Spanish cardinal: investing in healthy family life is best bet for peace

Madrid, Spain, Jan 11, 2008 / 16:11 pm

Amidst the debate in Spain over the recent pro-family march in Madrid, the archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal Agustin Garcia-Gasco, said, “A society without families, or with confused or weakened families, is a society continually exposed to violence,” and therefore “investing in healthy family life is the best bet for stable and lasting peace.”

In his weekly letter, the cardinal emphasized that a culture of peace has as its foundation the education of the family, where God plays a “decisive” role.  “With God as the origin and goal of the lives of individuals and nations, the consequences for all human beings to live in peace and dignity are decisively favorable,” he said.  “To forget about God or silence Him from the lives of people does nothing to bring about the peace that we all long for,” he added.

Cardinal Garcia-Gasco went on to note that the family is crucial for the education of people in their true dignity and harmony with others,” since, for starters, it is “the primary place for humanizing the person,” since “human beings are called to develop a personal story that is unique and irreplaceable.”  Likewise, he went on, the family is also “the primary place for humanizing society” and “without the warmth of family love, human coexistence is cheated of the most intimate hope of all human beings: to love and to be loved.”

The family is the “cradle of life and of love,” the cardinal said, noting that if people accepted human life lovingly and were committed to developing it to its fullest, “especially when it is weak and in need,” “there would be no room in our world for domestic violence, abortion, genetic manipulation, terrorism, war or any kind of human exploitation.”