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ON THE TRUE MEANING OF RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD
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Pastoral Letter for Family Week 2007
CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE OF THE PHILIPPINES
Episcopal Commission on Family and Life
Room 201, CBCP Bldg., 470 General Luna, Intramuros, Manila
As we celebrate Family Week from September 23 to 30, we are reminded once again of the Holy Family of Nazareth that showed all families the ways by which we must live our family life in consonance to God’s purpose. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, mirrored a perfect likeness to the intimate love and unity that the Holy Triune God holds together as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Human fatherhood and motherhood, while remaining biologically similar to that of living beings in nature, contain in an essential way, a “likeness to God” which is the foundation of the family and the basis of family prayer life.
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The family has been ordained to be the basic unit of society. The creation of man and woman and their union blessed by God in the Garden of Eden points to this fact. And God commanded them to multiply. Thus, the family became the main spring of the fulfillment of God’s Plan to create human community on earth that He would prepare to become His own family in heaven.
Right from the moment God created Adam and Eve, He also gave them duties and responsibilities to fulfill. The first of these duties is to build a loving relationship as husband and wife. Hence, marriage is the fundamental basis of the family. Begotten of this relationship of man and woman are the children springing forth from their love for each other, the bearing of children and their nurturance demand responsibility from parents that we call “responsible parenthood”. It implies above all a more profound relationship to the objective moral order established by God, of which a right conscience is its faithful interpreter.
The responsible exercise of parenthood goes beyond biological satisfaction between husband and wife. It demands that husband and wife recognize fully their own duties toward God, toward themselves, toward the family and society in a correct hierarchy of values.
Responsible fatherhood and responsible motherhood include not only the couples’ choices and decisions on how they will keep their marriage and raise their family but also the avoidance and refusal to deny or violate the will of God in the sacredness of their relationship as husband and wife that is often de-sacrelized by artificial methods of birth control in the name of a false sense of freedom and liberty of choice that often lead to the cruel death of children by abortifacients or direct abortion, and the tortures of deadly diseases that the pills, IUD’s, injectables and condoms bring.
Chemical agents and mechanical gadgets that make up the cluttered display of contraceptive methods of birth control have caused serious damage in family relationships, disrupting the unity and openness that build family life by the effects that accompany the contraceptive culture which include extramarital relationships, adolescent pregnancies, and even the hideous murderous act of abortion. This is compounded by an approved public educational curriculum that now teaches birth control in a contraceptive culture to the youth right inside the classrooms without parental consent. The modern pop culture has brought into the family a wider generation gap between the young and the old starting with the norm of respect and obedience of children to parents and the diminishing role of parental guidance in the lives of the younger generations.
Science and technology have produced electronic entertainment in the home specially television and computers that keep feeding the children images from nursery years to young adulthood the wrong images of life and styles of living that drown them with sex and violence.
Legislation in public office has caused a tremendous danger to family life in the contentious congressional Bills that propose to legalize abortion, prostitution and divorce.
Family and the Challenge of Modern Life
The living presence of the members of the family of parents to their children, and children to their parents is fundamental and irreplaceable to the continuing strength and unity of the family.
However, the world today in all its misguided norms and conduct has produced formidable challenges that the family has never met before. The role of women in the home has considerably changed from a focused homeliness and motherliness to career seeking outside the home. The contentious issue about gender and feminism has gone all the way to encouraging woman to challenge the masculinity of men and his role as provider and head of the family. The care and nurture of the children in their growing years has now been delegated to surrogate parents who have taken over most of the role of the parents in the formation of the children.
The Church Mission with the Family.
The Church, a prophetic, priestly and kingly people, is endowed with the mission of bringing all human beings to accept the word of God in faith and love, to celebrate and profess it in the sacraments and in prayer, and in the concrete realities of life.
The fruitfulness of the Christian family in its specific service to human advancement, which of itself cannot but lead to the transformation of the world, derives from its living union with Christ, nourished by the celebration of the Eucharist at the Temple of the Lord in the Church and in the Home.
SGND: MOST REV. PACIANO B. ANICETO, D.D.
Archbishop of San Fernando
Chairman, CBCP – ECFL
September 21, 2007
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