1. How would I define family in one sentence?

Family is a community of blood related persons(or, in a broader sense, a group of people with
a mutual habitat), and a place of primary development of the person; as such it represents the
nucleus and a basis of society.
2. How would I judge the current situation and future of the family in my country?
Croatia is a country with a strong attachment to tradition and its social and national roots.
Although last several years are characterized by a noticeablegeneral relativismwhich in this
case includes various means of adaptation to modernismof other countries in the West,
traditional values, among which a special place is pertained to the family, are omnipresent in
public awareness as something that we are ought to protect and cultivate. And this is clearly
discernable in the case of the last year's constitutional referendum, which proposed and later
voted the constitutional definition of marriage as a communion between a man a woman.
3. What does family mean for me?
For me, family is among the most important things in life. It is the place where I learned most
fundamental and important things in the most sensible period of development, which in no
other way can be properly compensated. In it, I developed self-consciousness and the notion
of complementarity of relations, i.e. relational reciprocity, in the most excellent way,
perceiving myself as an autonomous individual while others as equal in dignity and worthy of
respect. Through positive experiences in family I acquire interest and competencies for
forming my own family one day.
4. What is the significance of the Church for the family?
The Church has always been an advocate and a carrier of traditional values. In a time when
the latter is openly relativized and labeled as backward, Church, here meaning the community
of the Magisterium and believers, is aware of importance and function of family in
contemporary society and that is why it stands in the front line of defense from various
ideological tendencies and lobbies which strive to undermine the family and related tradition
values. Church, insisting on equal dignity of every person as created in the image of God,
recognizes and acknowledges the family as the core of the society and an authentic locus of
an integral development of the person. The latter fact has remainedunchanged in its teaching
throughout its history.