World Congress of Families Commends Bishops for Challenging EU on Family Policy
by Staff
February 12, 2008
(christiansunite.com) -- The World Congress of Families commends the European bishops for challenging the European Union's anti-family policies.World Congress of Families International Secretary Allan C. Carlson called the recently released report of The Commission of the European Bishops' Conference, "a courageous statement and an important contribution to the family debate in Europe."
The Report ("Proposal for a Strategy of the European Union for the Support of Couples and Marriage') notes that "loving and stable couples are a social capital for all Europeans" as well as "founts of mutual trust in society" and "the preferable instance for bringing up children."
The bishops take issue with the assumption of the EU bureaucracy that the two-income family is "a new social norm" in Europe. They call for recognition of the fact that home care for children is "an important and welcome contribution to the well-being of all citizens of the European Union."
Of attempts to force EU member states to recognize "de facto unions and registered partnerships" contracted elsewhere, the bishops charged that this far exceeds the Union's mandate.
In supporting the report, David Fieldsend of the Brussels-based CARE Europe, observed that at the EU, "For too long, talk of the family has been taboo while all sorts of fringe agendas were embraced with enthusiasm."
Carlson commented: "Across the continent, family forces are rallying. On December 30, more than one million activists crowded Madrid's Colon Plaza in what was billed as a 'Christian Family Day' opposing the ruling party's policies on abortion, divorce and same- sex marriage. The bishops' report is part of this counter-revolution in defense of the natural family."
World Congress of Families IV, attended by more than 3,400 delegates, was held in Warsaw, May 11-13 2007. In The Warsaw Declaration, World Congress of Families IV proclaimed: "The natural family, a creation of God, is the fundamental human community, based on the lifelong marriage between a man and a woman, in which new individuals are conceived, born and raised."
To read the entire Warsaw Declaration, go to this web page: www.worldcongress.org/WCF4/wcf4.dec.htm. To learn more about World Congress of Families, visit www.worldcongress.org.
The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seeks to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society. The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families -- Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007).
