"The respect due to all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, is one thing, but the rights of the authentic family, the base of the common good of society, is another. How can someone not understand that the family composed of a man and a woman, firmly rooted in marriage and committed to the education of their children, creates the 'capital' of attitudes, culture and virtues that constitute the basis of common life? How can one fail to understand that if this is missing the social bond crumbles?"
Monsignor Livio Melina, president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, said this in an interview published by "Tempi".
"We should meditate—he suggests—the words of Pope Ratzinger in one of his last speeches, precisely the Christmas greetings he addressed to the Roman Curia on December 22nd, 2012. He noted that the mutations and deformations threatening the family with the pretense of alleged 'new rights,' the redefinition of marriage, the repeal of fatherhood and motherhood, put at stake nothing less than the human identity. Without the constitutive relations that give us identity—son, father, mother, husband and wife, brother and sister—, man is merely a fragile individual, easily manipulated by those in power. However, the question is also radically theological, i.e., the original language of humanity that God used in the Revelation to speak to us is at stake. What words will be left to talk about God without the lexicon of these family relationships?"
