The Culture of Life, including the natural family, promotes peace. This is an obvious truth which many in this wacky state deny. Most on the dark side have been overtaken by emotion and passion, can't think straight, are in denial, or for some reason just won't give this idea fair consideration. But we offer this New Year's message from the Pope for those in the middle, and to encourage those of us already on board with God's plan. Excerpts from the Pope's speech to be given on New Year's Day, 2008 [from CNS News, 12-11-07]:
... the pope said the fact that a strong, healthy family is the basis of a healthy society is not simply a slogan.
"In a healthy family life we experience some of the fundamental elements of peace: justice and love between brothers and sisters; the role of authority expressed by parents; loving concern for the members who are weaker because of youth, sickness or old age; mutual help in the necessities of life; readiness to accept others and, if necessary, to forgive them....
"Everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life, everything that obstructs its right to be primarily responsible for the education of its children, constitutes an obstacle on the road to peace.
"The first form of communion between persons is that born of the love of a man and a woman who decide to enter a stable union in order to build together a new family. But the peoples of the earth, too, are called to build relationships of solidarity and cooperation among themselves, as befits members of the one human family.... [The family] is in effect the primary agency of peace ...
