Families, not just individuals, have rights, Pope argues [CWN]

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“Taking care of the young and the elderly is the choice of civilization,” Pope Francis said in an October 25 address to the Pontifical Council for the Family."Children and the elderly …

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CWN_News said:
“Taking care of the young and the elderly is the choice of civilization,” Pope Francis said in an October 25 address to the Pontifical Council for the Family."Children and the elderly …

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There is an argument to be made that families, not individuals, are the most fundamental unit of society.

The idea that we are a communio is a strong one in Catholic thinking, a mini trinity.

We are not solitudes.
 
The Holy Father’s entire address can be read here.

The context in which this was stated is important:
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    The first point on which I would like to pause is this: the family is a community of life which has its autonomous foundation. As Blessed John Paul II wrote in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio, the family is not the sum of the persons that constitute it, but a “community of persons” (cf. Nos. 17-18).
It is the place where one learns to love, the natural center of human life. It is made up of faces, of persons who love, talk, sacrifice for others and defend life, especially the most fragile, the weakest. It could be said, without exaggeration, that the family is the engine of the world and of history. Each one of us builds his/her own personality in the family, growing up with a mother and father, brothers and sisters, breathing the warmth of the home. The family is the place where we receive our name, the place of affections, the space of intimacy, where we learn the art of dialogue and interpersonal communication. In the family the person becomes conscious of his/her dignity and, especially if the education is Christian, recognizes the dignity of every individual person, particularly the sick, the weak and the marginalized.

The family-community is all this, which calls for being recognized as such, so much more today, when the protection of individual rights prevails. Because of this, you have acted well in paying particular attention to the Charter of Family Rights, presented in fact some 30 years ago, on October 22, 1983.
Also, well worth reviewing is the Charter of the Rights of the Family, 22 October 1983.

A short quote from that document’s preamble:
Considering that:

A. The rights of the person, even though they are expressed as rights of the individual, have a fundamental social dimension which finds an innate and vital expression in the family;

B. the family is based on marriage, that intimate union of life in complementarity between a man and a woman which is constituted in the freely contracted and publicly expressed indissoluble bond of matrimony and is open to the transmission of life;

C. marriage is the natural institution to which the mission of transmitting life is exclusively entrusted;

D. the family, a natural society, exists prior to the State or any other community, and possesses inherent rights which are inalienable;
Great premise upon which to base a statement of rights and responsibilities.
 
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