AMERICA/MEXICO - Materialism, violence and permissiveness are the most dangerous threats to the family. Cardinal Martino speaks at the conclusion og the 3rd World Congress for Families

Thursday, 1 April 2004

Mexico City (Fides Service) - “The family is the key to the future of humanity. Every people aspiring to strengthen its soul and to guarantee itself a more human future of justice and solidarity must undoubtedly strengthen the family humanity’s fundamental”. This statement was made by the President of Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Renato Martino, yesterday 31 March, in Mexico City when he addressed the 3rd World Congress for Families. The first two congresses were held in 1997 in the Czech Republic and in 1999 in Switzerland. The overall objective of the congress which brought together about 3,500 members of social organisations from more than 50 different countries and received a Message of encouragement from Pope John Paul II, was to encourage intercultural and interreligious encounter, reflection, dialogue and suggestions on how to build a world more suited to the family.
Cardinal Martino said today “we must direct our greatest efforts, our best ideas and sharpen our imagination and our creativity to render more effective activity to reinforce the family” which is “the first agent of socialisation, the first and irreplaceable school for learning to love, to respect life, one’s own and that of others, to build relationships of brotherhood and solidarity”. Hence “it is within the family that we must eliminate those forms of anti-culture which contradict the calling written in the heart of every human person to fullness of life in brotherhood and solidarity”. In particular the President of Justice and Peace denounced as a the serious threat to the family, the cultural of materialism which puts objects before persons, the culture of violence which considers the latter the only means of producing a more just society, the culture of permissiveness which causes a crisis in sexual rules, interpersonal relations in the family and relations with the authorities.
“Today - Cardinal Martino concluded - we cannot avoid opening our societies to globalisation to share in everything that fosters the progress of humanity, but we must educate to discernment, to defend the richness of every culture and to avoid anything that can threaten this richness. A people who loses its cultural identity becomes a privileged place for inhuman practices which endanger the future”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 30/3/2004 - Righe 26; Parole 369)


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