Just last Saturday, September 22nd, Pope Benedict XVI offered beautiful words about marriage and the family to participants in the meeting of the Christian/Centrist Democrat International. In his remarks, the Holy Father connected life and marriage – a perfect statement to share on the eve of October, which is Respect Life month!
Pope Benedict XVI: The commitment to respecting life in all its phases from conception to natural death – and the consequent rejection of procured abortion, euthanasia and any form of eugenics – is, in fact, interwoven with respecting marriage as an indissoluble union between a man and a woman and, in its turn, as the foundation for the community of family life. It is in the family, “founded on marriage and open to life” (Address to the Authorities, Milan, 2 June 2012), that human beings experience sharing, respect and gratuitous love, at the same time receiving – be they children, the sick or the elderly – the solidarity they need. The family, moreover, constitutes the principal and most significant place for the education of the person, thanks to the parents who place themselves at the service of their children in order to draw out (“e-ducere“) the best that is in them. Thus the family, the basic cell of society, is the root which nourishes not only the individual human being, but the very foundations of social coexistence. Blessed John Paul II was right, then, to include among human rights, “the right to live in a united family and in a moral environment conducive to the growth of the child’s personality” (Enc. Centesimus annus, 47).
The authentic progress of human society cannot forgo policies aimed at protecting and promoting marriage, and the community that derives therefrom. Adopting such policies is the duty not only of States but of the International Community as a whole, in order to reverse the tendency towards the growing isolation of the person, which is a source of suffering and atrophy for both individuals and for society.
– Address to Participants in the Meeting of the Christian/Centrist Democrat International (Sept. 22, 2012)
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