31. Forming a Community of Persons
Part II
The Mission of the Family: Forming a Community of Persons
19. The Role of the Family
In the apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, John Paul II emphasizes that the family must become what it is:
The family finds in the plan of God, the Creator and Redeemer, not only its identity, what it is, but also its mission, what it can and should do. The role that God calls the family to perform in history derives from what the family is; its role represents the dynamic and existential development of what it is. Each family finds within itself a summons that cannot be ignored, and that specifies both its dignity and its responsibility: Family, become what you are!1
The Christian family accomplishes its specific and original ecclesial mission by realizing itself as such, and not by any task that is superimposed on it. Accordingly, the family must go back to the “beginning” of God’s creative act if it is to attain self-knowledge and self-realization. God created the family as an intimate community of life and love. Thus, the family’s mission is to become more and more what it is: a community of life and love, which will be brought to perfection only in the Kingdom of God. In the final analysis, the role of the family is specified by love.
The family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love. This is a living reflection of and a real sharing in God’s love for humanity and the love of Christ for the Church, his bride.
Every task of the family is an expression and concrete actuation of that fundamental mission.…
With love as its point of departure and making constant reference to it, we can enumerate the four general tasks of the family:
i) forming a community of persons
ii) serving life
iii) participating in the development of society
iv) sharing in the life and mission of the Church.2
We will study each of these tasks of the family in the successive chapters.
Forming a Community of Persons
We have seen that the family is a community of persons. We shall see now that one of the aspects of its mission is to form, consolidate, and expand that community.
20. Love, the Principle and Strength of the Family
In its purer form, love is a stable determination of self-giving for the good of the beloved. It is a genuine and permanent disposition of benevolence, stronger than age, and beauty, impregnable to changes of fortune. Love accepts, hopes, and forgives. It fills the human heart with the inexplicable joy of giving: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).
We have seen how the person is an image of the God of love. The family, which is founded and given life by love, is a community of persons: husband and wife, parents and children, relatives. Without love, the family is not a community of persons and cannot live, grow, and perfect itself as such. This is so because man cannot live without love. Man’s life remains senseless, incomprehensible to himself, until love is revealed to him. To find himself, he needs to encounter love, experience it, make it his own, and share it with others.
The love between a husband and a wife and between the other members of the family is given life and sustenance by an increasing inner dynamism leading the family to an ever deeper and more intense communion, which is the foundation and soul of the community of marriage and the family.3
The mission to guard, reveal, and communicate love is entrusted to every human family, whether Christian or not. This is the plan of God—the creator of the family. He uses the marriage of man and woman, and the family based on this union, as an image of his loving union with his people (cf. Hos 1–3). Thus, marriage is a fitting sign of the covenant of life and love that God wills to exist between himself and his people. Marriage is a reality that points to something beyond itself—the love-giving union of God and humankind.4
But even a greater mission has been entrusted to the Christian family, according to the plan of God the Redeemer. We must remember that we are sinners in need of Redemption. “Man finds that he is unable of himself to overcome the assaults of evil successfully.… But the Lord himself came to free and strengthen man, renewing him inwardly and casting out the ‘prince of this world’ (Jn 12:31), who held him in the bondage of sin.”5 Christ the Redeemer not only re-creates human persons and reveals to them their fullest identity; he also re-creates marriage and family. In doing so, he reveals their full identity.
The Christian family finds its origin, inner identity, and vocation in Christ and his bride, the Church. For it is the Church, as John Paul II declares, that both gives birth to the Christian family and, by proclaiming the word of God, reveals to the Christian family its true identity: what it is and what it should be according to the Lord’s plan.6 Since the reality of the Christian family comes from its being generated by the Church, the identity of the Christian family is that of a miniature Church, summoned to imitate and relive the same self-giving and sacrificial love that the Lord Jesus has for the entire human race.7
In forming a community of persons, Christian husbands and wives bring into existence a miniature Church. Thus, the Christian family constitutes a specific revelation and realization of ecclesial communion, and, for this reason, the family can and should be called a domestic Church.8
21. Conjugal Love Expands into Family Love
Conjugal love results in family love, but it does not disappear when new members come to the family. On the contrary, as their mission, husband and wife are called to grow continually in their communion through day-to-day fidelity to their marriage promise of total and mutual self-giving. Conjugal love must increase by means of its generous exercise. Grace heals and perfects conjugal love. With it, the spouses are able to practice the spirit of sacrifice, magnanimity, and steadfastness in love.9
Moreover, this love between the spouses reaches its culmination in the giving of life to children, and extends itself as the exemplary principle of the whole family community. Therefore, the first task of the family, demanded by its very end, is a constant effort to develop an authentic community of persons.10 The love between parents and children, brothers and sisters, and relatives and household (family love) derives from the love that is specific to husband and wife, that is, from conjugal love. Thus, conjugal love is the inner dynamic principle giving to marriage and the family the capacity to carry out rightly its specific and original ecclesial role.
This sacred work can be brought to perfection only when the spouses have made the mutual, exclusive, and lasting transfer of the right to their bodies, not only to a conjugal act, or to a series of them. As love grows, so will the family grow. Anything that hinders this love also hinders and affects the family.
22. Conditions for the Development of the Community
The community of marriage cannot grow, save by respecting God’s plan, which is inscribed by the Creator in the heart of man and woman and perfected by Christ in the Sacrament of Marriage. Since the family begins with marriage, the goods of marriage are related to the goods of the family. Conjugal love, that power and inspiring dynamism of the conjugal communion, has, as its first task, the development of the family community, and it accomplishes this task in its concrete characteristics of unity and indissolubility.
22a) Unity
The nucleus of the family community is the conjugal communion, born from the covenant of conjugal love. Conjugal love results in the union—communion—of two persons: husband and wife. And they are called to grow continually in their communion through fidelity and total self-giving.
Love of friendship, which is the root of marriage, consists in equality. There is a complete equality among the spouses, and a marvelous complementarity of roles. Man gives what he has as specifically his own (his masculinity) and woman gives herself (her femininity). If they communicate all they have, they cannot share anything with a third party. If they love each other fully, they will be opposed to sharing themselves with another person.
So, since, according to natural law, it is not lawful for the wife to have several husbands—since this is contrary to the certainty of the paternity of the offspring—it would not be lawful, on the other hand, for a man to have several wives, for the friendship between wife and husband would not be free and equal, but somewhat servile. This natural law argument is corroborated by experience, for among husbands having plural wives, the wives are relegated to the status of servants.
Polygamy contradicts the marital communion because it is contrary to the equal personal dignity of husband and wife.11
Unity, a requirement of marriage, is also a requirement for the good of the family. Therefore, unity is a profoundly human demand, which Christ assumes and perfects with the Sacrament of Marriage.
22b) Indissolubility
Conjugal love—and hence the marital communion—is also characterized by its indissolubility. Indissolubility is rooted in the personal and total self-giving of the couple, and it is required by the good of the children, and, therefore, by the good of the family.
Since sex is naturally ordained to the generation and education of offspring, and this requires a very long time, we must come to the conclusion that matrimony should endure throughout an entire life.12 St. Thomas Aquinas gives reasons that are based on natural law (and, therefore, valid for all people of all times, religions and cultures) in favor of indissolubility. They can be summarized thus:
· There are harmful consequences of a broken home for the upbringing of the children.
· The equality of sexes is shattered; if divorce is allowed, women are at a disadvantage, since it is harder for them to remarry.
· The security and welfare of the family suffers; if spouses know that they may get divorced at any time, they will not take care to secure the future by saving, for example.
