30. The Family, a Community of Life and Love
13. Marriage Results in the Family
In the preceding chapter, we have seen that matrimony, established by an act of love, arises from the consent of the spouses. Conjugal consent is the mutual decision to get married, the foundational act of marriage. Conjugal love is the object of the consent. The consent, an act of the will, comes to be by reason of the contract or conjugal covenant. The consent of the spouses establishes a conjugal communion.
The term communion describes the personal relationship between the “I” and the “thou.” In contrast, the word community has a wider scope; it describes relationships among several persons. The birth of a child naturally turns the conjugal communion into a small community, which is the family. This, however, does not mean that marriage is only a means to an end, for, although marriage leads to the establishment of a family in the natural course of things, marriage itself is not absorbed by and lost in the family. It retains its distinct existence as an institution whose inner structure is different from that of the family.
Marriage and the family are ordered to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of the children.1 This implies a task and a challenge. The task involves the spouses in living out their original covenant. Moreover, the children should consolidate the conjugal covenant, enriching and deepening the love of the spouses. This is the challenge.
14. Human Beings Need to Grow in Families
Animals do not have families. Generally speaking, animals derive information through the most direct sensorial impacts. This is part of the divine design. Humans not only mate, but they also live in families and possess spirit. Furthermore, people need to grow in a specific environment to develop:
· privacy, which fosters individual autonomy and responsibility),
· affection, which fosters sociability, and is conducive to the development of the social virtues of a good citizen.
And this can be done only within the family. The family is a natural society; it is natural for man to form a family. The family is also called a “domestic society” (from Latin domus, “household”), “conjugal society” (from Latin con-iux, “fellow yoke-bearer”), and “matrimonial society” (from Latin matri munium, “defense for the source of life”). The mother (i.e., the source of life) is the stable element of the family.
15. Trinitarian Origin of the Family
By giving life within the family, parents share in God’s creative power, and, by raising their children, they become sharers in God’s paternal—and at the same time maternal—way of teaching. Through Christ, all education, within the family and outside of it, becomes part of God’s own pedagogy of salvation, which is addressed to individuals and families and culminates in the paschal mystery of the Lord’s death and Resurrection.2
15a) The Imprints of God’s Intra-Trinitarian Life
Because God is Father by essence, he has wanted that we, who share his image and likeness, could also be parents. Even more, as the three divine Persons are co-eternal and co-equal, in an analogous manner, all the family members are persons of equal dignity.
God is love. There is an infinite love and total self-giving among the three divine Persons. The mutual love of Father and Son—subsistent love—is the Holy Spirit. This divine love is reproduced in man. Man finds his fulfillment only through the sincere gift of self, i.e., in the truth of the noble love, worthy of a human person. Thus, the Holy Spirit is also the foundation of the mutual help between the spouses. He is a consoler, the root of the joy and the fecundity that is brought about by married love.
We were told: “You shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). The Holy Spirit is the mutual gift of Father and Son. Likewise, in the human family, the child is a divine gift that results from the mutual donation of the spouses.
15b) God and the Family
Men sinned against God and forgot about his plans. God then decided to punish them with the Deluge. But, in advance, God chose a family, Noah’s, to assure the continuity of human life on earth and carry on his covenant. “I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you” (Gn 6:18). The will of God to count on the family for his plan of salvation is confirmed with the promises that are given to the patriarchs. God told Abraham: “By you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves” (Gn 12:3). Similar blessings reached Isaac and Jacob. Later, God promised David that the Redeemer would sprout from his family. Every family must remember these facts, and must go back to the “beginning” of God’s creative act if it is to attain self-knowledge and self-realization in accordance with the inner truth of what it is and does in history.3
16. Two False Conceptions of the Family
Two ideologies, due to their wrong conception of the common good, envision society in a manner that is detrimental to the well-being of the family.
i) Liberalism (individualism) regards society as nothing but the sum-total of the individuals who compose it. This ideology is solely concerned with the “rights” of the individual, which it places above those of the family. Consequently, it will tend to advocate the “right” to divorce, abortion, sterilization, and contraception, even though those alleged rights are in conflict with the rights of the family to life, stability, and procreation.
ii) Socialism (collectivism) regards society as something higher than the individuals who compose it, and subordinates their rights and those of the family to the rights of society, incarnated in the state. The state will thus dictate to families, in accordance with “national policy,” what is the best line to follow. Since, in a socialist system, this “national policy” is determined exclusively in relation to economic or material welfare, it tends to introduce population control policies, regardless of the rights of the family.
