Opening remarks for the panel
“Family, Faith and the Freedom of Speech”
That the family is under attack is
not only obvious but evident. The very existence of this Congress is a proof
the family’s situation is one that must be defended.
The dominant pseudo-culture denies
the fundamental values of true culture: respect for virtue, duty and honor.
Instead, it exalts vice, licentiousness and vulgarity. In this climate, the
family wilts like a suffocated plant. There are also laws hostile to the nature
of the family, which weakens it by counterfeit forms, such as concubinage and
“same-sex marriage.”
Other attacks are carried out
through laws that stifle family life, harming religious practice, along with
laws destined to impede the free expression of speech in defense of the true
family.
“Hate crimes” laws actually
criminalize certain thoughts. They impede characterizing homosexual practice as
deviant -- which the wisdom of peoples together with Divine Revelation and
Natural Law always held to be contrary to nature -- thus making it difficult,
and perhaps impossible, to defend the true family against homosexual
partnerships.
There’s one more thing: the
destruction or weakening of the family signifies the destruction and weakening
of society, of civilization. We’re dealing with collective suicide, an act of a
desperate collective, an act of collective revolt against God.
We must oppose that revolt, and
defend the true family. We must awaken the silent majority who deep down are
faithful to the principles which guide Christian Civilization and who made the
family into a fortress, the bulwark of civilized and ordered life.
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