The family “is experiencing a profound cultural crisis” from individualism and postmodernism, Pope Francis has 
warned.
In Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) the Pope said that all communities and social bonds were being endangered by current cultural trends.
But he said that the weakening of these bonds was especially serious in the case of the family “because the family is the fundamental cell of society, where we learn to live with others despite our differences and to belong to one another”
He said: “Marriage now tends to be viewed as a form of mere emotional satisfaction that can be constructed in any way or modified at will.
“But the indispensible contribution of marriage to society transcends the feelings and momentary needs of the couple.
“As the French bishops have taught, it is not born ‘of loving sentiment, ephemeral by definition, but from the depth of the obligation assumed by the spouses who accept to enter a total communion of life’.”
This was taken from a statement issued by the French hierarchy during the debate in France over same-sex marriage.
Individualism, he added “favours a lifestyle which weakens the development and stability of personal relationships and distorts family bonds”.
Pope Francis also warned of a growing hostility to Christianity, which, he said, sometimes “may take the form of veritable attacks on religious freedom or new persecutions directed against Christians; in some countries these have reached alarming levels of hatred and violence”.
However he added that the problem was in many places “more that of widespread indifference and relativism, linked to disillusionment and the crisis of ideologies which has come about as a reaction to anything which might appear totalitarian”.
Pope Francis said: “This not only harms the Church but the fabric of society as a whole. We should recognise how in a culture where each person wants to be bearer of his or her own subjective truth, it becomes difficult for citizens to devise a common plan which transcends individual gain and personal ambitions.”
And echoing themes raised by his predecessor Pope Benedict, he warned of the rise of a secular culture which “tends to reduce the faith and the Church to the sphere of the private and personal”.
He added: “Furthermore, by completely rejecting the transcendent, it has produced a growing deterioration of ethics, a weakening of the sense of personal and collective sin, and a steady increase in relativism.
“These have led to a general sense of disorientation, especially in the periods of adolescence and young adulthood which are so vulnerable to change.”
And he quoted the bishops of the United States of America saying that, “while the Church insists on the existence of objective moral norms which are valid for everyone, ‘there are those in our culture who portray this teaching as unjust, that is, as opposed to basic human rights’.
“’Such claims usually follow from a form of moral relativism that is joined, not without inconsistency, to a belief in the absolute rights of individuals.
“’In this view, the Church is perceived as promoting a particular prejudice and as interfering with individual freedom.’”