The first school of social life ” “

  The thirteenth international Conference on the Role of the Church in European integration, held Sept. 13-14 in Tomaszowice, near Krakow, Poland, focused on the role of the family. The meeting, promoted by Pontifical University John Paul II in Krakow, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Robert Schuman Foundation in Luxembourg, COMECE and MEPs, was attended by a large number of national and European civil and religious authorities. Serious controversies. Policymakers, MEPs and Catholic Church representatives all agreed that the family based on marriage between man and woman wishing to generate and educate their children, is the first school of social life, and that the families ensure Europe its strength. Panel speakers convened that the demographic question, further worsened by unemployment and national financial deficits, is a major thorny issue within the EU. “The role of the family has recently become the object of serious controversies followed by decisions that raise major concerns, as they contradict Christian anthropology”, wrote the promoter of the Tomaszowice conferences monsignor Tadeusz Pieronek in the invitation, underlining his hope that participants will carry out a reflection “on the meaning of the family for Christians”. The debate, organized “to remember the fundamental truths and the principles of the family that draws its roots from the Gospel” is aimed at “highlighting the threats of ‘gender ideology’ along with the cultural, social and economic consequences of the breaking-up of the traditional family”. The value of European integration. The president of Poland, Bronislaw Komorowski, remarked: “although contemporary Europe is living its longest period of peace to date”, even without war “our Continent is bleeding, and it is turning into a community with ever less European citizens”. The Polish President added: “Europe and the family are both experiencing a time of crisis”. “To solve this problem, seeking the causes is not enough: it is necessary to indentify the possibilities that will emerge with the ongoing European integration”. In his in-depth analysis cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Archbishop of Krakow, pointed out: “The crisis in Europe is intimately connected with the family crisis”, and “without the rekindling of the family unit, the spiritual rebirth of Europe in full abidance to the values that shaped our continent and its people, is hard to imagine”. The Apostolic nuncio in Poland, Monsignor Celestino Migliore, underlined that “the family as an institution needs be motivated in its anthropological aspects”. The diplomat equally highlighted “the importance of micro-credit for families”. A school in humanity. The archbishop of Warsaw-Praga Msgr. Henryk Hoser, speaking in Tomaszowice, pointed out that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “identifies the family as a natural and primary union compared to the State or any other community, titular of its own inalienable rights”. The family, the prelate continued, “is the expression of human nature, the manifestation of the human person and the school of humanity”. Nonetheless, he continued, “social and cultural transformations under way, especially after 1968, have overturned century-long certainties along with the belief that the good of the family is a guarantee of the good of each Country and each people”. In his opinion, “cultural models that promoted unlimited freedom” thwart the furtherance of values, responsibilities, along with the long-lasting security of the family”. “The paradigm of the original sin may be identified within European contemporary culture”, said Msgr. Wladyslaw Zuziak, dean of the Pontifical University of Krakow. The prelate pointed out that “the gender ideology and other similar currents of thought pretend to achieve the impossible, namely, to change the status of the human person from a creature of God into a self-creator, to the extent of expecting to decide one’s own sexuality”. “But it should be borne in mind that man’s God-like self-deception ended with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden”, he concluded.