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Social Doctrine of the Church: about the family
Social Doctrine of the Church: about the family


Author: The agency Veritas | Source: Catholic.net



About the family 

 

215. The family is based on the free will of the spouses to join in marriage, respecting the meaning and values of this institution, which is not dependent on man, but on God himself. 

 

216. No power can abolish the natural right to marriage or modify its characteristics or its purpose. Marriage has its own, original and permanent characteristics. 



 

228. A particular problem, linked to the unions in fact, concerns the request for legal recognition of homosexual unions, which is increasingly the subject of public debate. Only an anthropology that responds to the full truth of man can give an adequate answer to the problem, which presents various aspects both in the social and ecclesial level. In the light of this anthropology it is obvious how incongruous is the claim to attribute a "conjugal" reality to the union between people of the same sex. It is opposed to this, above all, the objective impossibility of making the marriage fruitful through the transmission of life, according to the project enshrined by God in the same structure of the human being. 

 

Likewise, the absence of budgets for the interpersonal complementarity dear to the Creator, both in the physical-biological and the eminently psychological, between the male and the woman, is also opposed. Only in the union between two sexually diverse people can the perfection of each one be realized, in a synthesis of unity and mutual complementarity psychophysics. 

 

The homosexual person must be fully respected in his dignity, and encouraged to follow God's plan with a special effort in the exercise of chastity. This respect does not mean the legitimation of behaviors contrary to the moral law or, much less, the recognition of a right to marriage between persons of the same sex, with the consequent comparison of these unions with the family: "Yes, from the point of legal view, the marriage between two people of different sex was considered only as one of the possible marriages, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical change, with serious deterioration of the common good. By putting homosexual union on a legal plane analogous to marriage or family, the state acts arbitrarily and contradicts its own duties. " 

 

229. The strength of the family nucleus is a decisive resource for the quality of social coexistence. For this reason, the civil community cannot remain indifferent to the breakers tendencies that undermine the basis of its own foundations. If legislation can sometimes tolerate morally unacceptable behaviors, it must never weaken the recognition of indissoluble monogamous marriage as the only genuine form of family. It is therefore necessary that the public authorities "resisting the breakers tendencies of the same society and harmful to the dignity, security and well-being of the citizens, ensure that public opinion is not taken to underestimate the importance marriage and family institutions.” 

 

235. The desire for motherhood and paternity does not justify any "right to the child", instead, the rights of those who have not yet been born, which must be guaranteed the best conditions of existence, by the stability of the family founded on the marriage and the complementarity of the two figures, paternal and maternal.

 

It is necessary to reaffirm that all those techniques of reproduction are not morally acceptable? Such as the donation of sperm or ovules; replacement maternity; artificial fertilization heterologous? In which the uterus or gametes are used by strangers to the spouses. These practices harm the right of the child to be born of a father and a mother who are both biological and legal. 

 

The practices that separate the unitive act of the procreative by means of laboratory techniques, such as insemination and homologous artificial fertilization, are also reprehensible, so that the son appears more as the result of a technical act, than as the natural fruit of the human act of full and total donation of husbands. Avoid recourse to the various forms of so-called assisted procreation, which replaces the conjugal act, does it mean respect? Both in the same parents as in the children they intend to generate? The integral dignity of the human person. It is lawful, on the other hand, the means that are set up as aid to the conjugal act or in order to achieve its effects. 

 

On emigration 

 

298. The institutions of immigrant-receiving countries must carefully monitor to ensure that the temptation to exploit foreign workers is not disseminated, depriving of guaranteed rights to national workers, who must be insured to all without discrimination. 

 

On globalization and work 

 

310. One of the most significant stimuli for the current change in the organization of work comes from the phenomenon of globalization, which allows the experimentation of new forms of production, moving the production plants in areas other than those in the strategic and far-flung decisions of the consumer markets are taken. 

 

Two are the factors that drive this phenomenon: the extraordinary speed of communication without limits of space and time, and the relative ease to transport goods and people from one part of the planet to another. This implies a fundamental consequence on the productive processes: the property is becoming more and more distant, often indifferent to the social effects of the options that it makes. On the other hand, if it is true that globalization, a priori, is neither good nor bad in itself, but depends on the use that man makes of it, it must be said that a globalization of guardianship, essential minimum rights and fairness is necessary. 

