"We must improve the moral values of society," the Rector of the Moscow Islamic
Institute told an overflow crowd in Moscow gathered to talk about the family.
Representing the 20 million Russian Muslims, Rector Murtazin emphasized that
children need to be raised in spirituality instead of the vulgarity of the day
as depicted on television and in the press.
Zinovij Lvovich Kogan, Chairman of the Congress of the Jewish Religious
Organizations and Institutions in Russia, pointed out that participation in the
family and marriage is one's major duty in life, that parents have the main
responsibility for their children, and the main problem of the day is
morality-not the economy.
Terese Wieland of the German Akademie Diozese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, cited
research that shows love, mutual trust, and fidelity are the most important
things in a family today.
His Eminence Kyrill, a Metropolitan in the Russian Orthodox Church, pointed out
that the phony wizards who promote ideas that disintegrate the family have no
answers.
"Constant values can never be changed. They were made by the creator," Roman
Catholic Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz told the assembly, after explaining
that God's design for a man and woman was to make them inseparable. The
archbishop warned about breaking up the family and called on people everywhere
to stop the evils of abortion and euthanasia, noting that God created man and
woman and told them to go forth and multiply.
Bishop Andreas Laun of Austria decried theories about gender that are ridiculous
and confuse the roles of men and women, explaining that we were created in
God's likeness, male and female.
Russian Orthodox Archpriest Alexander Ranne explained that God made man in his
own image and that since it was not good for man to be alone, Eve was created
as Adam's partner. She was, he said, "the mother of everyone and more than an
assistant for Adam."
A professor of international law from the Netherlands, Franz Alting von Geusau,
called on fathers, along with mothers, to take primary responsibility for
making the family a school of humanity. He urged fathers and mothers to pray
together as they lead their families in a broken and imperfect world. "Many
problems of modern society are born in empty, loveless homes and the solution
of the these problems must begin at home."
Henri Joyeaux, a professor at the medical school of Montpellier University
France's reported that French law now says that boys may have homosexual
relationships, which decision was reached after surveying children. "And even
though children are being taught that homosexual love and heterosexual love are
equally good," Joyeaux strongly disagreed, adding that humankind will never
survive without marriage and the joining of husband and wife.
The theme that the institution of the family is essential for the economy was
discussed by Professor Jean-Didier Lecaillon, a professor of economics at the
University of Paris XII and Director of the Institute of Labor in France.
Professor Lecaillon is regarded internationally as an expert on family-centered
economics, defending large families and refuting population control.
From the United States, Dr. Glen Griffin talked about the important role parents
have to correct the abundant misinformation children are receiving today-citing
the example of the message that it's okay to play around with sex as long as a
condom is used. He pointed out that this message is not only spiritually wrong,
but is also seriously flawed medically. Dr. Griffin explained that condoms
offer little or no protection against many difficult-to-treat or incurable
sexually transmitted diseases. Instead of providing strategies, like condoms,
that enable self-destructive behaviors, Dr. Griffin urged parents, teachers,
and professionals to teach young people to save sex for marriage-and never to
give their children permission to do things that are wrong.
Professor and sociologist Antoly Ivanovich Antonov of Moscow State University
pointed out that in the anti-family culture, fewer and fewer children are being
born and that this drop in the birth rate is one of the great disasters of
modern society.
This meeting in Moscow of religious leaders, educators, heads of family
organizations, and other professionals from many nations was notable for many
reasons-but especially because of the recurrent theme expressing the urgent
need for action in a culture gone astray, action by parents and society to
return to time-tested values to strengthen families.