FRONT PAGE
The report on the “Evolution of the Family in Europe 2006” compiled by the FPI, the European Network of the Family Policy Institute, was presented to the European Parliament on Tuesday 9 May. According to this report, marriage breakdowns in Europe reached a total of almost one million in 2004, while over 10 million broken marriages, with over 16 million children involved, were registered between 1990 al 2004. BenedICT XVI, who met the members of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family on 11 May, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its foundation, once again spoke of the problems of the family. We present the full text of the two central passages of the Pope’s speech, underlining the two “fundamental aspects” studied by the same institute during these years. “The first aspect is that marriage and the family are rooted in the more fundamental core of the truth about man and of his destiny. Holy Scripture reveals that the vocation to love forms part of the genuine image of God that the Creator wished to imprint in his created being, whom he called to become similar to him precisely in the measure in which he/she is open to love. The sexual difference that distinguishes the body of man and woman is not therefore a mere biological fact, but has a far deeper significance: it expresses the form of love with which man and woman, by becoming one flesh alone, can realise an authentic communion of persons open to the transmission of life and thus cooperate with God in the generation of new human beings. A second aspect characterises the originality of the teaching of John Paul II on human love: his original way of reading God’s plan precisely in the confluence of divine revelation with human experience. For in Christ, fullness of the revelation of the love of the Father, is also manifested the full truth of the man’s vocation to love. Man can only fully find himself in sincere self-giving. In my recent Encyclical I wanted to emphasise that it is just through love that ‘the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny’ are illuminated ( Deus caritas est , 1). In other words, God used the means of love to reveal the mystery of his trinitarian love. Moreover, the close relation that exists between the image of divine love and human love enables us to grasp that ‘corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa: God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love’ (ibid., 11). This perception still remains in large part unexplored”. “The great challenge of the new evangelization, which John Paul II proposed with such force, has a need to be supported with a really deep reflection on human love, since it is just this love that is a privileged way chosen by God to reveal himself to man and it is in this love that God calls him to a new communion in the trinitarian love. This approach also enables us to overcome a conception of love confined to the private sphere that is so widespread today. Genuine love is transformed into a light that guides the whole of life to its fullness, generating a society inhabitable for man. The communion of life and of love that is marriage thus forms a genuine good for society. The problem of how to avoid confusion with other types of union based on a weak love is posed with special urgency today. Only the rock of total and irrevocable love between man and woman is able to provide the foundation on which to build a society that can become a home for all mankind”.
