By Patrick B. Craine
ROME, September 9, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Pope Benedict XVI called on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Wednesday to reject relativism and find the source of human rights in an objective ethic that respects life from conception to natural death and true marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Noting that the Assembly aims to address various violations of human dignity, the pope insisted that given “the context of today’s society in which different peoples and cultures come together, it is imperative to develop the universal validity of these rights as well as their inviolability, inalienability and indivisibility.”
The pope spoke to members of the Assembly, known for using its influence to promote a radical abortion and homosexual “rights” agenda, in a special audience at the Vatican on the sixtieth anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights. The delegation included PACE President Mevlüt üavusoglu, who addressed the pope.
“If these [rights] were to lack an objective rational foundation, common to all peoples, and were based exclusively on particular cultures, legislative decisions or court judgments, how could they offer a solid and long-lasting ground for supranational institutions such as the Council of Europe, and for your own task within that prestigious institution?” the pope asked.
The pontiff went on to maintain that “these values, rights and duties are rooted in the natural dignity of each person, something which is accessible to human reasoning.”
Further, he explained, Christianity “does not impede, but favors this search, and is an invitation to seek a supernatural basis for this dignity.”
“I am convinced that these principles, faithfully maintained, above all when dealing with human life, from conception to natural death, with marriage – rooted in the exclusive and indissoluble gift of self between one man and one woman – and freedom of religion and education are necessary conditions if we are to respond adequately to the decisive and urgent challenges that history presents to each one of you,” he said.