Vatican Information Services (VIS) have issued an English version
of the text of Pope Benedict’s statement to European Christian Democrat’s who
met him last Saturday September 22nd in Castlegandolfo, which included Irish Taoiseach Enda
Kenny.
Pope Benedict in his address to the Christian Democrat delegation
said that authentic progress of human society cannot forgo policies aimed at
protecting and promoting human life from conception to natural death together
with the protection of marriage and the family.
The following is an extract from Pope Benedict’s address
"Your political and institutional commitment must not be
limited to responding to the requirements of market logic. Rather, its central
and indispensable goal must remain the search for the common good, correctly
understood, and the promotion and protection of the inalienable dignity of the
human person. The teaching of Vatican Council II that 'the order of things must
be subordinate to the order of persons, and not the other way around' is today
more valid than ever. This order of persons 'is founded on truth, built up in
justice, and animated by love', and it cannot be discerned without constant
attention to the Word of God and the Magisterium of the Church".
"The areas in which this decisive discernment is to be
exercised are those touching the most vital and delicate interests of the
person, the place where the fundamental choices regarding the meaning of life
and the search for happiness are made. These areas are not separate from one
another but profoundly interconnected; they possess a manifest continuum which
is constituted by respect for the transcendent dignity of human beings, rooted
in the fact that they were made in the image of the Creator and are the
ultimate goal of any authentically human social justice.
"The commitment to respecting life in all its phases
from conception to natural end - and the consequent rejection of abortion,
euthanasia and any form of eugenics - is, in fact, interwoven with respecting
marriage as an indissoluble union between a man and a woman and, in its turn,
as the foundation for the community of family life. ... Thus the family, the
basic cell of society, is the root which nourishes not only the individual
human being, but the very foundations of social coexistence".
The Holy Father went on: "The authentic progress of
human society cannot forgo policies aimed at protecting and promoting marriage,
and the community that derives therefrom. Adopting such policies is the duty
not only of States but of the International Community as a whole, in order to
invert the tendency towards the growing isolation of the person, which is a
source of suffering and corrosion for both individuals and for society.
"If it is true that the defence and promotion of human
dignity 'have been entrusted to us by the Creator, and to whom the men and
women at every moment of history are strictly and responsibly in debt', it is
equally true that this responsibility particularly concerns people called to
positions of responsibility. They, especially if animated by Christian faith,
must be 'strong enough to provide coming generations with reasons for living
and hoping'".