· Public order is threatened; divorce easily creates tensions.13
Indissolubility is a fruit, a sign, and a requirement of the absolute faithful love that God has for man and that the Lord Jesus Christ has for the Church. The spouse who, abandoned by the other partner, remains faithful to his obligations gives special witness to this fidelity, a witness of which the world today has much need.14
23. The School of Deeper Humanity
It is impossible to reach one’s perfection without helping others to reach perfection. One’s happiness is inseparable from one’s contribution to the happiness of others. Nowhere is this truer than within the family. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that, when we talk about the common good, we refer to two realities: the good itself, and the way to its achievement. The good that is provided by the family is ultimately everlasting life in God, and the means are the children and the mutual help of the spouses. The fulfillment of one’s parental duties with perfection, the eagerness of children to learn and be educated, the care of husband and wife for each other, and their generosity toward God are necessary for each one’s integral human fulfillment. Beginning from the parents, an atmosphere of love at home bears fruits:
The self-giving that inspires the love of husband and wife for each other is the model and norm for the self-giving that must be practiced in the relationships between brothers and sisters and the different generations living together in the family.15
Furthermore:
All the members of the family, each according to his or her own gift, have the grace and responsibility of building, day by day the communion of persons, making the family a school of deeper humanity. This happens where there is care and love for the little ones, the sick, the aged; where there is mutual service every day; where there is a sharing of goods of joys and of sorrows.16
Unfortunately, like in any human society, there might be selfishness, tension, discord, or conflict among the members of a family that wound the spirit of communion. “Family communion can only be preserved and perfected through a great spirit of sacrifice.”17 In spite of the frustrations and divisions, “every family is called by the God of peace to have the joyous and renewing experience of reconciliation, that is, communion re-established, unity restored.”18
But in order to carry out its role, the family must count, first of all, on the strength of love. Love is naturally present in the relationships among the different members of the family. It must also become the interior strength that shapes and animates the family communion and community. Moreover, the role of the sacraments in family life should not be underestimated:
Participation in the sacrament of reconciliation and in the banquet of the one body of Christ offers to the Christian family the grace and responsibility of overcoming every division and of moving towards the fullness of communion willed by God, responding in this way to the ardent desire of the Lord: “That they be one.”19
In what follows, we shall describe the mission of the different members of the family, who should find in love the “source and the constant impetus for welcoming, respecting, and promoting each one of its members in his or her lofty dignity as a person; that is, as a living image of God.”20
24. The Role of the Woman
The apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio describes the task of the woman as mother, spouse, and daughter. The point of departure is her equal dignity and responsibility with men. The defense of this dignity has been a true title of honor for the Church throughout the centuries, always faithful to the revealed teaching that, in Christ, “there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3: 28). Within this perspective, John Paul II shows, in confronting a crude but very widespread error, that the promotion of the dignity of women would be false were it to compromise her specific role within the family. The true advancement of women requires the clear recognition of the value of their maternal and family role, by comparison with all other public roles and all other professions.21
In particular, this means that wives and mothers should not, in practice, be compelled to work outside the home, and that their families should be able to live and prosper in a dignified manner, even when they themselves devote their full time to their own family.
In overcoming the modern misconception that has arisen over this truth, there are two pillars on which to build:
i) There is need to build a renewed theology of work, which will illuminate the meaning and radical dignity of every kind of human work, and therefore of that of the woman in the domestic hearth. Many discriminations and current prejudices arise from a failure to understand the authentic meaning of the dignity of work.
It is well to remember that the dignity of work is based on Love. Man’s great privilege is to be able to love and to transcend what is fleeting and ephemeral. He can love other creatures, pronounce an “I” and a “you” which are full of meaning. And he can love God, who opens heaven’s gates to us, makes us members of his family and allows us also to talk to him in friendship, face to face.
That is why a man ought not to limit himself to material production. Work is born of love; it is a manifestation of love and is directed toward love. We see the hand of God, not only in the wonders of nature, but also in our experience of work and effort. Work thus becomes prayer and thanksgiving, because we know we are placed on earth by God, that we are loved by him and made heirs to his promises.22
ii) The other pillar is overcoming preconceived ideas about the dignity of women that would take away all her proper characteristics, gifts of the Creator. Dignity “does not mean for women a renunciation of their femininity or an imitation of the male role, but the fullness of true feminine humanity, which should be expressed in their activity, whether in the family or outside it.”23
25. Men as Husbands and Fathers
Husbands must love their wives. “Husbands should not forget that they belong to their wives, and that as long as they live they have the obligation to show the same affection as a young man who has just fallen in love.”24
“Efforts must be made to restore socially the conviction that the place and task of the father in and for the family is of unique and irreplaceable importance.”25 The love for his wife and his love and devotion to his children are the normal way to understand and fulfill his own duties. The community of the family is lacking something if either the mother’s or the father’s presence is missing.
26. The Rights and Duties of Parents
The right and duty of parents to give education has three properties:26
i) It is essential in that it is connected with the transmission of human life.
ii) It is original and primary with regard to the educational role of others, on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children.
iii) It is irreplaceable and inalienable, and therefore, incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others, except in the case of physical or psychological impossibility.
Since they have conferred life on their children, parents have the original, primary and inalienable right to educate them; hence they … have the right to educate their children in conformity with their moral and religious convictions, taking into account the cultural traditions of the family that favor the good and the dignity of the child; they should also receive from society the necessary aid and assistance to perform their educational role properly.27
The rights and duties of parents flow from the nature and purpose of marriage and the family:
· Right to the subsistence and life of the family
· Right to the fulfillment of their own mission:
o Right to procreation, which no state policy of population control should interfere with
o Right to bring up the children—to choose the school when the time comes (the role of the school, both private and public, is subsidiary to that of the family)
· Right to adequate financial support, or a just salary, taking into account the needs of the entire family
· Right to protection and help, such as social security.
