Loving marriage can benefit society, pope says

VATICAN CITY - Only total, self-giving love based on marriage between a man and woman can form a solid enough foundation for building communities and can benefit all of society, said Pope Benedict XVI.

There is a "special urgency" today to avoid confusing marriage with "other types of union based on a weak love," he said in an address to participants attending an international congress on the family. "Only the rock of total and indissoluble love between a man and a woman is capable of being the base for the building of a society that can be a home for all people," he said in his text. In a May 11 audience in the Vatican, the pope met with families and other participants attending an international congress celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. The May 11-13 congress was titled "Loving Human Love: The Heritage of John Paul II on Marriage and the Family." Pope John Paul founded the institute in 1981, the same year he created the Pontifical Council for the Family. Pope Benedict said his predecessor saw the need to continue studies and promote church teaching on marriage, life and the family in order to tackle "the difficult moments that followed the publication of that prophetic and always timely encyclical" by Pope Paul VI, "Humanae Vitae." Pope Benedict said in his encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est" ("God Is Love"), that he sought to illustrate how God is showing his people the way to love others. The image of there being one, monotheistic God "corresponds to monogamous marriage," he said. "Marriage based on an exclusive and definitive love" for another person mirrors God's relationship with his people and vice versa: "The way of loving God becomes the measure of human love," the pope said, quoting from his encyclical. Marriage represents the union of life and love and becomes an "authentic good for society." Authentic love between a man and a woman in marriage becomes "a light that guides one's life to fullness, generating a society that humankind can live in," he said in his address.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops