In a recent decision, the Court of Cassation, Italy's highest court, said there was no substantial legal difference between a family founded on marriage and a family resulting from a cohabiting couple. To buttress its decision, the court referred to what it described as an "evolution" in thinking about the forms that a family takes in modern society. The case concerned theft between an ex-cohabiting couple.

Prof. Giuseppe Dalla Torre, a Catholic legal expert and rector of Rome's LUMSA University, described the sentence as "a serious attack on the family". Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said that he views "with concern this progressive slide toward a further privatisation of the family, as if the family were irrelevant for society".

I respect the decision of those people who, for whatever reason, decide to live together without marrying. It is their choice and their right.

I also think that it is high time to regularise in some measure the rights and duties that result from such a decision.

However, this regularisation should be in such a way that it is very clear that such heterosexual relationships should not be placed on an equal footing with relationships based on marriage. The latter is a public commitment before society (and for believers, in front of God) and consequently promotes a more serious sense of responsibility among those involved.

Developments in several countries that equate relationships ensuing from heterosexual co-habitation and/or from same sex marriage on par with families based on marriage are not promoting the common good.

These developments reminded me of the final statement released last December following the first European Catholic-Orthodox forum. The family was described as "a good for humanity". "The family, born of marriage between man and woman that gives rise to children and an extended network of relationships, needs to be rediscovered as valuable social capital."

The rapid devaluation of this social capital means that the family crisis in Europe is much deeper than the economic one.

The forum stated that "much effort needs to be invested in the promotion of family life. The family needs to be rediscovered for what it offers society." It calls for the positive re-evaluation of both motherhood and fatherhood.

"Mothers who stay at home (and I add, also fathers) in order to raise and educate children should be afforded support both morally and financially. Their mission is not less important than that of other respected professions... The idea of fatherhood is also fundamental for society and it too needs to be rediscovered by contemporary society. It's impossible to speak of a fraternal society without fatherhood."

The final statement emphasises that the needs of children and the well-being of the family should not be subordinated to economic interests. Therefore, the forum called "upon all public institutions to ensure that policies regarding remuneration for work are consistent with establishing and maintaining a family with dignity... It should be such that both parents need not necessarily be obliged to work full time outside the home to the detriment of family life and especially to the detriment of the education of children."

We are free to make choices but we have to carry responsibility for the consequences of the choices we make. We would be foolish to abandon the centuries-old and tried model of the family based on marriage forums other forms of relationships. The family based on marriage is not an outdated notion; on the contrary, it is the future as much as it was the past.

As the final statement of the forum quoted above states: "Without the mutual love of the family our society dies."