In both systems, the family is crushed between the claims of the individual and the claims of the state. This is a failure to realize that families are the natural units or constituents of society.4
17. The Family, Open to Life
As we have seen in the previous chapter, love is, essentially, a gift. Conjugal love, which makes the spouses “one flesh,” does not end with the couple, but makes them capable of the greatest possible gift: the gift of becoming cooperators with God in giving life to a new human person. Thus, in a family that is open to life, children are the precious gift of marriage.
Just as the common good of the spouses is fulfilled in conjugal love, which is open to new life, so too the common good of the family is fulfilled through that same spousal love in the newborn child. Ordination to life is a requirement not only of the institution of marriage, but also of conjugal love itself. It is a sign of the authenticity of that love.5
Parenting—the generation of a human being—does not end in begetting children. It surpasses the purely biological level and demands the investment of a series of personal values in the child. For the harmonious growth of these values, a persevering and unified contribution by both parents is necessary.6 The love of the spouses and the begetting of children create personal relationships and primordial responsibilities among the members of the same family. Since new life that is born into the world brings along a right to love and education, spouses receive with each child the gift of a new responsibility from God: educating the children in human values and the love of God and neighbor. The love of God for man has so disposed things that human life is born and grows under the protection of the community of love that is the family; this fact alone should motivate the parents to welcome life. Parental love is, for the children, the visible sign of the very love of God, “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph 3:15), and is, for the parents, the enlargement of their conjugal vocation with that of parenthood.
The inclination of love to serve life is not only biological but spiritual. Thus, when procreation is not possible, it takes other forms, but conjugal life does not lose its value for this reason. Physical sterility can be for spouses the occasion for other important services to the life of the human person, for example, adoption, various forms of educational work, and assistance to other families and poor and handicapped children.7
Similarly, those who are called to give themselves to God alone with undivided heart know that their apostolic celibacy is a singular source of spiritual fertility in the world.8
18. The Family, a Community
A community is a stable group, freely established or accepted, where many valuable things are shared and possessed in common. We refer to communities when the goods that are possessed in common are spiritual goods. When the shared goods are purely material or peripheral, then we prefer to talk of societies. In the first case, the bonds that link together the members of the group are mostly spiritual, in the second, the bonds are juridical.
There could be in the community material and spiritual legal bonds among the members, a clear manifestation of our nature. But the unity and strength of the community is founded on the spirit, the most important links being knowledge and love, that is to say, friendship.
Material goods are finite, and thus they can be shared only by a limited number of people. The more people who possess a material good, the smaller each person’s share becomes. Not so with the spiritual goods. Knowledge and love can be possessed by many without getting diminished, and the mere fact of sharing these goods enriches all.
Anything that opposes one of the elements of marriage (the matrimonial institution itself and conjugal love) opposes marriage and the family. Thus, polygamy, divorce, and “free love” obscure the dignity of the institution of marriage. Selfishness, hedonism, and all illicit practices against conception are opposed to conjugal love and, therefore, to the good of marriage and the family.
These considerations help us to better understand the family as a community of life and love, founded in the conjugal union.9
18a) To Form a Christian Family, a Divine Vocation
Even if Christian marriage, in the making, appears as giving consent to a contract, a single act, it has a transcendental dimension as a result of a divine initiative. Grace establishes Christian marriage as a sacrament. The sacrament of marriage is the result of a joint realization of having received a vocation to form a Christian family. The Christian family becomes a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The state of marriage becomes a permanent divine vocation to become that divine sign and image (holiness) and to manifest the love of God to the world (apostolate).10
Footnotes:
1. Cf. CCC, 2201–2233; Bishop Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II), Love and Responsibility, 217–218.
2. Cf. John Paul II, Letter to Families, Feb. 2, 1994.
3. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 17.
4. Cf. J.M. de Torre, Person, Family and State (Manila: Southeast Asian Foundation, 1991), 73.
5. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 14, 28.
