Rodzina – zagrożona nadzieja

Abstract

The article – in a syntetic form – presents the teaching of John Paul II about marriage and family. The first part recapitulates his fundamental doctrine of the communio personarum (marriage as a community of persons), which is the source of the new human life and the unique environment of personal growth for the members of the family as well. The Family, if properly understood, institutes the school of mature humanity (in the service for civil society) and a living cell of Christianity (the domestic Church). The second part analizes dangers which destroy and weaken the contemporary family. The erroneus anthropology and philosophy of consumption are among the essential causes of the family crisis. This crisis has many faces: divorce, birth control and euthanasia, genetic engeneering, artificial conception ‘in vitro’, omnipresence of the „anti-life mentality”, pornography and – as a result – the threat of depopulation. This situation makes the mission of the Church (as the promotor of the truth) indispensable and – at the same time – difficult.