TownHall's Jennifer Roback-Morse was in Valencia, Spain this past weekend, and witnessed Pope Benedict XVI's comments defending marriage and the family. These comments brought thunderous applause from a nation whose socialist government had recently imposed gay marriage, easier divorce, and less parental control of education upon its largely Catholic citizenry.

Of course, she had to get the text of his speech from the Vatican website due to possible jamming of the English translation.

Gotta hand it to those socialists. When they want something, they do everything they can to stop anyone or anything that could get in their way, even if it means squashing a world leader's right to be heard by his audience.

Nice job, assholes. Too bad for you, we know how to use a search engine. Did you really think we were stupid enough to just accept that our reporters couldn't hear the translation? We can read, you know. I wonder what you could have found so offensive that it had to be jammed? Maybe this?

None of us gave ourselves life or singlehandedly learned how to live. All of us received from others both life itself and its basic truths, and we have been called to attain perfection in relationship and loving communion with others. The family, founded on indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman, is the expression of this relational, filial and communal aspect of life. It is the setting where men and women are enabled to be born with dignity, and to grow and develop in an integral manner.

Once children are born, through their relationship with their parents they begin to share in a family tradition with even older roots. Together with the gift of life, they receive a whole patrimony of experience. Parents have the right and the inalienable duty to transmit this heritage to their children: to help them find their own identity, to initiate them to the life of society, to foster the responsible exercise of their moral freedom and their ability to love on the basis of their having been loved and, above all, to enable them to encounter God. Children experience human growth and maturity to the extent that they trustingly accept this heritage and training which they gradually make their own. They are thus enabled to make a personal synthesis between what has been passed on and what is new, a synthesis that every individual and generation is called to make.

Or this?

At the origin of every man and woman, and thus in all human fatherhood and motherhood, we find God the Creator. For this reason, married couples must accept the child born to them, not simply as theirs alone, but also as a child of God, loved for his or her own sake and called to be a son or daughter of God. What is more: each generation, all parenthood and every family has its origin in God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Emphasis mine. Why? Because I'm pro-life? No. Because those are the exact words a priest used to comfort a 20-year old young lady who had come down with that awful disease that liberals so despise ... pregnancy. Through her tears of shame, he told her to stand proudly at her wedding and be happy. There would be no need for shame. After all, she carried within her a child of God.

That young lady was my mother. That child of God was me. I can't think of anyone, save for my father, who is more grateful and proud that my mother made the right decision in marrying my father and bringing me into this world. Still, having Pope Benedict use the exact same words that priest used to comfort my mother 39 years ago brought tears to my eyes. It was a moment of pure inspiration.

Anyway, back to the Pope and his teachings, which were so evil the Spanish socialists sought to jam the translation:

As the years pass, this gift of God which the parents have helped set before the eyes of the little ones will also need to be cultivated with wisdom and gentleness, in order to instill in them a capacity for discernment. Thus, with the constant witness of the their parents' conjugal love, permeated with a living faith, and with the loving accompaniment of the Christian community, children will be helped better to appropriate the gift of their faith, to discover the deepest meaning of their own lives and to respond with joy and gratitude.

Wow ... really damaging stuff.

I did find this interesting, though:

In contemporary culture, we often see an excessive exaltation of the freedom of the individual as an autonomous subject, as if we were self-created and self-sufficient, apart from our relationship with others and our responsibilities in their regard. Attempts are being made to organize the life of society on the basis of subjective and ephemeral desires alone, with no reference to objective, prior truths such as the dignity of each human being and his inalienable rights and duties, which every social group is called to serve.

This starts out looking like a dig on individualism, but Benny brings it together by invoking the inalienable rights, and showing that we must accomplish our duties as individuals. It winds up being a perfect dig on socialism.

Still, the most productive things the Pope had to say were in support of marriage.

To help us advance along the path of human maturity, the Church teaches us to respect and foster the marvellous reality of the indissoluble marriage between man and woman which is also the origin of the family. To recognize and assist this institution is one of the greatest services which can be rendered nowadays to the common good and to the authentic development of individuals and societies, as well as the best means of ensuring the dignity, equality and true freedom of the human person.

Ok, idiots. Jam the signal for our translation if you wish (or just hand out cheap equipment, if that's your excuse), but we Americans will get to the truth whether you like it or not.

Marriage is among the oldest of humankind's institutions and traditions. People the world over have participated in it and like it the way it has been practiced for these several thousand years. Sure, nobodys perfect, and sometimes people falter, but those aren't reasons to make divorce easier or to change the meaning of marriage altogether.

This has been a moment of pride in this Pope, and a moment of continued disgust with socialist idiots. Please comment accordingly.

RWR