 

312. The globalization of the economy, with the release of markets, the accentuation of competition, the growth of companies specializing in the supply of products and services, requires greater flexibility in the labor market and in the organization and management of production processes. 

 

In assessing this delicate matter, it seems appropriate to grant greater moral, cultural and strategic attention to orient social and political action on the issue linked to the identity and contents of the new work, in a market and an economy in turn new. Labor market changes are often an effect of the change of work itself, and not their cause.

On the political community 

 

399. The citizen is not obliged in conscience to follow the prescriptions of the civil authorities if they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of the people or to the teachings of the Gospel. 

 

Unfair laws place the person morally straight in the face of dramatic problems of conscience: when they are called to collaborate in morally illicit actions, they have an obligation to refuse. In addition to being a moral duty, this rejection is also an elemental human right that, precisely as such, the same civil law must recognize and protect: "Those who resort to conscientious objection must be safe not only from penal sanctions, but also from any damage on a legal, disciplinary, economic and professional level." 

 

It is a serious duty of conscience not to provide collaboration, not even formal, to those practices that, while being admitted by the civil law, are in contrast with the law of God. Such cooperation, in effect, can never be justified, nor is it invoked to respect the freedom of others, nor does it rely on the fact that it is envisaged and required by civil law. No one can ever evade the moral responsibility of the acts performed and on this responsibility each one will be judged by God himself. 

 

424. The Church and the political community, although both are expressed with visible organizational structures, are of a different nature, both by the configuration and by the purposes pursued. Vatican Council II has solemnly reaffirmed that "the political community and the Church are independent and autonomous, each on their own grounds". The Church is organized with appropriate ways to satisfy the spiritual demands of its faithful, while the various political communities generate relationships and institutions in the service of all that belongs to the temporal common good. The autonomy and independence of the two realities are clearly shown especially in the order of the ends. 

 

The duty to respect religious freedom imposes on the political community that guarantees to the Church the necessary space of action. For its part, the Church does not have a specific field of competence in terms of the structure of the political community: "The Church respects the legitimate autonomy of the democratic order; but it has no title to express preferences for one or another institutional or constitutional solution, "nor does it have the task of valuing political programs, if not for their religious and moral implications. 

 

425. The reciprocal autonomy of the Church and the political community does not entail such a separation that it excludes collaboration: both, although on a diverse basis, are at the service of the personal and social vocation of the same men. 

 

427. In order to prevent and mitigate possible conflicts between the Church and the political community, the legal experience of the Church and the State has delineated various stable forms of relationship and instruments capable of ensuring harmonious relations. This experience is an essential point of reference for the cases in which the State intends to invade the field of action of the Church, hindering its free activity, even to pursue it openly or, vice versa, in the cases in which the organizations do not act correctly with respect to the State. 

 

On the "ecological issue"

 

461. The biblical message and the Magisterium of the Church constitute the essential points of reference for valuing the problems that arise in the relations between man and the environment. At the origin of these problems one can perceive the claim to exert an absolute dominion on the things by the man, a man indifferent to the considerations of moral order that must characterize all human activity. The tendency to "inconsiderate" exploitation of the resources of creation is the result of a long historical and cultural process. 

 

463. A correct conception of the environment, if on the one hand it cannot utilitarian reduce the nature to a mere object of manipulation and exploitation, on the other hand, it must not absolutize  and place it, in dignity, above the same human person. In the latter case, it is possible to deify nature or land, as can easily be seen in some environmental movements that ask for an internationally guaranteed institutional recognition of their ideas. 

 

464. A vision of man and of things detached from any reference to transcendence has led to rejecting the concept of creation and attributing to man and nature a completely autonomous existence. 

 

On terrorism 

 

513. Terrorism is one of the most brutal forms of violence that currently disturbs the international community, as it sows hatred, death, desire for vengeance or retaliation. 

 

514. Terrorism must be condemned in the most absolute way. It manifests a total disregard for human life, and no motivation can justify it, as long as man is always end, and never half. 

 

515. It is a desecration and blasphemy to proclaim itself terrorists in the name of God.

 








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