The Church reasserts the values of marriage and family

Our Lady of Guadalupe Protectress of the unborn

MEXICO CITY, JAN. 14, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The family crisis is not just a problem of morals; it goes much deeper and is rooted in misunderstandings about the very nature of men and women, says the archbishop of Quebec.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet affirmed this today at the 6th World Meeting of Families, underway in Mexico City.

He spoke of the disorder in values, saying it explains certain nations adopting laws that recognize homosexual couples as marriages, and even permit them to adopt children.

This "cultural battle," the prelate said, involves a "vision of the world without God that tries to replace the Judeo-Christian heritage," with grave consequences at the "human, social and religious level."

The result, Cardinal Ouellet lamented, is that added to the "growing fragility of couples are the education problems linked to the loss of models and the influence of currents of thought that reject the very bases of the family institution."

This anthropological crisis, he said, "particularly widespread in the West," has been promoted by the gender theory, which adulterates "the reality of matrimony and the family, re-proposing the notion of the human couple starting from the subjective desires of the individual, making the sexual difference practically insignificant, to the point of trying to equate heterosexual unions and homosexual relations."

The cardinal noted that "according to this theory, the sexual difference inscribed in the biological reality of the man and the woman does not have significant influence in the sexual identity of the individuals because it is the result of a subjective orientation and a social construction."

"Under the influence of these sometimes openly anti-Christian ideologies, certain states move to legislation that reconsiders the meaning of marriage, procreation, affiliation and the family, without taking into account the fundamental anthropological realities that give structure to human relationships," he lamented. "Various international organizations participate in this movement for the destruction of matrimony and family for the benefit of certain well-organized pressure groups that pursue their own interests in detriment to the common good.

"The Catholic Church strongly criticizes these cultural currents, which too easily obtain the support of the modern press."

Faced with this panorama, the cardinal proposed a rediscovery of Pope John Paul II’s "Familiaris Consortio", which defines marriage "as a personal union in which the spouses reciprocally give and receive."

It aims to reach "the very roots of reality," the cardinal said, affirming the link between the personal love of the spouses and the transmission of life.

In this way, he said, the three values of marriage – procreation, faithful love and indissolubility – find their "axis" in fruitful conjugal love.