“Truth and Goodness of Conjugality” is the theme of the keynote address that Cardinal Carlo Caffara, Archbishop of Bologna, delivered in the city, at the Teatro Manzoni, on September 12th, 2013, as part of the meeting on “The Family: The Ego’s Womb.” Beginning with the recognition of same-sex marriage in many jurisdictions, the Archbishop spoke at length about the truth and goodness of conjugality, on the basis of the supposition that marriage, with its intimate nature, “is not exclusively the fruit of social consensus.”
The Cardinal explained that “objectively—that is, whether one thinks this or not; whether one likes it or not—the definition of conjugality, implied in the recognition of the same-sex couple, totally disconnects conjugality itself from the origin of the human person. Homosexual conjugality is unable to create the conditions for the emergence of a new human life. Hence, there are two alternatives: either we cannot conceive a homosexual form of conjugality, or the origin of new human beings has nothing to do with conjugality."
"One of the key words of the Christian: love, has been taken over by modern culture and it has become an empty term, a kind of receptacle that each one fills with what he feels. Today, its truth is difficult to share. […] The witnesses of the truth of conjugality will have a difficult life, just as witnesses of the truth not infrequently do. Yet, this—he concludes—is the educator’s most urgent task."
Lectio Magistralis Caffarra
