Societies which undermine traditional marriage weaken themselves, Cardinal Sean Brady has said.
Speaking at the Annual Grandparents Pilgrimage at Knock on Sunday, the Cardinal paid tribute to the role of grandparents in raising their grandchildren.
But he stressed that nothing could “ever replace marriage between a man and a woman as the best environment for raising children”.
And he added that any society which diminished “the value of the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, diminishes the very foundation of society itself”.
While he acknowledged that grandparents could do “a marvellous job where either parent or both parents can no longer be part of a child’s life,” Cardinal Brady stressed that the role “of both a mother and a father in a child’s life is irreplaceable”.
He added that grandparents had a critical role in helping parents raise their children. Grandparents, Cardinal Brady said, could “show the young that being a loving, committed parent is part of being fulfilled and happy, not an obstacle to it”.
He pointed to the fact that grandparents now played an “increasingly central role” in supporting the economic and parenting needs of your own children.
While the role of grandparents in Irish families had always been cherished in a particular way, he continued, over the past decade “the economic and practical dependency of parents on grandparents has increased significantly”.
It had to be acknowledged, Cardinal Brady said that today’s generation of grandparents laid the foundation for the society of today. Grandparents, he said “probably contributed more in working hours and the percentage of their wages paid in tax than ever before”.
It was grandparents time and money which was “now holding many families in this country together as they struggle with the consequences of the global economic crisis”.
He continued: “The ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’ – or more accurately of ‘Grandma and Granda’ – were critical to the success of the Celtic Tiger.” As young families searched for bigger deposits for dearer mortgages, grandparents’ resources would be critical to the success and pace of our economic recovery, Cardinal Brady said.
