The importance that many give to the primary or physical environment is inversely proportional to that they give to the cultural and symbolic environment.
There is an ever-growing consciousness that we owe the future generations an environment healed from the myriad lacerations we have inflicted upon it.
In order to do this, many today are ready for – if not demanding – a stricter regulatory regime. However, when the secondary or cultural/symbolic environment is the topic under discussion it seems the attitude is that everything is permissible.
There could be many reasons for this attitude. It may be easier to get more reliable empirical data to record the negative effects on the physical environment than one can get to prove the damage done to the secondary environment.
Probably, though, the different treatment of the two environments is the result of the existence of different, competing and contrasting value systems.
What is wrong for one system is right for the other system.
The liberal and the communitarian ethical systems are two clear examples. Diametrically opposing models are, for example, being proposed for marriage and the family.
In this scenario of ethical and cultural pluralism, both advocacy and dialogue are important. These are the lungs of a pluralistic body politic.
Christians have a duty towards present and future generations to advocate the Christian concept of marriage and the family. Last December, Pope Benedict, during a speech to Gabor Gyorivanyi, the new Hungarian ambassador to the Vatican, exercised this advocacy role. The Pope underlined the importance of defending marriage, asserting that without this basic cell of society, Europe has much to lose:
“Marriage has given Europe its particular aspect and its humanism, also and precisely because it has had to learn to acquire continually the characteristic of fidelity and of renunciation traced by it… Europe will no longer be Europe if this basic cell of the social construction disappears or is substantially transformed.”
Marriage within the Christian world-view is a basic form of ordering the relationship between man and woman and, at the same time, a basic cell of the state community. This model is being continuously challenged.
The Pope explained that, on the one hand, marriage and the family are at risk “because of the erosion of its most profound values of stability and indissolubility, because of a growing liberalisation of the right of divorce and of the custom, increasingly widespread, of man and woman living together without the juridical form and protection of marriage”.
On the other hand, the Pope pointed out that the different types of union being proposed by some have no foundation in Europe’s history of culture and of law. From this model, the Pope draws a political strategy. He asserts that “the Church cannot approve legislative initiatives that imply a valuation of alternative models of the life of the couple and the family”.
The Pope’s words are clear, as should be all Christian advocacy activity. However, one should not forget the other function of the lung that is essential in a pluralistic democracy.
This function is dialogue, which has to be sincere, patient and loving. It should be accompanied by a desire to understand what the other is saying and an effort to find common ground.
Without dialogue, advocacy becomes an imposition. Without advocacy, dialogue loses all sense of direction.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt