Pope Says Abortion, Gay Marriage Are 'Obstacles' to World Peace

Just when you think the Vatican cannot come up with any more nutty pronouncements, Pope Benedict XVI steps into the breach and lets off yet another ridiculous statement. In addition to gays and abortion, I guess single parent families and grand parents raising children are also threats to world peace. So too it would seem is celibacy. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has this summary (http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=14597):

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Nuclear arms proliferation, environmental pollution and economic inequality are threats to world peace -- but so are abortion, birth control and same-sex marriage, Pope Benedict XVI said in a statement released by the Vatican Tuesday (Dec. 11). "The Human Family, a Community of Peace" is this year's papal message for the World Day of Peace, which will be observed Jan. 1. Presenting the nuclear family as the "first and indispensable teacher of peace" and the "primary agency of peace," the 15-page document links sexual and medical ethics to international relations. "Everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of new life ... constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace," Benedict writes.

The full text of Bendict's conflated language - why can't the Vatican ever speak in normal language - can be found here: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20071208_xli-world-day-peace_en.html. Here are some highlights:

The family, society and peace

The natural family, as an intimate communion of life and love, based on marriage between a man and a woman(2), constitutes “the primary place of ‘humanization' for the person and society”(3), and a “cradle of life and love”(4). The family is therefore rightly defined as the first natural society, “a divine institution that stands at the foundation of life of the human person as the prototype of every social order”(5).

The denial or even the restriction of the rights of the family, by obscuring the truth about man, threatens the very foundations of peace.

Consequently, whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community, national and international, since he weakens what is in effect the primary agency of peace. This point merits special reflection: everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life, everything that obstructs its right to be primarily responsible for the education of its children, constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace.

Here, however, we cannot forget that the family comes into being from the responsible and definitive “yes” of a man and a women, and it continues to live from the conscious “yes” of the children who gradually join it.