I often hear it said that people today have a longing for God, for spirituality, for religion, and are starting once again to see the Church as a possible conversation partner from which, in this regard, they can receive something. (There was a period in which this was basically sought only in other religions.)

Awareness is growing: the Church especially conveys spiritual experience; she is like a tree where the birds can make their nests even if they want to fly away again later. But she is precisely also a place where one can settle for a certain time.

Instead, what people find more difficult is the morality that the Church proclaims. I have pondered on this. I have been pondering on it for a long time, and I see ever more clearly that in our age morality is, as it were, split in two.

Modern society doesn’t merely lack morals but has "discovered" and demands another dimension of morality, a dimension which in the Church’s proclamation in recent decades, and even earlier perhaps, has not been sufficiently presented. This dimension includes the great topics of peace, non-violence, justice for all, concern for the poor, and respect for creation.

These have become an ethical whole, which, precisely as a political force, has great power, and for many constitutes the substitution or succession of religion.

Instead of religion, seen as metaphysical and as something from above, perhaps also as something individualistic, the great moral themes come into play as the essential, which then confer dignity on man and engage him.

This is one aspect: this morality exists, and it also fascinates young people, who work for peace, for non-violence, for justice, for the poor, for creation. And these are truly great moral themes that also belong, moreover, to the tradition of the Church.

The means offered for their solution, however, are often very unilateral and are not always credible. But we cannot dwell on this now. The important topics are present.

The other part of morality, often received controversially by politics, concerns life. One aspect of it is the commitment to life from conception to death, that is, commitment to its defense against abortion, against euthanasia, and against manipulation and man’s self-authorization in order to dispose of life.

People often seek to justify these interventions with the seemingly great purpose of thereby serving the future generations, and it even appears moral to take human life into one’s own hands and manipulate it.

On the other hand, the knowledge also exists that human life is a gift that demands our respect and love from its very first to its very last moments—including for the suffering, the disabled, and the weak.

The morality concerning marriage and the family also fits into this context. Marriage is becoming, so to speak, ever more marginalized.

We are aware of the example of certain countries where legislation has been modified so that marriage is no longer defined as a bond between a man and a woman but as a bond between persons. With this, obviously, the basic idea of marriage is destroyed, and society from its roots becomes something quite different.

The awareness that sexuality, eros, and marriage as a union between a man and a woman go together—and they become one flesh (Gn 2:24)—this knowledge is growing weaker and weaker. Every type of bond seems normal. This represents a sort of overall morality of non-discrimination and a form of freedom due to man.

Naturally, with this, the indissolubility of marriage has become almost a utopian idea, which many public figures seem precisely to contradict. So it is that even the family is gradually breaking up.

There are, of course, many explanations for the problem of the sharp decline in the birth rate, but certainly a decisive role is also played in this by the fact that people want to enjoy life, that they have little confidence in the future, and that they feel that family is no longer viable as a lasting community in which future generations can grow up.

In these contexts, therefore, our proclamation clashes with, and is contrary to, the awareness of modern society with its sort of anti-morality based on a conception of freedom as the faculty to choose autonomously with no pre-defined guidelines, and of non-discrimination, hence, as the approval of every type of possibility.

Thus, it autonomously establishes itself as ethically correct, but the other awareness has not disappeared. It exists, and I believe we must commit ourselves to reconnecting these two parts of morality and to making it clear that they must be inseparably united.

Only if human life from conception until death is respected is the ethic of peace possible and credible. Only then can non-violence be expressed in every direction. Only then can we truly accept creation, and only then can we achieve true justice.

I think that this is the great task we have before us: on the one hand, not to make Christianity seem merely morality, but rather a gift in which we are given the love that sustains us and provides us with the strength we need to be able to "lose our own life."

On the other hand, in this context of freely given love, we need to move forward towards ways of putting into practice this way whose foundation is always offered to us by the Decalogue, which we must interpret today with Christ and with the Church in a progressive and new way.

These, therefore, were the themes I thought I should and could elaborate. I thank you for your indulgence and your patience. Let us hope that the Lord will help us all on our journey.