It all comes back to the family

This news release from the Vatican Information Service caught my attention because it sort of pulls together the last few posts here.

Pope Benedict addressed the bishops of the Dominican Republican, and he stressed their pastoral duty of teaching the truth about the human person to a society heavily influenced by distortions of the meaning of life promoted by the secular culture.

The Holy Father highlighted how the Church seeks to ensure that “the family remains a real environment in which a person is born, grows up and is educated for life, and in which parents, in their tender love for their children, prepare them for healthy interpersonal relationships that incarnate human and moral values in the midst of a society so marked by hedonism and religious indifference.”

After stressing the need for the State authorities “to collaborate still more in the indispensable task of working in favor of families,” the Pope affirmed that he was not unaware of “the difficulties facing the institution of the family in the country, especially with the drama of divorce and pressures to legalize abortion, as well as the spread of unions not in accordance with the Creator’s design for marriage.”

In a brief address, Benedict hit on several topics, including the media, for establishing a just and moral order. They all go together.