The rights of the parents, however, are not absolute rights, since they cannot command their children to do anything against the natural law, such as stealing, or marrying against their will, for example. These rights are binding for as long as the children are under their parents’ authority.
Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centers chosen and controlled by them. In this regard, the Church reaffirms the law of subsidiarity, which the school is bound to observe when it cooperates in sex education, by entering into the same spirit that animates the parents.28
This education must bring the children to a knowledge of and respect for the moral norms as the necessary and highly valuable guarantee for responsible personal growth in human sexuality. No one is capable of giving moral education in this delicate area better than duly prepared parents.29
27. Attacks against the Rights of the Parents
The rights of the parents are denied by the following false ideologies:
· The various forms of socialism, such as fascism, Nazism, and communism, which view children as the property of the state or of society, and which absorb all individual rights
· Educational liberalism (of Rousseau and John Dewey), which rejects all authority in the educational field, whether religious, parental, or even intellectual
· Anarchism, which rejects all political and social authority30
28. The Rights of Children
The rights and duties of children are even more urgent because they are weaker. The smaller the child is, the more is he in need of everything, particularly when he is sick, suffering, or handicapped. Specifically, the child has a right to “acceptance, love, esteem, many-sided and concerted material, emotional, educational, and spiritual concern.”31 Attention to this matter is a sign of possessing the correct Christian concept of the family. “Concern for the child, even before birth, from the first moment of conception and then throughout the years of infancy and youth, is the primary and fundamental test of the relationship of one human being to another.”32
The children have a right to be trained and guided for independent life. They should be equipped in such a way that they can eventually be self-reliant, with freedom and personal responsibility. For the attainment of this goal, they need:
· Affection, i.e., the feeling of being loved, which is primarily, though not exclusively, provided by the gentle and tender hand of the mother,
· Firm authority, i.e., the clear and orderly guidance that is primarily, though not exclusively, provided by the father.
Without the first, children grow up bashful, inhibited, scrupulous, and fearful. Without the latter, they grow up selfish, ruthless, and spoiled individualists.33
Like all members of the family, children also have duties: the responsibility to participate actively in the family community. “By means of love, respect and obedience toward their parents, children offer their specific and irreplaceable contribution to the construction of an authentically human and Christian family.”34
29. The Elderly in the Family
The elderly carry out the important mission of being witnesses to the past and a source of wisdom for the young for the future. Setting them aside causes acute suffering to them and spiritually impoverishes the family. “The pastoral activity of the Church helps everyone to discover and to make good use of the role of the elderly within the civil and ecclesial community, in particular within the family.”35 The elderly bring continuity in the transmission of values, together with the charisma of wisdom and understanding.
Footnotes:
1. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 17.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 18.
4. Cf. CCC, 2205.
5. GS, 13.
6. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 49.
7. Cf. W. May, Marriage, the Rock on Which the Family is Built; CCC, 2204.
8. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 21; LG, 11.
9. Cf. GS, 49; Pius XI, Enc. Casti Connubii, 287.
10. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 18.
11. Cf. Ibid., 19.
12. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3.123.
13. Cf. J.M. de Torre, Person, Family and State, 91; CCC, 2382–2386.
14. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 20.
15. Ibid., 37.
16. Ibid., 21.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 22.
21. Cf. Ibid., 23.
22. St. Josemaría Escrivá, Christ is Passing By, 48.
23. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 23; cf. Ramón García de Haro, Marriage and the Family in the Documents of the Magisterium, 353.
24. St. Josemaría Escrivá, Christ is Passing By, 26.
25. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 25.
26. Cf. Ibid., 36; CCC, 2221–2231.
27. John Paul II, Charter of the Rights of the Family, Oct. 22, 1983.
28. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 37.
29. Cf. Pontifical Council for the Family, Guidelines for Education within the Family, 42–47.
30. Cf. J.M. de Torre, Person, Family and State, 118.
31. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 26.
32. Ibid.
33. Cf. J.M. de Torre, Person, Family and State, 117.
34. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 21.
