POPE
Benedict, in the most theologically weighty speech of his pontificate, has
mounted a strong defence of traditional marriage and condemned all other forms
of civil and same-sex unions as “pseudo-freedom” and “libertinism”.
The Pope opened a three-day Rome diocesan meeting, held in
the pontifical cathedral of St John Lateran, on the family and the Church last
Monday with a powerful lecture looking at the philosophical underpinnings of
sexuality, freedom, marriage, and birth.
“The various forms of the dissolution of marriage today,
such as free unions and ‘trial marriages’, right up to pseudo-marriages between
persons of the same sex, are expressions of an anarchic freedom, which are
wrongly passed off as the true liberation of man,” said the Pope. “Such
pseudo-freedom is founded on a ‘banalisation’ of the body, which inevitably
means the ‘banalisation’ of man.” He described this as “libertinism” that
undervalued the human body and led to a dualism between body and spirit.
A former university professor and Vatican doctrinal chief,
Benedict sat at a long mahogany table in front of the altar and delivered what
amounted to a high-powered theology lecture, as representatives of the
different groups of people in the diocese packed the cathedral. The Pope said
the family, exposed to “many difficulties and threats” today, was a “decisive
resource” for passing faith on to children and for giving a Christian sense to
culture and society.
He outlined the classical “anthropological” foundations of
the family, as expressed in official church teaching, and especially
highlighted the indissolubility of the marriage bond and the necessity for true
love to be open to producing children. He added that the “greatest expression
of freedom is not the search for pleasure, without ever making a decision”, but
rather the “total gift of self” in a lifelong commitment.
The Pope made clear references to contraception
(“systematically closing one’s union to the gift of life”) and the “suppression
or the manipulation of life to be born”, saying such actions were “contrary to
human love”. He said no one person alone could adequately transmit love or the
meaning of life to his or her children. Only the Church had the “authority and credibility”
to do that.
Pope Benedict said this was especially true because of the
“massive presence in our society and culture” of relativism that does not
recognise anything as “definitive”. He said this was “a particularly insidious
obstacle to the work of education” and urgently needed to be addressed “not
only in our work of educating persons . . . we are also called to work against
its predominance in our society and culture”.
The Pope said it was important for Christian families to
“make a public commitment” that would reaffirm the “intangibility of human life
from conception to its natural end, the unique and irreplaceable value of the
family founded on marriage, and the necessity for legislative and
administrative measures that support families in their task of generating and
educating children”.
Pope Benedict XVI this week re-confirmed his predecessor’s
choice to hold the Fifth World Family Gathering in the Spanish city of Valencia
in July 2006.
Robert Mickens, Rome
From the Tablet