Apostolic
Exhortation to the Episcopate, to the Clergy and to the Faithful
of the whole Catholic Church on the Role of
the Christian Family in the Modern World
22 November 1981
1. The Transmission of Life
Cooperators in the Love of God the Creator
28. With the creation of man and woman in His
own image and likeness, God crowns and brings to perfection the work of His
hands: He calls them to a special sharing in His love and in His power as
Creator and Father, through their free and responsible cooperation in
transmitting the gift of human life: "God blessed them, and God said to
them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'"(80)
Thus the fundamental task of the family is to
serve life, to actualize in history the original blessing of the Creator-that
of transmitting by procreation the divine image from person to person.(81)
Fecundity is the fruit and the sign of conjugal
love, the living testimony of the full reciprocal selfgiving
of the spouses: "While not making the other purposes of matrimony of less
account, the true practice of conjugal love, and the whole meaning of the
family life which results from it, have this aim: that the couple be ready with
stout hearts to cooperate with the love of the Creator and the Savior, who
through them will enlarge and enrich His own family day by day."(82)
However, the fruitfulness of conjugal love is
not restricted solely to the procreation of children, even understood in its
specifically human dimension: it is enlarged and enriched by all those fruits
of moral, spiritual and supernatural life which the father and mother are
called to hand on to their children, and through the children to the Church and
to the world.
The Church's Teaching and Norm, Always Old Yet
Always New
29. Precisely because the love of husband and
wife is a unique participation in the mystery of life and of the love of God
Himself, the Church knows that she has received the special mission of guarding
and protecting the lofty dignity of marriage and the most serious
responsibility of the transmission of human life.
Thus, in continuity with the living tradition
of the ecclesial community throughout history, the recent Second Vatican
Council and the magisterium of my predecessor Paul
VI, expressed above all in the Encyclical Humanae vitae, have handed on to our times a truly prophetic proclamation,
which reaffirms and reproposes with clarity the
Church's teaching and norm, always old yet always new, regarding marriage and
regarding the transmission of human life.
For this reason the Synod Fathers made the
following declaration at their last assembly: "This Sacred Synod, gathered
together with the Successor of Peter in the unity of faith, firmly holds what
has been set forth in the Second Vatican Council (cf. Gaudium
et spes, 50) and afterwards in the Encyclical Humanae vitae, particularly that love between
husband and wife must be fully human, exclusive and open to new life (Humanae vitae, 11; cf. 9, 12)."(83)
The Church Stands for Life
30. The teaching of the Church in our day is
placed in a social and cultural context which renders it more difficult to
understand and yet more urgent and irreplaceable for promoting the true good of
men and women.
Scientific and technical progress, which
contemporary man is continually expanding in his dominion over nature, not only
offers the hope of creating a new and better humanity, but also causes ever
greater anxiety regarding the future. Some ask themselves if it is a good thing
to be alive or if it would be better never to have been born; they doubt
therefore if it is right to bring others into life when perhaps they will curse
their existence in a cruel world with unforeseeable terrors. Others consider
themselves to be the only ones for whom the advantages of technology are
intended and they exclude others by imposing on them contraceptives or even
worse means. Still others, imprisoned in a consumer mentality and whose sole
concern is to bring about a continual growth of material goods, finish by
ceasing to understand, and thus by refusing, the spiritual riches of a new
human life. The ultimate reason for these mentalities is the absence in
people's hearts of God, whose love alone is stronger than all the world's fears
and can conquer them.
Thus an anti-life mentality is born, as can be
seen in many current issues: one thinks, for example, of a certain panic
deriving from the studies of ecologists and futurologists on population growth,
which sometimes exaggerate the danger of demographic increase to the quality of
life.
But the Church firmly believes that human life,
even if weak and suffering, is always a splendid gift of God's goodness.
Against the pessimism and selfishness which cast a shadow over the world, the
Church stands for life: in each human life she sees the splendor of that
"Yes," that "Amen," who is Christ Himself.(84) To the
"No" which assails and afflicts the world, she replies with this
living "Yes," thus defending the human person and the world from all
who plot against and harm life.
The Church is called upon to manifest anew to
everyone, with clear and stronger conviction, her will to promote human life by
every means and to defend it against all attacks, in whatever condition or
state of development it is found.
Thus the Church condemns as a grave offense
against human dignity and justice all those activities of governments or other
public authorities which attempt to limit in any way the freedom of couples in
deciding about children. Consequently, any violence applied by such authorities
in favor of contraception or, still worse, of sterilization and procured
abortion, must be altogether condemned and forcefully rejected. Likewise to be
denounced as gravely unjust are cases where, in international relations,
economic help given for the advancement of peoples is made conditional on
programs of contraception, sterilization and procured abortion.(85)
Educating in the Essential Values of Human Life
37. Even amid the difficulties of the work of
education, difficulties which are often greater today, parents must trustingly
and courageously train their children in the essential values of human life.
Children must grow up with a correct attitude of freedom with regard to
material goods, by adopting a simple and austere life style and being fully convinced
that "man is more precious for what he is than for what he has."(100)
In a society shaken and split by tensions and
conflicts caused by the violent clash of various kinds of individualism and
selfishness, children must be enriched not only with a sense of true justice,
which alone leads to respect for the personal dignity of each individual, but
also and more powerfully by a sense of true love, understood as sincere
solicitude and disinterested service with regard to others, especially the
poorest and those in most need. The family is the first and fundamental school
of social living: as a community of love, it finds in self-giving the law that
guides it and makes it grow. The self- giving that inspires the love of husband
and wife for each other is the model and norm for the self-giving that must be
practiced in the relationships between brothers and sisters and the different
generations living together in the family. And the communion and sharing that
are part of everyday life in the home at times of joy and at times of
difficulty are the most concrete and effective pedagogy for the active,
responsible and fruitful inclusion of the children in the wider horizon of
society.
Education in love as self-giving is also the
indispensable premise for parents called to give their children a clear and
delicate sex education. Faced with a culture that largely reduces human
sexuality to the level of something common place, since it interprets and lives
it in a reductive and impoverished way by linking it solely with the body and
with selfish pleasure, the educational service of parents must aim firmly at a
training in the area of sex that is truly and fully personal: for sexuality is
an enrichment of the whole person-body, emotions and soul-and it manifests its
inmost meaning in leading the person to the gift of self in love.
Sex education, which is a basic right and duty
of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether
at home or in educational centers chosen and controlled by them. In this
regard, the Church reaffirms the law of subsidiarity,
which the school is bound to observe when it cooperates in sex education, by
entering into the same spirit that animates the parents.
In this context education for chastity is
absolutely essential, for it is a virtue that develops a person's authentic
maturity and makes him or her capable of respecting and fostering the
"nuptial meaning" of the body. Indeed Christian parents, discerning
the signs of God's call, will devote special attention and care to education in
virginity or celibacy as the supreme form of that self-giving that constitutes
the very meaning of human sexuality.
In view of the close links between the sexual
dimension of the person and his or her ethical values, education must bring the
children to a knowledge of and respect for the moral norms as the necessary and
highly valuable guarantee for responsible personal growth in human sexuality.
For this
reason the Church is firmly opposed to an often widespread form of imparting
sex information dissociated from moral principles. That would merely be an
introduction to the experience of pleasure and a stimulus leading to the loss
of serenity-while still in the years of innocence-by opening the way to vice.