35. Cf. Ibid., 27.
The Mission of the Family: Forming a Community of Persons
19. The Role of the Family
In the apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, John Paul II emphasizes that the family must become what it is:
The family finds in the plan of God, the Creator and Redeemer, not only its identity, what it is, but also its mission, what it can and should do. The role that God calls the family to perform in history derives from what the family is; its role represents the dynamic and existential development of what it is. Each family finds within itself a summons that cannot be ignored, and that specifies both its dignity and its responsibility: Family, become what you are!1
The Christian family accomplishes its specific and original ecclesial mission by realizing itself as such, and not by any task that is superimposed on it. Accordingly, the family must go back to the “beginning” of God’s creative act if it is to attain self-knowledge and self-realization. God created the family as an intimate community of life and love. Thus, the family’s mission is to become more and more what it is: a community of life and love, which will be brought to perfection only in the Kingdom of God. In the final analysis, the role of the family is specified by love.
The family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love. This is a living reflection of and a real sharing in God’s love for humanity and the love of Christ for the Church, his bride.
Every task of the family is an expression and concrete actuation of that fundamental mission.…
With love as its point of departure and making constant reference to it, we can enumerate the four general tasks of the family:
i) forming a community of persons
ii) serving life
iii) participating in the development of society
iv) sharing in the life and mission of the Church.2
We will study each of these tasks of the family in the successive chapters.
Forming a Community of Persons
We have seen that the family is a community of persons. We shall see now that one of the aspects of its mission is to form, consolidate, and expand that community.
20. Love, the Principle and Strength of the Family
In its purer form, love is a stable determination of self-giving for the good of the beloved. It is a genuine and permanent disposition of benevolence, stronger than age, and beauty, impregnable to changes of fortune. Love accepts, hopes, and forgives. It fills the human heart with the inexplicable joy of giving: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).
We have seen how the person is an image of the God of love. The family, which is founded and given life by love, is a community of persons: husband and wife, parents and children, relatives. Without love, the family is not a community of persons and cannot live, grow, and perfect itself as such. This is so because man cannot live without love. Man’s life remains senseless, incomprehensible to himself, until love is revealed to him. To find himself, he needs to encounter love, experience it, make it his own, and share it with others.
The love between a husband and a wife and between the other members of the family is given life and sustenance by an increasing inner dynamism leading the family to an ever deeper and more intense communion, which is the foundation and soul of the community of marriage and the family.3
The mission to guard, reveal, and communicate love is entrusted to every human family, whether Christian or not. This is the plan of God—the creator of the family. He uses the marriage of man and woman, and the family based on this union, as an image of his loving union with his people (cf. Hos 1–3). Thus, marriage is a fitting sign of the covenant of life and love that God wills to exist between himself and his people. Marriage is a reality that points to something beyond itself—the love-giving union of God and humankind.4
But even a greater mission has been entrusted to the Christian family, according to the plan of God the Redeemer. We must remember that we are sinners in need of Redemption. “Man finds that he is unable of himself to overcome the assaults of evil successfully.… But the Lord himself came to free and strengthen man, renewing him inwardly and casting out the ‘prince of this world’ (Jn 12:31), who held him in the bondage of sin.”5 Christ the Redeemer not only re-creates human persons and reveals to them their fullest identity; he also re-creates marriage and family. In doing so, he reveals their full identity.
The Christian family finds its origin, inner identity, and vocation in Christ and his bride, the Church. For it is the Church, as John Paul II declares, that both gives birth to the Christian family and, by proclaiming the word of God, reveals to the Christian family its true identity: what it is and what it should be according to the Lord’s plan.6 Since the reality of the Christian family comes from its being generated by the Church, the identity of the Christian family is that of a miniature Church, summoned to imitate and relive the same self-giving and sacrificial love that the Lord Jesus has for the entire human race.7
In forming a community of persons, Christian husbands and wives bring into existence a miniature Church. Thus, the Christian family constitutes a specific revelation and realization of ecclesial communion, and, for this reason, the family can and should be called a domestic Church.8
21. Conjugal Love Expands into Family Love
Conjugal love results in family love, but it does not disappear when new members come to the family. On the contrary, as their mission, husband and wife are called to grow continually in their communion through day-to-day fidelity to their marriage promise of total and mutual self-giving. Conjugal love must increase by means of its generous exercise. Grace heals and perfects conjugal love. With it, the spouses are able to practice the spirit of sacrifice, magnanimity, and steadfastness in love.9
Moreover, this love between the spouses reaches its culmination in the giving of life to children, and extends itself as the exemplary principle of the whole family community. Therefore, the first task of the family, demanded by its very end, is a constant effort to develop an authentic community of persons.10 The love between parents and children, brothers and sisters, and relatives and household (family love) derives from the love that is specific to husband and wife, that is, from conjugal love. Thus, conjugal love is the inner dynamic principle giving to marriage and the family the capacity to carry out rightly its specific and original ecclesial role.
