By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
In an address to the new German ambassador to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI said the Church cannot approve alternative models of married life, such as same-sex marriage and civil unions, and expressed his concern about increasing attempts to eliminate the Christian concept of marriage and family from society.
The Pope made his comments on Monday while receiving the Letters of Credence of Walter Jurgen Schmid, the new ambassador of Germany to the Holy See.
He began his address by praising Fr. Gerhard Hirschfelder, a martyred priest who died under the Nazi regime and who is due to be beatified in Munster on September 19.
When contemplating the martyrdom of Fr. Hirschfelder and others like him, the Holy Father said that while certain men and women are willing to die for their faith, others “tend to show an overriding inclination towards more permissive religious convictions.”
They forgo the personal God of Christianity for an undefined supreme being who has only a vague relationship with people, he said, and in doing so, create an “alternative god” whose concept of good and bad are indistinguishable. When this is applied to the areas of justice and lawmaking, it spawns social activity that is increasingly dominated “by private interest or by power calculations, to the detriment of society”.
This is especially true in the area of marriage, he said.
“The Church looks with concern at the growing attempts to eliminate the Christian concept of marriage and the family from the conscience of society. Marriage is the lasting union of love between a man and a woman, which is always open to the transmission of human life”.
In this context he identified the need for a “culture of the person”, using an expression of John Paul II. Moreover, he continued, “the success of marriages depends upon us all and on the personal culture of each individual citizen. In this sense, the Church cannot approve legislative initiatives that involve a re-evaluation of alternative models of marriage and family life. They contribute to a weakening of the principles of natural law, and thus to the relativization of all legislation and confusion about values in society”.
He also commented on how man must use advances in biotechnology and medicine to help mankind. “We cannot reject these developments, but we must remain highly vigilant. Once we have begun to distinguish (and this often already happens in the mother’s womb) between a life that is worthy to be lived and one which is unworthy, then no other phase of existence will be spared, particularly old age and infirmity.”
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