Family as the foundation of human society is ever at the centre of the Church’s pastoral and social mission.
Patriarch Daniel of Romania has supported consistently and vocally those traditional families struggling to cope with the multiple challenges and crises of modern society.
The family is in a fragile and difficult situation, the Patriarch stresses, because some consider the traditional family model as obsolete or outdated.
His Beatitude is concerned about the individualistic and secular mindset, by which people are not seeking to sanctify their lives by prayer, by giving birth to children and bringing them up in the Christian faith.
He warns about a growing number of people who view marriage simply as a contract or a partnership, whether between persons of different or the same sex.
Social partnerships or cohabitation between persons cannot be treated as a traditional family, and any attempt to identify them as such is an artificial innovation, the Primate of the Romanian Orthodox Church has said.
Let us support the Church’s effort to defend the traditional family!
Given this context, the Church expresses her concern, her responsibility, her appreciation and support for the family as an important institution of society. His Beatitude notes that family has been the most stable human institution despite passing through many trials and dangers.
Highlighting that families are in fact a gift from God, the patriarch has called on all to support the efforts of the Church to defend the traditional, natural family, and to resist other new family “models”.
Any artificial model cannot substitute the natural family since it is a foundation for the existence, stability and continuity of European society. The natural family is a foundation for a growing paternal love, for bringing up children properly, for spiritual health and material prosperity.
Family is a sacred reality
The Patriarch calls family a blessing and the icon of God’s love for humankind. He explains that family cannot be reduced to biological, legal, psychological, sociological or economic factors.
The family is a sacred reality for Christian faith and even for all monotheistic religions. It is the perfection attained by the human being in a state of communion in generous love.
The parent-children relationship is modelled on and finds its fulfilment in the relationship of the faithful with God. Thus the patriarch has urged parents to spend more time with their children and to attend to their bodily and spiritual needs.
The Patriarch addresses children urging them to love their parents and pray for them.
Let us have a permanent concern for the future of Christian family
The Holy Synod encourages with love and responsibility all the spiritual sons and daughters of the Romanian Orthodox Church to overcome the moral and material crisis that we are experiencing.
Each of us needs to have a permanent concern for our families and for the future of the Christian family and of the Romanian nation, by rediscovering and living out Christian values in our homes, in the parishes to which we belong, and in the great family of the Church, reads a statement from the hierarchy of the Romanian Church.
In this vein, the Romanian Orthodox Church condemns the horror of abortion, which is not only murder but the murder of an innocent and defenceless child. The Church calls on all to give birth to their child and raise him or her in a loving Christian home.
Let us always rejoice in the divine gift of conceiving children, considering it a blessing for the family and the nation. Let us counsel and support newlyweds to beget children, to bring them up and educate them. Let us rediscover dialogue, appreciation and mutual support in the family and among families.
Photo credit: Sandu Floarea
