VATICAN CITY — Two millennia after the “Gospel of the family” defeated an abusive social practice that humiliated women, the “radical equality” of spouses in Christian marriage must now bear “new fruit” in society, including “the right to equal pay for equal work,” said Pope Francis.
This “disparity” between men and women in the workplace is “a pure scandal,” Pope Francis said April 29 during his weekly general audience.
Continuing a series of audience talks about marriage, the pope began by saying Jesus demonstrated his great fondness and solicitude for marriage and family when he changed water into wine at the wedding at Cana.
The love between man and woman in marriage is “God’s masterpiece,” the pope said, straying from his prepared remarks. Though Jesus’ message to married couples is always the same, “many things have changed” since then, he said.
Today there are fewer marriages, more marriage breakups, and fewer children, the pope noted. Family and marital bonds are broken with “always greater frequency and speed,” and children are always “the biggest victims,” he said.
The pope said that if a person, since childhood, experiences marriage as a temporary bond, then “unconsciously” he or she will tend to live that way, too.
Though young people rank family first as a social indicator for happiness, he said, many give up on the idea of “an irrevocable bond” and of a long-lasting family life.
“For fear of failure, many do not even want to think about (marriage),” Christian youth included, he said.
“I believe we need to reflect with great seriousness about why many young people ‘don’t feel’ like getting married,” the pope said. Why do they “often prefer cohabitation?”