The bishops voice their opposition” “to cohabitation” “

The “new and alternative family models” seem “poor and rickety”, and the attempt to equate cohabitation with marriage is “dangerous”: so say the bishops of the Commission for the family and the defence of life of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, in its message to mark the “Day for the family and life” that is being celebrated on 30 December, feast of the Holy Family, in all the dioceses of Spain. In their message, published in recent days and entitled “Christmas, feast of family and of life”, the bishops express their “sorrow” about the growing fashion for civil marriages among the baptized and “the expansion of a divorcist mentality”. “In this perspective – write the bishops – divorce is conceived as a right, but in fact it conceals the human and social drama at the basis of the crisis of marriage”. According to the bishops, society does its best to cast a veil of silence even over “the dreadful post-abortion syndrome that causes so much grief and suffering to those mothers who, in an undoubtedly difficult moment of their life, have failed to opt for life”. The bishops support the importance of family life, since it is a “school of fraternity and solidarity, that fosters solidarity with other families”. “Serving the Gospel of life – they suggest – presupposes that families play an active role in family associations and strive to ensure that the laws and institutions of the State in no way violate human rights, first and foremost among which is the right to life, from conception to natural death”. In celebrating the Day for the family and life the bishops also wish to commemorate the “innocent victims of abortion”: “no circumstance, however dramatic, can justify the murder of an innocent human being”. The Spanish bishops point out that women, abandoned to their fate and determined to have an abortion, become “at once the perpetrators and the victims of this violence”; “the painful consequences – physiological, psychological and moral – they suffer therefore require the merciful attention of the Church”. The Spanish bishops organized a national congress on the family from 16 to 18 November. Strong reservations on the direct interventions of the government in favour of unmarried families and single-parent families emerged from this congress (see further SirEurope no.8/2001, p.3).