6. Cf. Ibid., 11.
7. Cf. Ibid., 14.
8. Cf. LG, 42; CCC, 2349.
9. Cf. John XXIII, Enc. Mater et Magistra, 51; Paul VI, Enc. Populorum Progressio, 36.
10. Cf. CCC, 2204–2206; GS, 49.
In the preceding chapter, we have seen that matrimony, established by an act of love, arises from the consent of the spouses. Conjugal consent is the mutual decision to get married, the foundational act of marriage. Conjugal love is the object of the consent. The consent, an act of the will, comes to be by reason of the contract or conjugal covenant. The consent of the spouses establishes a conjugal communion.
The term communion describes the personal relationship between the “I” and the “thou.” In contrast, the word community has a wider scope; it describes relationships among several persons. The birth of a child naturally turns the conjugal communion into a small community, which is the family. This, however, does not mean that marriage is only a means to an end, for, although marriage leads to the establishment of a family in the natural course of things, marriage itself is not absorbed by and lost in the family. It retains its distinct existence as an institution whose inner structure is different from that of the family.
Marriage and the family are ordered to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of the children.1 This implies a task and a challenge. The task involves the spouses in living out their original covenant. Moreover, the children should consolidate the conjugal covenant, enriching and deepening the love of the spouses. This is the challenge.
14. Human Beings Need to Grow in Families
Animals do not have families. Generally speaking, animals derive information through the most direct sensorial impacts. This is part of the divine design. Humans not only mate, but they also live in families and possess spirit. Furthermore, people need to grow in a specific environment to develop:
· privacy, which fosters individual autonomy and responsibility),
· affection, which fosters sociability, and is conducive to the development of the social virtues of a good citizen.
And this can be done only within the family. The family is a natural society; it is natural for man to form a family. The family is also called a “domestic society” (from Latin domus, “household”), “conjugal society” (from Latin con-iux, “fellow yoke-bearer”), and “matrimonial society” (from Latin matri munium, “defense for the source of life”). The mother (i.e., the source of life) is the stable element of the family.
15. Trinitarian Origin of the Family
By giving life within the family, parents share in God’s creative power, and, by raising their children, they become sharers in God’s paternal—and at the same time maternal—way of teaching. Through Christ, all education, within the family and outside of it, becomes part of God’s own pedagogy of salvation, which is addressed to individuals and families and culminates in the paschal mystery of the Lord’s death and Resurrection.2
15a) The Imprints of God’s Intra-Trinitarian Life
Because God is Father by essence, he has wanted that we, who share his image and likeness, could also be parents. Even more, as the three divine Persons are co-eternal and co-equal, in an analogous manner, all the family members are persons of equal dignity.
God is love. There is an infinite love and total self-giving among the three divine Persons. The mutual love of Father and Son—subsistent love—is the Holy Spirit. This divine love is reproduced in man. Man finds his fulfillment only through the sincere gift of self, i.e., in the truth of the noble love, worthy of a human person. Thus, the Holy Spirit is also the foundation of the mutual help between the spouses. He is a consoler, the root of the joy and the fecundity that is brought about by married love.
We were told: “You shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). The Holy Spirit is the mutual gift of Father and Son. Likewise, in the human family, the child is a divine gift that results from the mutual donation of the spouses.
15b) God and the Family
Men sinned against God and forgot about his plans. God then decided to punish them with the Deluge. But, in advance, God chose a family, Noah’s, to assure the continuity of human life on earth and carry on his covenant. “I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you” (Gn 6:18). The will of God to count on the family for his plan of salvation is confirmed with the promises that are given to the patriarchs. God told Abraham: “By you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves” (Gn 12:3). Similar blessings reached Isaac and Jacob. Later, God promised David that the Redeemer would sprout from his family. Every family must remember these facts, and must go back to the “beginning” of God’s creative act if it is to attain self-knowledge and self-realization in accordance with the inner truth of what it is and does in history.3
16. Two False Conceptions of the Family
Two ideologies, due to their wrong conception of the common good, envision society in a manner that is detrimental to the well-being of the family.
i) Liberalism (individualism) regards society as nothing but the sum-total of the individuals who compose it. This ideology is solely concerned with the “rights” of the individual, which it places above those of the family. Consequently, it will tend to advocate the “right” to divorce, abortion, sterilization, and contraception, even though those alleged rights are in conflict with the rights of the family to life, stability, and procreation.
ii) Socialism (collectivism) regards society as something higher than the individuals who compose it, and subordinates their rights and those of the family to the rights of society, incarnated in the state. The state will thus dictate to families, in accordance with “national policy,” what is the best line to follow. Since, in a socialist system, this “national policy” is determined exclusively in relation to economic or material welfare, it tends to introduce population control policies, regardless of the rights of the family.
