“Everyone speaks of values, but no one respects them”. That’s the concern voiced by Cardinal Joachim Meisner, archbishop of Cologne, in an interview published in the daily Kölner Express on 18 December. The cardinal placed particular emphasis on the family: “We are he said in the midst of a disaster which continues uncurbed. The disintegration of marriage and the family in our society represents the low point of our current predicament: all the questions of social security are the result of a misconceived marriage and family policy and an ideology that defames maternity and paternity”. In particular, the archbishop of Cologne criticizes the family policy pursued by the Schröder government which he says is much the same as that “practised in the former DDR”. To reverse this trend, what is needed, says Meisner, is a revaluation of marriage and the family”, so that maternity and working at home be safeguarded from a material point of view and evaluated in the light of their social importance”.