This sacred work can be brought to perfection only when the spouses have made the mutual, exclusive, and lasting transfer of the right to their bodies, not only to a conjugal act, or to a series of them. As love grows, so will the family grow. Anything that hinders this love also hinders and affects the family.
22. Conditions for the Development of the Community
The community of marriage cannot grow, save by respecting God’s plan, which is inscribed by the Creator in the heart of man and woman and perfected by Christ in the Sacrament of Marriage. Since the family begins with marriage, the goods of marriage are related to the goods of the family. Conjugal love, that power and inspiring dynamism of the conjugal communion, has, as its first task, the development of the family community, and it accomplishes this task in its concrete characteristics of unity and indissolubility.
22a) Unity
The nucleus of the family community is the conjugal communion, born from the covenant of conjugal love. Conjugal love results in the union—communion—of two persons: husband and wife. And they are called to grow continually in their communion through fidelity and total self-giving.
Love of friendship, which is the root of marriage, consists in equality. There is a complete equality among the spouses, and a marvelous complementarity of roles. Man gives what he has as specifically his own (his masculinity) and woman gives herself (her femininity). If they communicate all they have, they cannot share anything with a third party. If they love each other fully, they will be opposed to sharing themselves with another person.
So, since, according to natural law, it is not lawful for the wife to have several husbands—since this is contrary to the certainty of the paternity of the offspring—it would not be lawful, on the other hand, for a man to have several wives, for the friendship between wife and husband would not be free and equal, but somewhat servile. This natural law argument is corroborated by experience, for among husbands having plural wives, the wives are relegated to the status of servants.
Polygamy contradicts the marital communion because it is contrary to the equal personal dignity of husband and wife.11
Unity, a requirement of marriage, is also a requirement for the good of the family. Therefore, unity is a profoundly human demand, which Christ assumes and perfects with the Sacrament of Marriage.
22b) Indissolubility
Conjugal love—and hence the marital communion—is also characterized by its indissolubility. Indissolubility is rooted in the personal and total self-giving of the couple, and it is required by the good of the children, and, therefore, by the good of the family.
Since sex is naturally ordained to the generation and education of offspring, and this requires a very long time, we must come to the conclusion that matrimony should endure throughout an entire life.12 St. Thomas Aquinas gives reasons that are based on natural law (and, therefore, valid for all people of all times, religions and cultures) in favor of indissolubility. They can be summarized thus:
· There are harmful consequences of a broken home for the upbringing of the children.
· The equality of sexes is shattered; if divorce is allowed, women are at a disadvantage, since it is harder for them to remarry.
· The security and welfare of the family suffers; if spouses know that they may get divorced at any time, they will not take care to secure the future by saving, for example.
