Dear Brothers and Sisters!
1. Today, too, I would like to continue my reflection on marriage, the family and natural law. At the basis of the family is the love between a man and a woman: a love understood as a gift of self, mutual and profound, expressed also in sexual, conjugal union.
The Church is sometimes reproached for making sex a 'taboo'. The truth is quite different! Throughout history, in contrast to Manichaean tendencies, Christian thought has developed a harmonious and positive vision of the human being, recognising the significant and valuable role that masculinity and femininity play in human life.
After all, the biblical message is unequivocal: 'God created man in his own image . Male and female he created them' (Gen 1:27). Carved into this statement is the dignity of every man and woman, in their equality of nature, but also in their sexual diversity. It is a fact that profoundly touches the constitution of the human being. "From sex, in fact, the human person derives the characteristics that on a biological, psychological and spiritual level make him or her man or woman" (Congr. pro Doctrina Fidei, Persona humana, 1).
I reiterated this recently in my Letter to Families: "Man is created 'from the beginning' as male and female: the life of the human community - of small communities as well as of the whole of society - bears the mark of this original duality. From it derive the 'masculinity' and 'femininity' of individuals, just as from it every community draws its own characteristic richness in the mutual completion of persons" (John Paul II, Letter to Families, n. 6).
2. Sexuality thus belongs to the Creator's original design, and the Church cannot help but hold it in high esteem. At the same time, neither can she fail to ask everyone to respect it in its profound nature.
As a dimension inscribed in the totality of the person, sexuality constitutes a 'language' at the service of love, and therefore cannot be experienced as pure instinctuality. It must be governed by man as an intelligent and free being.
This does not mean, however, that it can be manipulated at will. In fact, it possesses its own typical psychological and biological structure, aimed both at communion between man and woman and at the birth of new persons. Respecting this structure and this inseparable connection is not 'biologism' or 'moralism', it is attention to the truth of being a man, of being a person. It is by virtue of this truth, perceptible even in the light of reason, that so-called 'free love', homosexuality and contraception are morally unacceptable. These are behaviours that distort the profound meaning of sexuality, preventing it from being at the service of the person, communion and life.
3. May the Blessed Virgin, model of femininity, tenderness and self-mastery, help the men and women of our time not to trivialise sex, in the name of a false modernity. May young people, women and families look to her. May Mary, most chaste Mother, enlighten the representatives of nations so that at the next meeting in Cairo they may take decisions inspired by authentic human values, which are the basis of the desired civilisation of love.
[Pope John Paul II, Angelus 26 June 1994]
