Model Making Materials

The family is a treasure

For Monsignor Jorge Eduardo Lozano, Bishop of Gualeguaychú and member of the Episcopal Commission for Social Pastoral

In recent days there has been much talk about marriage and family. In the National Senate approved a bill amending the institution of marriage. Unfortunately there was not enough debate, and that public hearings were completed in just nine provinces. In the other, citizens institutionally unable to express their representatives. Unfortunately

and allege that nine Senators have not been at the time of the vote. A result so tight with these absences are numerous and significant to think.

is time to target the family, not to shoot, but to strengthen and consolidate. We know that family is the basic unit of society. It learns the most beautiful of human experience: love and be loved. She is a school of the deepest values: learning to pray, tell the truth, help care for the weakest, participate each according to his possibilities in the common welfare.

Several public opinion polls show that young people value family and home are in the first place to have a problem. Also among the aspirations of young people appears in a first power to start a family. Therefore we say that the Argentines are very familieros.

However, when we look at some TV shows or listen to radio, it seems the opposite. "They point to the family." Tease loyalty, promote the trades, we celebrate the deception. It "shows" that loving relationships are superficial, fleeting, without mutual commitment and openness to life without having children. "Love" is understood as self-satisfaction and not as a donation or gift of self. The pursuit of pleasure without regard to others does not help to germinate and strengthen family ties.

But yes, when there are children or adolescents involved in crime or act of violence, then we hear voices and accusing fingers are asking, "Where are the parents of these kids? Where is the family? ". Family often emotionally carried on by older siblings, grandparents, uncles or other relatives as fathers or mothers are not present-maybe-making visible a kind of absence that could call "Structural."

persistent poverty Some situations cause the dissolution of the family. Sometimes the father or mother must go away to work, or lack of adequate housing does not help the growth and development of all its members. Arguments and fights, fires in many cases by alcoholism or other addictions, are eroding family life.

These inconsistencies make me agree with the complaint expressed by the Tango "Cambalache": "What lack of respect, what outrage to reason!". On the one hand demand the presence and strength of the family, and another is bastardized and mocked. One can hardly grow in social friendship if you do not start at home, home, family.