In both systems, the family is crushed between the claims of the individual and the claims of the state. This is a failure to realize that families are the natural units or constituents of society.4
17. The Family, Open to Life
As we have seen in the previous chapter, love is, essentially, a gift. Conjugal love, which makes the spouses “one flesh,” does not end with the couple, but makes them capable of the greatest possible gift: the gift of becoming cooperators with God in giving life to a new human person. Thus, in a family that is open to life, children are the precious gift of marriage.
Just as the common good of the spouses is fulfilled in conjugal love, which is open to new life, so too the common good of the family is fulfilled through that same spousal love in the newborn child. Ordination to life is a requirement not only of the institution of marriage, but also of conjugal love itself. It is a sign of the authenticity of that love.5
Parenting—the generation of a human being—does not end in begetting children. It surpasses the purely biological level and demands the investment of a series of personal values in the child. For the harmonious growth of these values, a persevering and unified contribution by both parents is necessary.6 The love of the spouses and the begetting of children create personal relationships and primordial responsibilities among the members of the same family. Since new life that is born into the world brings along a right to love and education, spouses receive with each child the gift of a new responsibility from God: educating the children in human values and the love of God and neighbor. The love of God for man has so disposed things that human life is born and grows under the protection of the community of love that is the family; this fact alone should motivate the parents to welcome life. Parental love is, for the children, the visible sign of the very love of God, “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph 3:15), and is, for the parents, the enlargement of their conjugal vocation with that of parenthood.
The inclination of love to serve life is not only biological but spiritual. Thus, when procreation is not possible, it takes other forms, but conjugal life does not lose its value for this reason. Physical sterility can be for spouses the occasion for other important services to the life of the human person, for example, adoption, various forms of educational work, and assistance to other families and poor and handicapped children.7
Similarly, those who are called to give themselves to God alone with undivided heart know that their apostolic celibacy is a singular source of spiritual fertility in the world.8
18. The Family, a Community
A community is a stable group, freely established or accepted, where many valuable things are shared and possessed in common. We refer to communities when the goods that are possessed in common are spiritual goods. When the shared goods are purely material or peripheral, then we prefer to talk of societies. In the first case, the bonds that link together the members of the group are mostly spiritual, in the second, the bonds are juridical.
There could be in the community material and spiritual legal bonds among the members, a clear manifestation of our nature. But the unity and strength of the community is founded on the spirit, the most important links being knowledge and love, that is to say, friendship.
Material goods are finite, and thus they can be shared only by a limited number of people. The more people who possess a material good, the smaller each person’s share becomes. Not so with the spiritual goods. Knowledge and love can be possessed by many without getting diminished, and the mere fact of sharing these goods enriches all.
Anything that opposes one of the elements of marriage (the matrimonial institution itself and conjugal love) opposes marriage and the family. Thus, polygamy, divorce, and “free love” obscure the dignity of the institution of marriage. Selfishness, hedonism, and all illicit practices against conception are opposed to conjugal love and, therefore, to the good of marriage and the family.
These considerations help us to better understand the family as a community of life and love, founded in the conjugal union.9
18a) To Form a Christian Family, a Divine Vocation
Even if Christian marriage, in the making, appears as giving consent to a contract, a single act, it has a transcendental dimension as a result of a divine initiative. Grace establishes Christian marriage as a sacrament. The sacrament of marriage is the result of a joint realization of having received a vocation to form a Christian family. The Christian family becomes a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The state of marriage becomes a permanent divine vocation to become that divine sign and image (holiness) and to manifest the love of God to the world (apostolate).10
Footnotes:
1. Cf. CCC, 2201–2233; Bishop Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II), Love and Responsibility, 217–218.
2. Cf. John Paul II, Letter to Families, Feb. 2, 1994.
3. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 17.
4. Cf. J.M. de Torre, Person, Family and State (Manila: Southeast Asian Foundation, 1991), 73.
5. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 14, 28.
6. Cf. Ibid., 11.
7. Cf. Ibid., 14.
8. Cf. LG, 42; CCC, 2349.
9. Cf. John XXIII, Enc. Mater et Magistra, 51; Paul VI, Enc. Populorum Progressio, 36.
10. Cf. CCC, 2204–2206; GS, 49.