Pope says Christians need to promote life, traditional families

"RENEWING THE AMERICAN DREAM"


By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Today more than ever, Christian families need to pay witness to and promote the irreplaceable value of life and the family based on marriage between a man and a woman, Pope Benedict XVI said.

"The best service that we Christians can offer today's society," the pope said, is being "people who are free and rich with human and Gospel values and who are on a journey toward holiness."

The traditional family is "an indispensable foundation of society and peoples as well as an irreplaceable good for children who deserve to come into the world as a fruit of love and the total and generous giving of the parents," he said at the end of the Sixth World Meeting of Families which took place Jan. 14-18 in Mexico City.

The pope made his comments via satellite from the Vatican Jan. 18 after a closing Mass at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Mass was celebrated by the pope's envoy, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

"Today more than ever, there is a need for the witness and public commitment of all Christians to reaffirm the dignity and the unique and irreplaceable value of the family founded on marriage between a man and a woman," he said.

Christians also need to show that they are open to life at all its stages, he said.

Every Christian must help promote "legislative and administrative measures" that support the traditional family and their "inalienable rights," he said.

The pope said the family, "founded on indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman, is the expression of this relational, filial and communal aspect of life. It is the setting where men and women are enabled to be born with dignity, and to grow and develop in an integral manner."

But families' efforts to be a true school of humanity and perennial values are being hindered by "a deceptive concept of freedom," the pope said.

This false sense of freedom, he said, glorifies whims and individual impulses "to the point of leaving everyone locked up in the prison of his or her own 'I.'"

"True human freedom comes from having been created in the image and likeness of God and, therefore, should be exercised with responsibility, always opting for the true good so that it becomes love, the gift of self," the pope said.

Real love and closeness among family members are needed more than ideals or theories, he added.

It is through one's concrete experience in the home "that one learns to truly live and value life and health, freedom and peace, justice and truth, work, harmony and respect," he said.

Pope Benedict also said his prayers were with families who are facing the trials of poverty, illness, isolation and separation because of migration, as well as those families being persecuted for their Christian faith.

He encouraged large families who are oftentimes criticized or not understood by others yet are giving "an example of generosity and faith in God."

He urged families to pray together, especially the rosary, and to build their faith on listening to the word of God and working to incorporate Gospel values concretely in their lives.

At the end of his speech, the pope announced the next World Meeting of Families would be held in Milan, Italy, in 2012 on the theme "The Family: Work and Play."