No human being “belongs” to another in the way that a thing does. Children are not their parents’ “property”; spouses are not each other’s “property.” Yet they do “belong to each other in a much deeper way than, for example, a piece of wood or a plot of land, or whatever else we call “property.” Children “belong” to their parents, yet they are free creatures of God in their own right, each with his own calling and his own newness and uniqueness before God. They belong to each other, not as property, but in mutual responsibility. They belong to each other precisely by accepting one another’s freedom and by supporting one another in love and knowledge—and in this communion they are simultaneously free and one for all eternity.
--Pope Benedict XVI,
Jesus of Nazareth.
