30-November-2004 -- EWTNews Brief
DOHA, Qatar, November 30 (CNA) - At the
International Conference on the Family this morning in Doha, Qatar, Cardinal
Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family,
addressed the growth of an ideology hostile to the family which obscures the
natural complementarity of men and women in conjugal love and upbringing of
children, and underscored the fundamental importance of this complementarity for
family life, children and society.
"One truth that is present in a profound way in all cultures and
religions is that of the family based on marriage, the only worthy and
appropriate place for conjugal love," with the couple's "complete,
reciprocal self-giving."
He said that "a child, God's most precious gift, is the fruit of this
mutual self-giving, and the spouses are associated with God, the source of human
life, with their complete masculinity and femininity."
"Today an ideology hostile to the family is spreading in some
parliaments not only in Europe, but in America too," he noted. "In
fact, in the past decade, the complementarity between a man and a woman and the
overcoming of any opposition between the sexes have strangely been
negated."
He argued that "the abuses deriving from a certain kind of 'male
chauvinist' domination ...are not valid arguments for an exacerbated feminism
that considers marriage and the family a place of slavery, and fatherhood and
motherhood an unbearable burden that turns into fear."
Cardinal Trujillo said it is "necessary to oppose ''polyform
sexuality", underlining that "recognition of 'de facto' unions, which
are a legal fiction, proposing same-sex unions as an alternative to marriage,
and inventing new, unacceptable notions of marriage to the point of accepting
the adoption of children, are grave signs of dehumanization," and noted
that it is not discrimination to oppose these things, it is protecting spouses
and children.
Motherhood and fatherhood as complementary Spouses are "cooperators with
the love of God the Creator," he said, noting that "responsible
motherhood and fatherhood express a concrete commitment to carry out this duty,
which has taken on new characteristics in the contemporary world."
The cardinal affirmed that "the roles of father and mother are
complementary and inseparable; they presuppose that specific, interpersonal
relations are established between the children and the parents."
"Motherhood," said Cardinal Trujillo, "is closely tied to the
personal structure of the human being and the personal dimension of the gift. A
mother's contribution is decisive in laying the foundations of a new human
personality."
"The father's role, which all too often is obscured," he said,
"is of great importance in the formation of the children's personality and
in the decisive choices that concern their future."
"This reciprocal influence of the father and the mother is manifested in
the complementarity of the paternal and maternal roles in a child's
upbringing," he said.
Disturbed by the devaluaton of motherhood in our societies, Cardinal Trujillo
declared that "motherhood is ... a life in the service of a vocation of the
greatest importance for individual persons, for the family, and for the whole of
society."
He also pointed out that families have a responsibility to educate greater
awareness of the father's task.
Responsibility of politicians Turning to the need for political authorities
to do their part to protect the family, the cardinal pointed out that "the
family, a natural society, exists prior to the State, any other political
organization or juridical institution. Therefore, the originality and identity
of the family based on marriage must be recognized by the political
authorities."
"In the State's protection of the family," he added, "the real
interests of the State coincide with those of the family and children. It is in
the family first of all where human capital is formed on all levels: that is,
the wonderful resource that consists of a human person brought up with a sense
of responsibility and a job well done."
"This is what Pope John Paul II states in the Encyclical 'Centesimus
Annus': 'The first and fundamental structure for 'human ecology' is the family,
in which man receives his first formative ideas about truth and goodness'."