Aliens in This World

Referring to these difficulties makes clear one of the reasons why to many, having children appears a risk too great to take. A child needs loving attention. This means - we have to give him some time, time from our life. But precisely this essential ‘prime material’ of life - time - seems to be getting scarcer every day. The time we have at our disposal is hardly sufficient for our own life - how can we give it up to somebody else?

To have time to give time to others - that is a very concrete way to learn how to give ourselves, to lose ourselves in order to find ourselves.

To this problem must be added a difficult calculation: What standards do we have for measuring what we owe our children so that they may live rightly, and in doing this, also respect their freedom?

The problem has become so difficult because we are no longer sure of what standards to pass on; because we are no longer sure how freedom should be properly exercised, what is the right way to live, what is morally obligatory and what is inadmissible.

The modern spirit has lost orientation, and this disorientation prevents us from indicating to others the right way.

Indeed, the problem goes even deeper. Today, man is uncertain about the future. Is it permissible to send someone towards this uncertain future? Ultimately, is it a good thing to be a human being?

This profound uncertainty about man himself - alongside the wish to live life for oneself alone - is probably the deepest reason why to many, the risk of having children now appears unsustainable.

Indeed, we can transmit life responsibly only if we are capable of transmitting more than biological life, but also a sense that life can be lived even through crises, with a certainty of hope that is stronger than the clouds which obscure the future.

If we do not relearn the basics of life - if we do not rediscover the certainty of faith - it will be even less possible to entrust to others the gift of life and the task of meeting an unknown future.

Finally, also related to all this, is the problem of making definitive decisions: Can a man and a woman be united for always? Can one say Yes to last a whole life?

Yes, we can. We were created for this. In this Yes, a couple can realize their freedom and create the sacred environment of matrimony which widens to become the family and thus constructs the future.

At this point, I cannot keep silent about my concern over proposed laws for de facto couples. Many of these couples chose that way of life because, at least for the moment, they do not feel themselves able to accept the juridically sanctioned bond of matrimony. And so they prefer to remain as common-law partners.

When new juridical forms are created that would relativize matrimony, then the renunciation of any definitive bond would also obtain, so to speak, a juridical seal of approval. In this case, a definitive decision by anyone who already finds it hard to make one becomes even more unlikely.

Then, for other forms of coupling, there is an added relativization of genders - making the coupling of a man and a woman equivalent to that of persons of the same gender. This tacitly confirms the dismal theories that would take away relevance from the masculinity or femininity of the human being, as if it it only had to do with biological fact.

These theories claim that a person - that is, his intellect and his will - decides autonomously what he is or is not. This implies a devaluation of corporality, from which it follows that a person, wishing to be emancipated physically from the ‘biological sphere’, ends up by destroying himself.

To those who tell us that the Church should not interfere in these matters, we can only answer: Does not man interest us?

Do not believers, with the great culture of their faith, have the right to express themsleves about all this?

Is it not rather their - our - duty to raise our voice in defense of man, that creature who, precisely in the inseparable unity of body and soul, is the image of God?

The trip to Valencia has become for me a journey in search of what it means to be a human being.

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My comments: This part of the speech cuts right to the heart of the problems of modern society, and of people I know. To its honor, science fiction as a genre has always insisted that the future is worth living to see, to be a human being is worthwhile, and that both the natural and the human world are full of wonders. It has insisted that the vastness of the stars is not a soul-crushing diminishment of all man’s dreams, but rather a vast and intriguing place of beauty and promise. But at the same time, there is this emphasis on intellect trumping all, will trumping all, and even a desire to leave the body for something better designed, more permanent, and less able to suffer — to be bodiless intellects in a computer, or cyborgs, and to live forever.

Fantasy and horror, which have always coexisted with science fiction as if the other half of its consciousness, have insisted, to their honor, that intellect and logic does not necessarily trump all, that other creatures may have their own wish to live, and that there are beings greater than we are which take an interest in our doings. But again, will tends to trump all, and power is an obsession.

In neither genre do babies or young children or married couples get much play. And in both, although much play and theorizing about moral standards is okay, and it’s okay to preach about the popular cause of the moment, mentioning anything else is largely forbidden. Freedom only goes so far — not as far as true freedom.

And worse still, you constantly see fans doing things to deprive themselves of human dignity. Things which they would fight if imposed upon them become good and enviable things if they choose them. Consent makes everything good — even wrongs to which no person can justly consent.

I’m glad our little pope is much more tactful and effective at pointing these things out than I am.