· Public order is threatened; divorce easily creates tensions.13
Indissolubility is a fruit, a sign, and a requirement of the absolute faithful love that God has for man and that the Lord Jesus Christ has for the Church. The spouse who, abandoned by the other partner, remains faithful to his obligations gives special witness to this fidelity, a witness of which the world today has much need.14
23. The School of Deeper Humanity
It is impossible to reach one’s perfection without helping others to reach perfection. One’s happiness is inseparable from one’s contribution to the happiness of others. Nowhere is this truer than within the family. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that, when we talk about the common good, we refer to two realities: the good itself, and the way to its achievement. The good that is provided by the family is ultimately everlasting life in God, and the means are the children and the mutual help of the spouses. The fulfillment of one’s parental duties with perfection, the eagerness of children to learn and be educated, the care of husband and wife for each other, and their generosity toward God are necessary for each one’s integral human fulfillment. Beginning from the parents, an atmosphere of love at home bears fruits:
The self-giving that inspires the love of husband and wife for each other is the model and norm for the self-giving that must be practiced in the relationships between brothers and sisters and the different generations living together in the family.15
Furthermore:
All the members of the family, each according to his or her own gift, have the grace and responsibility of building, day by day the communion of persons, making the family a school of deeper humanity. This happens where there is care and love for the little ones, the sick, the aged; where there is mutual service every day; where there is a sharing of goods of joys and of sorrows.16
Unfortunately, like in any human society, there might be selfishness, tension, discord, or conflict among the members of a family that wound the spirit of communion. “Family communion can only be preserved and perfected through a great spirit of sacrifice.”17 In spite of the frustrations and divisions, “every family is called by the God of peace to have the joyous and renewing experience of reconciliation, that is, communion re-established, unity restored.”18
But in order to carry out its role, the family must count, first of all, on the strength of love. Love is naturally present in the relationships among the different members of the family. It must also become the interior strength that shapes and animates the family communion and community. Moreover, the role of the sacraments in family life should not be underestimated:
Participation in the sacrament of reconciliation and in the banquet of the one body of Christ offers to the Christian family the grace and responsibility of overcoming every division and of moving towards the fullness of communion willed by God, responding in this way to the ardent desire of the Lord: “That they be one.”19
In what follows, we shall describe the mission of the different members of the family, who should find in love the “source and the constant impetus for welcoming, respecting, and promoting each one of its members in his or her lofty dignity as a person; that is, as a living image of God.”20
24. The Role of the Woman
The apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio describes the task of the woman as mother, spouse, and daughter. The point of departure is her equal dignity and responsibility with men. The defense of this dignity has been a true title of honor for the Church throughout the centuries, always faithful to the revealed teaching that, in Christ, “there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3: 28). Within this perspective, John Paul II shows, in confronting a crude but very widespread error, that the promotion of the dignity of women would be false were it to compromise her specific role within the family. The true advancement of women requires the clear recognition of the value of their maternal and family role, by comparison with all other public roles and all other professions.21
In particular, this means that wives and mothers should not, in practice, be compelled to work outside the home, and that their families should be able to live and prosper in a dignified manner, even when they themselves devote their full time to their own family.
In overcoming the modern misconception that has arisen over this truth, there are two pillars on which to build:
i) There is need to build a renewed theology of work, which will illuminate the meaning and radical dignity of every kind of human work, and therefore of that of the woman in the domestic hearth. Many discriminations and current prejudices arise from a failure to understand the authentic meaning of the dignity of work.
It is well to remember that the dignity of work is based on Love. Man’s great privilege is to be able to love and to transcend what is fleeting and ephemeral. He can love other creatures, pronounce an “I” and a “you” which are full of meaning. And he can love God, who opens heaven’s gates to us, makes us members of his family and allows us also to talk to him in friendship, face to face.
That is why a man ought not to limit himself to material production. Work is born of love; it is a manifestation of love and is directed toward love. We see the hand of God, not only in the wonders of nature, but also in our experience of work and effort. Work thus becomes prayer and thanksgiving, because we know we are placed on earth by God, that we are loved by him and made heirs to his promises.22
ii) The other pillar is overcoming preconceived ideas about the dignity of women that would take away all her proper characteristics, gifts of the Creator. Dignity “does not mean for women a renunciation of their femininity or an imitation of the male role, but the fullness of true feminine humanity, which should be expressed in their activity, whether in the family or outside it.”23
25. Men as Husbands and Fathers
Husbands must love their wives. “Husbands should not forget that they belong to their wives, and that as long as they live they have the obligation to show the same affection as a young man who has just fallen in love.”24
“Efforts must be made to restore socially the conviction that the place and task of the father in and for the family is of unique and irreplaceable importance.”25 The love for his wife and his love and devotion to his children are the normal way to understand and fulfill his own duties. The community of the family is lacking something if either the mother’s or the father’s presence is missing.
26. The Rights and Duties of Parents
The right and duty of parents to give education has three properties:26
i) It is essential in that it is connected with the transmission of human life.
ii) It is original and primary with regard to the educational role of others, on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children.
iii) It is irreplaceable and inalienable, and therefore, incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others, except in the case of physical or psychological impossibility.
Since they have conferred life on their children, parents have the original, primary and inalienable right to educate them; hence they … have the right to educate their children in conformity with their moral and religious convictions, taking into account the cultural traditions of the family that favor the good and the dignity of the child; they should also receive from society the necessary aid and assistance to perform their educational role properly.27
The rights and duties of parents flow from the nature and purpose of marriage and the family:
· Right to the subsistence and life of the family
· Right to the fulfillment of their own mission:
o Right to procreation, which no state policy of population control should interfere with
o Right to bring up the children—to choose the school when the time comes (the role of the school, both private and public, is subsidiary to that of the family)
· Right to adequate financial support, or a just salary, taking into account the needs of the entire family
· Right to protection and help, such as social security.
