The Situation of the Family in the World Today

1. The family in the modern world, as much as and perhaps more than any other institution, has been beset by the many
profound and rapid changes that have affected society and culture. Many families are living this situation in fidelity to those
values that constitute the foundation of the institution of the family. Others have become uncertain and bewildered over
their role or even doubtful and almost unaware of the ultimate meaning and truth of conjugal and family life. Finally, there
are others who are hindered by various situations of injustice in the realization of their fundamental rights.

Knowing that marriage and the family constitute one of the most precious of human values, the Church wishes to speak and
offer her help to those who are already aware of the value of marriage and the family and seek to live it faithfully, to those
who are uncertain and anxious and searching for the truth, and to those who are unjustly impeded from living freely their
family lives. Supporting the first, illuminating the second and assisting the others, the Church offers her services to every
person who wonders about the destiny of marriage and the family.[1]

In a particular way the Church addresses the young, who are beginning their journey towards marriage and family life, for
the purpose of presenting them with new horizons, helping them to discover the beauty and grandeur of the vocation to
love and the service of life.

6. The situation in which the family finds itself presents positive and negative aspects: the first are a sign of the salvation of
Christ operating in the world; the second, a sign of the refusal that man gives to the love of God.

On the one hand, in fact, there is a more lively awareness of personal freedom and greater attention to the quality of
interpersonal relationships in marriage, to promoting the dignity of women, to responsible procreation, to the education of
children. There is also an awareness of the need for the development of interfamily relationships, for reciprocal spiritual and
material assistance, the rediscovery of the ecclesial mission proper to the family and its responsibility for the building of a
more just society. On the other hand, however, signs are not lacking of a disturbing degradation of some fundamental
values: a mistaken theoretical and practical concept of the independence of the spouses in relation to each other; serious
misconceptions regarding the relationship of authority between parents and children; the concrete difficulties that the family
itself experiences in the transmission of values; the growing number of divorces; the scourge of abortion; the ever more
frequent recourse to sterilization; the appearance of a truly contraceptive mentality.

At the root of these negative phenomena there frequently lies a corruption of the idea and the experience of freedom,
conceived not as a capacity for realizing the truth of God's plan for marriage and the family, but as an autonomous power of
self-affirmation, often against others, for one's own selfish well-being.

Worthy of our attention also is the fact that, in the countries of the so-called Third World, families often lack both the means
necessary for survival, such as food, work, housing and medicine, and the most elementary freedoms. In the richer
countries, on the contrary, excessive prosperity and the consumer mentality, paradoxically joined to a certain anguish and
uncertainty about the future, deprive married couples of the generosity and courage needed for raising up new human life:
thus life is often perceived not as a blessing, but as a danger from which to defend oneself.

The historical situation in which the family lives therefore appears as an interplay of light and darkness.

This shows that history is not simply a fixed progression towards what is better, but rather an event of freedom, and even a
struggle between freedoms that are in mutual conflict, that is, according to the well-known expression of St. Augustine, a
conflict between two loves: the love of God to the point of disregarding self, and the love of self to the point of disregarding
God.[16]

It follows that only an education for love rooted in faith can lead to the capacity of interpreting "the signs of the times,"
which are the historical expression of this twofold love.

The Influence of Circumstances on the Consciences of the Faithful

7. Living in such a world, under the pressures coming above all from the mass media, the faithful do not always remain
immune from the obscuring of certain fundamental values, nor set themselves up as the critical conscience of family culture
and as active agents in the building of an authentic family humanism.

Among the more troubling signs of this phenomenon, the Synod Fathers stressed the following, in particular: the spread of
divorce and of recourse to a new union, even on the part of the faithful; the acceptance of purely civil marriage in
contradiction to the vocation of the baptized to "be married in the Lord", the celebration of the marriage sacrament without
living faith, but for other motives; the rejection of the moral norms that guide and promote the human and Christian
exercise of sexuality in marriage

The Precious Value of Marriage and of the Family

3. Illuminated by the faith that gives her an understanding of all the truth concerning the great value of marriage and the
family and their deepest meaning, the Church once again feels the pressing need to proclaim the Gospel, that is the "good
news," to all people without exception, in particular to all those who are called to marriage and are preparing for it, to all
married couples and parents in the world.
The Church is deeply convinced that only by the acceptance of the Gospel are the hopes that man legitimately places in
marriage and in the family capable of being fulfilled.

Willed by God in the very act of creation,[3] marriage and the family are interiorly ordained to fulfillment in Christ[4] and
have need of His graces in order to be healed from the wounds of sin[5] and restored to their "beginning,"[6] that is, to full
understanding and the full realization of God's plan.

At a moment of history in which the family is the object of numerous forces that seek to destroy it or in some way to
deform it, and aware that the well-being of society and her own good are intimately tied to the good of the family, [7] the
Church perceives in a more urgent and compelling way her mission of proclaiming to all people the plan of God for marriage
and the family, ensuring their full vitality and human and Christian development, and thus contributing to the renewal of
society and of the People of God.

Christian exercise of sexuality in marriage.

Our Age Needs Wisdom

8. The whole Church is obliged to a deep reflection and commitment, so that the new culture now emerging may be
evangelized in depth, true values acknowledged, the rights of men and women defended, and justice promoted in the very
structures of society. In this way the "new humanism" will not distract people from their relationship with God, but will lead
them to it more fully.

Science and its technical applications offer new and immense possibilities in the construction of such a humanism. Still, as a
consequence of political choices that decide the direction of research and its applications, science is often used against its
original purpose, which is the advancement of the human person.

It becomes necessary, therefore, on the part of all, to recover an awareness of the primacy of moral values, which are the
values of the human person as such. The great task that has to be faced today for the renewal of society is that of
recapturing the ultimate meaning of life and its fundamental values. Only an awareness of the primacy of these values
enables man to use the immense possibilities given him by science in such a way as to bring about the true advancement of
the human person in his or her whole truth, in his or her freedom and dignity. Science is called to ally itself with wisdom.

The following words of the Second Vatican Council can therefore be applied to the problems of the family: "Our era needs
such wisdom more than bygone ages if the discoveries made by man are to be further humanized. For the future of the
world stands in peril unless wiser people are forthcoming.[17]

The education of the moral conscience, which makes every human being capable of judging and of discerning the proper
ways to achieve self-realization according to his or her original truth, thus becomes a pressing requirement that cannot be
renounced.

Modern culture must be led to a more profoundly restored covenant with divine Wisdom. Every man is given a share of such
Wisdom through the creating action of God. And it is only in faithfulness to this covenant that the families of today will be in
a position to influence positively the building of a more just and fraternal world.