Pope urges help for traditional families crumbling in secularised Europe
Pope Benedict warned on Sunday that the traditional family in Europe was disintegrating under the weight of secularization and called for laws to help couples cope with the costs of having and educating children. On the second day of his trip to Croatia, a bastion of Roman Catholicism in the Balkans, the pope said an open-air mass for hundreds of thousands of people and hammered home one of the major themes of his papacy.
“Unfortunately, we are forced to acknowledge the spread of a secularization which leads to the exclusion of God from life and the increasing disintegration of the family, especially in Europe,” he said in his sermon on the edge of the capital.
The 84-year-old Benedict’s sermon was the latest in a series of salvos against what the Church sees as growing anti-Catholicism and “Christianophobia” in Europe. Speaking on the day Croatia, whose population of 4.4 million people is 90 percent Catholic, celebrates its “Family Day,” he denounced practices such abortion, cohabitation as a “substitute for marriage,” and artificial birth control.
The pope urged Catholic families throughout Europe not to give in to a creeping “secularized mentality” and called for “legislation which supports families in the task of giving birth to children and educating them.”
The sermon reflected the Vatican’s belief that the Catholic Church in Europe is under assault by some national governments and European institutions over issues such as gay marriage, abortion, religious education and the use of Christian religious symbols in public places.
Read the full story here. For more on the pope’s visit, see Pope tells Croatians EU too bureaucratic, sometimes ignores local cultures
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Pope tells Croatians EU too bureaucratic, sometimes ignores local cultures
Pope Benedict criticized the European Union’s bureaucracy on Saturday as overly centralised and rationalistic, saying it sometimes neglected historical differences and national cultures. He made the comments as he started a lightning trip to Croatia, which is bidding to become an EU member and is expected to join the bloc in 2013.
“Croatia’s entry into Europe is logical, right and necessary,” the pope told reporters aboard the plane from Rome. But he also said he could understand how some people in a small country like Croatia, whose entire population of some 4.4 million people is little more than that of some major European cities, would be wary of joining a big bloc. Some 50 percent of Croatians support EU entry, while some 30 percent oppose it and 20 percent are still undecided, according to recent opinion polls.
Benedict said he could understand a “certain scepticism” when a small country like Croatia enters an alredy constituted bloc like the EU. “There is almost a fear of a centralised bureaucracy that is too strong, of a rationalistic culture that does not take into sufficient consideration the richness and diversity of history,” he said.
He also criticised what he called an “abstract rationalism” in the EU bureaucracy that did not give sufficient attention to cultural diversity. Croatia is some 90 percent Catholic and the Vatican is keen to have another predominantly Catholic country in the bloc as it grows in order to defend the continent’s Christian roots and values.
Benedict is spending 36 hours in Zagreb to encourage the local Church in the most Catholic of Balkan countries 20 years after independence and 16 years after the end of the Balkan wars.
Speaking at the airport after a welcome address by President Ivo Josipovic, he stressed one of the major themes of his papacy — that the old continent should never forget or sideline its Christian roots in the face of an increasingly secular society. He spoke of a need to promote “the fundamental moral values hat underpin social living and the identity of the old Continent” in a world marked by increasing secularism. One of Croatia’s missions, he said at the airport, would be to “help to steer the European Union towards a fuller appreciation of those spiritual and cultural treasures”.
From the airport the pope went to a private meeting with the president. On Saturday evening, he was due to address academic and cultural leaders and hold a prayer vigil with young people. On Sunday he will pray at the tomb of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, who was accused of collaborating with the Nazi-allied rulers during World War II. The communists sentenced him to 16 years in confinement after the war. The late Pope John Paul beatified Stepinac in 1998, putting him one step away from sainthood.
When John Paul II was elected, nobody thought communism would ever end. When Benedict XVI became pope, there was a secular end to European History. No longer. This pope will have a hell of a job fighting off gay lobbies, secular bullies and feminists but I believe these too can be overcome. Best of luck to him.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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