Bishops Ready to OK Message on Families : Catholics: Statement praises the traditional family but offers support to parents without spouses. Church teaching against divorce is upheld.

WASHINGTON —  In the face of rapid social change, shifting values and economic hardships, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops today are poised to approve a detailed new message intended to mobilize the church’s resources on behalf of families.

Although the bishops uphold the traditional family and the church’s teaching against divorce, they also pledge their “solidarity” with single-parent families, urge all families to reconsider gender roles in light of modern-day realities and call on busy parents to take time to balance the demands of earning a living with their obligations to spouses and children.

“There is nothing more fundamental (than families) to our vitality as a society,” the bishops declare in a document that calls on families to examine the quality of their lives.

At the same time, the bishops authorized their Committee on Pro-Life Activities, chaired by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, to draft their first comprehensive letter on abortion in nearly 20 years.

Unlike previous pronouncements, the letter, to be completed sometime next year, will also tackle such issues as euthanasia and the civil rights of immigrants.

“We feel that today we need a new, fresh, more compelling and relevant pastoral message,” Mahony said.

Mahony also won approval on a 201-7 vote Monday to form a network of 1 million Catholics whose names were gathered from church campaigns against the Freedom of Choice Act to lobby Congress and the Clinton Administration against abortion. The vote and Mahony’s statement signaled the bishops’ willingness to step up their efforts on Capitol Hill to resist the Clinton Administration’s support of the right to abortion and to fight anticipated attempts at the state level to legalize euthanasia.

The message to families--the first in 13 years--is one of two major pronouncements scheduled to come out of the annual fall meeting here of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The prelates are also expected to issue a reflection on the role of the United States in the world on the 10th anniversary of the bishops’ influential 1983 pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Peace,” which provoked heated debate far beyond the Catholic community for its challenge of the Ronald Reagan Administration’s military program, advocacy of a nuclear freeze and conditional acceptance of the concept of nuclear deterrence.

The statement on families is addressed primarily to Catholics but bishops said it could be helpful to all.

“This message is filled with practical suggestions, both out of Christian traditions and new psychological insights,” said Dolores Leckey, executive director of the bishops’ Secretariat for Family, Laity, Women and Youth.

Although maintaining that a permanent, faithful marriage provides best for the needs of children, bishops offered encouragement to the divorced and those whose spouses have died.

Timed to coincide with the United Nation’s 1994 International Year of the Family, the message was drafted by the Committee on Marriage and Family, chaired by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, after three years of consultations with married couples, parents, the divorced and widowed, priests and family life experts.