"DECLARATION OF BUENOS AIRES"
"FAMILY AND LIFE, FIFTY YEARS AFTER THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF
HUMAN RIGHTS"
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August 5, 1999
1. We, a group of experts and other persons committed to the cause of the family and life, have met at the invitation of the Pontifical Council for the Family, to reflect for three days (December 14-16, 1998) on the theme: "Human Rights and the Rights of the Family". We join with great hope in the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, promulgated by the United Nations on December 10, 1948.
6. We emphasize and reaffirm, because of its social importance, article 16, clause 3, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State".
It has the right to protection from the State and also from the international community. If the individual's juridical personhood is based on having his rights recognized by the international order, the same should apply to the juridical personhood of the family. The State cannot adopt measures corrosive to the family without acting against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is therefore necessary to defend the family and to proclaim it as a "Good News" for humanity given its capacity to inspire actions and attitudes that build up society.
7. The family is the central nucleus of civil society. It is a community based on marriage and therefore possesses a cohesion that is greater than that of any other social community. Because of this the family should be respected and protected by the State as the first social institution. In accordance with the Principle of Subsidiarity the State cannot intervene in areas where the initiative of the family is sufficient. The family has also suffered in the last few decades from the very negative impact of the State's attacks aiming at debilitating, eliminating or controlling the intermediary bodies of "civil Society". When the State arrogates to itself the power to regulate family ties and to dictate laws that do not respect the natural community of the family, which is prior and superior to it, (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VII, 15-20 Passim), there is a well-founded fear that the State uses the family for its own interests and, rather than protecting and defending its rights, it debilitates and damages the family. The Universal Declaration prevents these abuses. It recognizes the right of men and women to marry (art. 16, 1) and in this way to found a family. With its insistence that this "natural and fundamental" unit (art. 16, 3) deserves the protection of not only the State, but also of society, The Universal Declaration prevents these abuses.
8. The Family, as recognized by the Declaration, constitutes a fundamental good for society (Gaudium et Spes, 52, 2). We have seen on the eve of the Third Millennium, however, the promotion of ambiguous and erroneous considerations, which attack its nature: we then speak of an identity crisis. Even though the family has a very clear identity based on marriage, which is its origin and source, it is said that it is not possible to define the family, that different kinds of families and models of the family exist. The insinuation is that the rapid changes experienced by the family such that the forms the family can acquire are almost infinite. They even say that it is not possible to be sure of anything concerning the future of the family.
Everything would be the fruit of consensual human projects with legal support. The idea of a natural, stable and permanent institution that deserves the protection of society is thus destroyed. The anthropological poverty of this conception of the family as a club or association that is made or dissolved at will empties man of the sense of responsibility and commitment while sowing the seeds of social decomposition in the home. Children are the ones who pay the highest costs in the end. The reason behind these attacks on the very idea of the family comes from the rejection of the idea of a "Natural Law" on the part of many. They do not accept natural institutions, but the deepest reason is that they reject God as the source of Natural Law. They do not accept the dimension of truth, and this leads to a real "eclipse of the sense of God and of man" (Evangelium Vitae, 23). What matters is personal opinion. The result of this perspective is that all-possible kinds of living arrangements, hetero- and homosexual, could enter into the conception of the family.
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