FAMILY CANNOT BE EQUATED TO 'DE FACTO' UNIONS

VATICAN CITY, MAR 18, 2000 (VIS) - Yesterday afternoon, the Pontifical Council for the Family published a communique concerning a European Parliament resolution of March 16 that equates families with 'de facto' unions.
In the communique, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo and Bishop Francisco Gil Hellin, respectively president and secretary of the council, indicate that this parliamentary resolution considers "the nature of 'de facto' unions, including open cohabitation between people of the same sex, and the need for recognition of 'legal marriage' between people of the same sex."

"This resolution," they write, "constitutes a serious and sustained attack on the marriage-based family, a union of love and life between a man and a woman from which life naturally results. Upon this matrimonial link, a necessary good, all societies are solidly based. To deny this fundamental and elemental anthropological truth would lead to the destruction of the social fabric (of society). If 'de facto' unions - and, even more so, homosexual unions - are equated to true matrimony and parliaments invited to adapt their legislation accordingly, would this not constitute a non-recognition of the deepest aspirations of people in their most intimate identity?

"Over the course of history, peoples have wisely recognized the nature and consequences of the marriage tie that has now, through this resolution, been subject to such a misguided interpretation by the European Parliament. Fortunately, the parliaments of Europe will surely know how to remain in harmony with the overwhelming majority of European families, who urgently need support in their noble mission and who now find themselves unjustly equated to this kind of 'union' through a resolution which has no true legal value or binding force. The specific nature of the marriage-based family is recognized by the majority of European constitutions. Moreover, that nature is not a truth that pertains only to believers, rather it represents the natural heritage of humanity, it is written in the human heart and marks the culture of peoples.

"Consequently, legislators and especially Catholic parliamentarians, should not vote to support this type of legislation as it goes against the common good and the truth of man and, as a result, is in reality iniquitous."

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