Family should never be object of experimentation, insists cardinal

Mar 7, 2008 / 15:05 pm

The Archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal Agustin Garcia-Gasco, wrote in his weekly letter that the family should never be the object of experimentation, and he warned that human dignity is “threatened when marriage between a man and a woman is weakened in the legislation of the State, thus producing confusion in society.”

The cardinal called for human rights and the family to be defended,” because the family is a natural reality that arises from the complimentarity between man and woman in the task of procreating and raising children,” according to the AVAN news agency.

Likewise, he explained that civil liberties “cannot be argued in order to strip the contents of marriage and the family institution, reducing them to mere voluntary associations.”

He pointed to terrorism first and warned that “the ignorance and scorn for human rights has led to insulting acts of barbarism for the conscience of humanity,” and is common among those who practice terrorism or who defend it or who come to see terrorists as valid representatives of society.”

Terrorism can only be overcome with reason and the rule of law, Cardinal Garcia-Gasco stressed, warning that “considering terrorists to be negotiators representative of society is a grave error that offends the culture of human rights.”  Therefore, “proposals of this type never deserve a hearing.  They are never opportunities for peace. They always prolong scorn for human dignity,” he said.

The cardinal also emphasized that human dignity is attacked whenever human life is not protected from conception to natural death, when the lives of the handicapped or terminally ill are not appreciated, when the right of parents to educate their children is not guaranteed, when the central role of the family in family policies and in the creation and development of schools is not promoted, when economic policies do not adequately recognize the contribution of families to the common good, when help is not given to immigrant families to reunite and to assimilate into responsible civil coexistence, when machismo is not rooted out.”
 
Cardinal Garcia-Gasco also made note of how “in recent years and months we have been witnesses of the sad spectacle of those who, under the guise of defending laicity, seek to silence those of us who exercise our freedom of speech and of belief.”
 
Faced with this situation, the cardinal said that “when the legitimate laicity of the State appears as an excuse to attack the freedoms of others, it becomes radical secularism that attacks religious freedom and whose ultimate consequences are unpredictable.”