CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS) — Many children raised by cohabitating, separated, divorced or remarried parents are deprived of fixed points of reference and can suffer from inner conflict and confusion, Pope Benedict XVI told Brazilian bishops. The traditional family based on a man and woman united in an indissoluble marriage is under attack in today’s world, he said. “There are forces and voices in present society that seem committed to demolishing the natural homestead of human life,” the pope said during a meeting Sept. 25 with bishops from the northeastern area of Brazil. Families in secularized cultures, especially where divorce is legal, seem deeply immersed in uncertainty, he said. More and more couples build their unions on the fragility and impermanence of cohabitation, which is merely based on an “individual’s feeling or subjectivity,” he said. He said as divorces increase and cohabitation is on the rise, the children in these situations are “deprived of their parents’ support and become victims of malaise and abandonment, thus spreading social disorder.”
