Politics
Monday March 1, 2004
Pope Insists Catholic Legislators Must Never Vote Against Life or Family
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VATICAN, March 1, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Pope John Paul II said Saturday that it was an "opportune" time to remind lawmakers, especially Catholic lawmakers, that they may never vote in favour of laws attacking life or attacking the family. The Pope made his comments in a speech to Argentina's new ambassador to the Vatican.
The Pope urged the building of a society "worthy of man" which must therefore be based on "fundamental and irrevocable values" which include life and family. He said laws must protect life "from conception to natural death" and marriage - the "pillar of society . . . the union of man and woman, open to life, which gives rise to the natural institution of the family"
"I consider it opportune to recall that the legislator, and the Catholic legislator in particular, cannot contribute to the formulation or approval of laws contrary to 'the primary and essential norms that regulate moral life', the expressions of the highest values of the human person and proceeding in the last analysis from God, the Supreme Legislator," said the Pope.
He warned, "One must keep this in mind at this moment in which there are not lacking attempts to reduce matrimony to a mere individual contract, with characteristics quite diverse from those that belong to matrimony and the family, and which wind up degrading it, as if it were a form of accessory association within the social body."
He concluded, "For that reason, perhaps now more than ever, public authorities have to protect and favour the family, the fundamental nucleus of society, in all its aspects, knowing that they are thus promoting a social development that is just, stable and promising."
See the full text (in Spanish) at:
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/bulletin/news/14446.php?index=14446&po_date=...
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