The rights of the parents, however, are not absolute rights, since they cannot command their children to do anything against the natural law, such as stealing, or marrying against their will, for example. These rights are binding for as long as the children are under their parents’ authority.
Sex education, which is a basic right and duty of parents, must always be carried out under their attentive guidance, whether at home or in educational centers chosen and controlled by them. In this regard, the Church reaffirms the law of subsidiarity, which the school is bound to observe when it cooperates in sex education, by entering into the same spirit that animates the parents.28
This education must bring the children to a knowledge of and respect for the moral norms as the necessary and highly valuable guarantee for responsible personal growth in human sexuality. No one is capable of giving moral education in this delicate area better than duly prepared parents.29
27. Attacks against the Rights of the Parents
The rights of the parents are denied by the following false ideologies:
· The various forms of socialism, such as fascism, Nazism, and communism, which view children as the property of the state or of society, and which absorb all individual rights
· Educational liberalism (of Rousseau and John Dewey), which rejects all authority in the educational field, whether religious, parental, or even intellectual
· Anarchism, which rejects all political and social authority30
28. The Rights of Children
The rights and duties of children are even more urgent because they are weaker. The smaller the child is, the more is he in need of everything, particularly when he is sick, suffering, or handicapped. Specifically, the child has a right to “acceptance, love, esteem, many-sided and concerted material, emotional, educational, and spiritual concern.”31 Attention to this matter is a sign of possessing the correct Christian concept of the family. “Concern for the child, even before birth, from the first moment of conception and then throughout the years of infancy and youth, is the primary and fundamental test of the relationship of one human being to another.”32
The children have a right to be trained and guided for independent life. They should be equipped in such a way that they can eventually be self-reliant, with freedom and personal responsibility. For the attainment of this goal, they need:
· Affection, i.e., the feeling of being loved, which is primarily, though not exclusively, provided by the gentle and tender hand of the mother,
· Firm authority, i.e., the clear and orderly guidance that is primarily, though not exclusively, provided by the father.
Without the first, children grow up bashful, inhibited, scrupulous, and fearful. Without the latter, they grow up selfish, ruthless, and spoiled individualists.33
Like all members of the family, children also have duties: the responsibility to participate actively in the family community. “By means of love, respect and obedience toward their parents, children offer their specific and irreplaceable contribution to the construction of an authentically human and Christian family.”34
29. The Elderly in the Family
The elderly carry out the important mission of being witnesses to the past and a source of wisdom for the young for the future. Setting them aside causes acute suffering to them and spiritually impoverishes the family. “The pastoral activity of the Church helps everyone to discover and to make good use of the role of the elderly within the civil and ecclesial community, in particular within the family.”35 The elderly bring continuity in the transmission of values, together with the charisma of wisdom and understanding.
Footnotes:
1. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 17.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 18.
4. Cf. CCC, 2205.
5. GS, 13.
6. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 49.
7. Cf. W. May, Marriage, the Rock on Which the Family is Built; CCC, 2204.
8. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 21; LG, 11.
9. Cf. GS, 49; Pius XI, Enc. Casti Connubii, 287.
10. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 18.
11. Cf. Ibid., 19.
12. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3.123.
13. Cf. J.M. de Torre, Person, Family and State, 91; CCC, 2382–2386.
14. Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 20.
15. Ibid., 37.
16. Ibid., 21.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 22.
21. Cf. Ibid., 23.
22. St. Josemaría Escrivá, Christ is Passing By, 48.
23. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 23; cf. Ramón García de Haro, Marriage and the Family in the Documents of the Magisterium, 353.
24. St. Josemaría Escrivá, Christ is Passing By, 26.
25. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 25.
26. Cf. Ibid., 36; CCC, 2221–2231.
27. John Paul II, Charter of the Rights of the Family, Oct. 22, 1983.
28. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 37.
29. Cf. Pontifical Council for the Family, Guidelines for Education within the Family, 42–47.
30. Cf. J.M. de Torre, Person, Family and State, 118.
31. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 26.
32. Ibid.
33. Cf. J.M. de Torre, Person, Family and State, 117.
34. John Paul II, Ap. Ex. Familiaris Consortio, 21.
35. Cf. Ibid., 27.