27. This preparation
will not lose sight of the importance of helping young people acquire a
critical ability with regard to their surroundings, and the Christian courage
of those who know how to be in the world without belonging to it. This is what
we read in the Letter to Diognetus, a venerable and certainly authentic
document from the early Christian era: "Christians are not distinguished
from the rest of mankind by either country, speech, or customs...the whole
tenor of their way of living stamps it as worthy of admiration and admittedly
extraordinary... They marry like all others and beget children; but they do not
expose their offspring. Their table they spread for all, but not their bed.
They find themselves in the flesh, but do not live according to the
flesh" (V, 1, 4, 6, 7, 8). Formation should arrive at a mentality and
personality capable of not being led astray by ideas contrary to the unity and
stability of marriage, thus able to react against the structures of the
so-called social sin that "With greater or lesser violence, with
greater or lesser harm, every sin has repercussions on the entire ecclesial
body and the whole human family" (Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio
et Paenitentia, 16). In the face of these sinful influences and so many
social pressures, a critical conscience must be instilled.
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