Do Not Abandon the Healthy Principles on Which Family is Based – Make Laws to Protect Families – Archbishop Ioachim

Basilica News Agency – Aurelian Iftimiu – 11/9/2020

The Archbishop of Roman and Bacău wrote a message on the feast of the Righteous Joachim and Anna, in which he referred to the values of the natural family and the need to promote and protect them both in daily life and through appropriate laws.

“Three fundamental values support the backbone of a nation and ensure its historical continuity: the family, the school and the Church,” wrote His Eminence Archbishop Joachim.

“Birth in a family, formation in school and fulfilment as a human being through the communion of love with God are the stages of man’s becoming and his perfection as the most enlightened being in creation.”

The archbishop reviewed the challenges facing the family after the fall of communism: migration, divorce, family abandonment, new models of living “imported” from other countries and poverty. Of all this, the hierarch noted, only “the return to the healthy principles of life, which we inherited and in which most of us had the privilege of being born, can save us.”

Despite all the challenges facing the family, we need to not abandon adherence to the healthy principles on which it has been built for millennia, stressed the archbishop.

“Let us not let the roller out of the control of recent history to level our consciences. Let us appeal to reason, think mature, not ridicule the family, as a fundamental institution of humanity,” he noted.

“Let us not be selfish thinking only of ourselves, but also careless, indifferent or neutral to how the idea of contemporary family is understood and how to try to impose different alternatives or paradigms of living together.”

In his message, His Eminence highlighted thinking in perspective, caring for others, for the future. “Nothing can replace the love of a mother who sacrifices herself by giving birth to a child, and if we have enjoyed this right and privilege let us think about future generations, the joy and happiness of unborn children, the right to normality guaranteed by human nature itself,” Archbishop Ioachim added Sept. 9.

This is also a duty of gratitude to those who gave us life: “The responsibility of creating an optimal and natural environment for the perpetuation of life in the world and parental care for those we gave life to, are the concrete way to thank our mothers for educating and protecting us in the family environment, because they sacrificed themselves for our good, that they chose to give birth to us and thus fulfil their sublime vocation to be those through whom God perpetuates life on earth.”

For this purpose, the Church remains the strongest support for the family and for the defence of the values and attitudes on which it is built, stated the Archbishop of Roman and Bacău.

In the context of the Solemn Year of the Pastoral Care of Parents and Children, the feast of the Holy and Righteous Ancestors Joachim and Anna “offers us the opportunity to raise awareness, appreciate and cultivate in a special way the values that are closely related to the family, meditating on the fulfilment of the vocation of parents, on the protection of the family that God has placed as a guarantee of the perpetuation of the gift of life, the chosen education of the children entrusted by God, as well as the honour of the parents who gave birth and raised them.”

This solemn year is an opportunity to show “that we want what is best for our children, that we respect the memory of our ancestors, who died fighting for their families, for the clean and healthy values that have always been the essence of this nation,” added the hierarch.

Through the decision to protect the family and the fundamental values that represent it, we demonstrate “that we know how to choose from the heritage of European and universal values what is beautiful and uplifting, promoting what is defining for people everywhere and always.”

The Archbishop concluded his message by appealing to the world leaders, urging them “to protect the family and the children through well-drafted laws, which would protect the marriage between a man and a woman, to offer them security, perspective and material support.”

‘May God bless and protect all the parents and children of the world!’

Photography courtesy of Basilica.ro / Raluca Ene

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