While Pope Benedict was in Sydney, Australia, for World Youth Day last month, those of us who stayed home celebrated the occasion with a gathering in Sidney, Ohio, of approximately 600 of our young people from Ohio and Michigan. I found it to be a very inspiring, uplifting experience.

At one point I was asked what we as a church should be doing to minister to our young people. My immediate response was simply this: The most fundamental thing we can do for our young people is to support their parents! Today, more than ever, the church needs to educate and help parents in their God-given responsibility to raise their children.

Youth programs in the diocese and parishes are extremely important. Catholic schools and after-school religious education are essential. However, as the church has always taught, as studies show and as common sense dictates, parents are the single greatest influence on their children. A youth minister in Sidney told me that many studies are made of the influences on young people today, but when young people themselves are asked, the vast majority say the biggest influence is their parents.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “the right and the duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable.” (no. 2221)

Sadly, this fundamental principle is increasingly eroded today. Young people still look to their parents, but parents themselves are often unsure of asserting themselves as parents, or are overwhelmed by competing influences on the life of their children.
For example, popular culture and the media are multi-billion dollar industries directed at the young with messages that often do not reflect reverence for God, parents, lawful authority or a true understanding of human personhood, freedom, virtue or sexuality.
The “primordial and inalienable” rights of parents are being undermined by a society that increasingly demeans and diminishes their role. Government, too, is more and more coercing a redefinition of the very meaning of parents contrary to the divine institution of marriage between one man and one woman.

Last year in Canada, for example, a court ruled that a child could have three parents — two lesbian mothers and one father. One of the women had given birth using the sperm of a third-party male. Among other things, this judicial ruling is based on a denial of the necessary connection between the marital act and the procreation of children, the tragic consequences of which Pope Paul VI prophetically envisioned 40 years ago in his encyclical Humanae Vitae.

Parenthood is not created or defined by the state, but by God. It is biological parents — not schools, government, child advocates or even churches — who have a divinely conferred and graced responsibility to raise their children. There is certainly an important place for step-parents, adoptive parents, foster parents or others who have been given legal custody of a child for compelling reasons. These “parent figures,” however, do not take away from the fundamental reality of biological parents.

Last year, on Sept. 14, I joined a number of other religious leaders in northwestern Ohio in signing a covenant concerning parents. We committed ourselves “to developing ways and means of honoring and supporting parents in their sacred role as we declare the year 2009 the Year of the Parent.” This covenant was undertaken in collaboration with a coalition named the “Parent Community Partnership” (PCP).

More immediately, our diocese will participate in observing Parents’ Week next month from Sept. 21-27. This is sponsored by PCP in collaboration with faith communities, schools, government and social service agencies. Parishes will be hearing more about this during the coming month. For more information, consult our diocesan Web site.

The following words of Pope John Paul, spoken 30 years ago, are still very valid:

“It is not enough to affirm and defend this principle of the parent’s right … In this field, goodwill, love itself, are not sufficient. It is a skill that parents must acquire with the grace of God, in the first place by strengthening their own moral and religious convictions, by setting an example, by reflecting also on their experience, with each other, with other parents, with expert educators, with priests … In this way young people — strengthened in their Christian identity to face in the right way a pluralistic world often indifferent or even hostile to their convictions — will be able to become strong in faith, serve society, and take an active part in the life of the church.” (International Family Congress, Oct. 30, 1978)

+ MOST REVEREND LEONARD P. BLAIR
   BISHOP OF TOLEDO