the Catholic universities members of the FIUC;
The elaboration of teaching programs in the field of the family, identifying the possible equivalences;
The exchanges of teachers and students as well as the communication of knowledge, documentation and materials;
The study of the possibility of creating, from the present situation, the programs and diplomas of the member institutes, a European diploma.
Regarding research, the Institutes and Centers members of REDIF have the following objectives:
The promotion of the joint scientific wealth of the questions related to the field of the family;
The richness of the means to activate through debate, especially on the aims of family policy and family law;
The organization of seminars, colloquia and congresses;
Publication of research results and scientific seminars.
The Institutes and Family Centers indicated below:
University School of Family Sciences, Pontifical University of Salamanca (Spain)
Institute for Family and Sexuality Studies, Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium)
Centro di Ateneo Studi e Ricerche sulla Famiglia, Cattolica Università del Sacro Cuore di Milano (Italy)
University Institute of the Family, Comillas Pontifical University of Madrid (Spain)
Institute of Family Sciences, Catholic University of Lyon (France)
Grup de recerca de parella i familia, Universidad Ramon Llull (Spain)