| Pope on Family |
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| Wednesday, 19 July 2006 07:59 | |||
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Continuing with the magnificent preaching of Pope John Paul II on marriage and family, Pope Benedict XVI recently spoke to the subject at a Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Family (13 May).
It was John Paul who returned to the Church’s working vocabulary the traditional descriptives of family as “a domestic church” and “a sanctuary of life.” Building on these expressions, Pope Benedict offered this defini-tion: “The family, founded on marriage, is the patrimony of humanity, a fundamental social institution; it is the vital cell and pillar of society and this concerns believers and non-believers alike. It is a reality that all States must hold in the highest regard because, as John Paul II liked to repeat, ‘the future of hu-manity passes by way of the family.’” Today, the Holy Father said, the very stability of the family is in jeopardy. A host of erroneous concepts about the human being, about freedom, and even about love itself are everywhere pervasive. Both the divorce rate and the number of separations are increasing. Consequences include the disintegration of family unity and multiple serious problems for children, “the innocent victims of these situations.” And because of the culture spawned by all these problems, married couples literally must often stand up against the tide of what is sociologically “correct.” Another consequence of ignoring Biblical values about marriage and family is a general loss of respect for the human embryo, which, in Benedict’s words (reminiscent of his first encyclical), “ought always to be born from an act of love” and who “already should be treated as a person.” Here the Holy Father emphasized that the very progress of science and technology in the area of bioethics is bizarrely converted into a threat to humanity “when human beings lose the sense of their own limitations and, in practice, claim to replace God the Creator.” Human procreation must always be “the fruit of the conjugal act with its twofold unitive and procreative meaning.” “Procreation” is of course a sacred word, because it reflects a sacred trust; specifically, to help create with God. Yet today, Benedict observes, the noble concept of eros has been reduced merely to “sex,” and has been turned into a commodity. As an extreme example of what this has brought about, the Pope adds, is that “de facto” unions have actually been given credibility by many, as absurd as this may be. Although “they reject the obligations of marriage, they claim enjoyment of the same rights.” Furthermore, there are even efforts to redefine marriage in order “to legalize homosexual unions,” even defending in them a “right” to adoption. A strange side-effect of attempts to redefine marriage and convert it into something God never intended it to be is that – in Benedict’s words – “vast areas of the world are suffering from the so-called ‘demographic winter,’ with the consequent gradual ageing of the population.” Families appear to be “ensnared by the fear of life and of parenthood.” Never before in history, therefore, has there been a more urgent need for Catholics (indeed, all Christians and God-fearing individuals) to give strong, enthusiastic witness to the values the Church defends with respect to marriage and family life: values derived from Revelation and from reason as illumined by Revelation.
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