The Family's Role in the Development of Society

Charles J. Chaput
NFP Forum
Reproduced with Permission

(Excerpts)


Martin Luther once said, "Don't lie when you pray."

That may sound like an odd place to begin a discussion of how families should share in the building of society. But I think it's exactly the right place. Jesus told His disciples to be a leaven, and to "go make disciples of all nations." He said, "Do not be afraid," and "I will be with you always, to the close of the age." We've been working with that mandate for 2,000 years. So what has the Church accomplished?

First, we wouldn't be here today if God hadn't already done great things through His Church. The Gospel and the sacraments are alive in the world. Millions of people make them the foundation of their daily lives. But second, more people today have never heard the Gospel than at any time in the last 200 years. That's more people both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the world population. In a way, we've actually lost ground as missionaries. And even among the millions who claim to believe in Jesus Christ, many don't know their faith, or don't really practice it, or just tend to use it to justify their own choices.

.... Unfortunately, too many Christians .... live their convictions as if they were pious cliches. The language o faith gives us the words to comfort ourselves in the face of disappointment or suffering. But many of us never carry Christ beyond that. We're embarrassed to share Him with others. We're afraid to apply His teachings to our economy or our politics. And that suits modern secular culture very well, because privatized faith has no public consequences.

The trouble with such faith is this: It's a form of lying. It's hypocrisy. The greatest enemy of Jesus Christ in every age doesn't come in the shape of the world or the flesh or the devil. It's the lukewarm faith of His disciples. If we want to know why the world isn't won for Christ, take a good look in the mirror.

Henri Bergson once said, "If you want to know a man, don't listen to what he says; watch what he does." .... God didn't make us to be "good enough" Catholics. He made us to be saints. He made us for greatness and heroism. Every human heart, Christian or not, instinctively knows that. St. Irenaeus once wrote that, "the glory of God is man fully alive." God calls each of us to humanize and transform the world, and if we don't live life that way, people will seek meaning elsewhere, in counterfeits.... The witness you and I give in our daily lives has consequences beyond anything we can imagine. Example is powerful. That's why the historian Christopher Lasch once said that "an honest atheist is always to be preferred to a [dishonest] Christian."

Real religious faith has nothing to do with pious cliches, and it's never primarily centered on the self. On some level our faith should make us restless and uncomfortable, like a good infection. Karl Barth said that "to class hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the world." John Paul II tells us again and again that our Christian vocation is to take part in a struggle for the soul of the contemporary world. Real faith has very serious public consequences. It's always personal, but never private. And it always seeks to change the world.

OK, how does any of this relate to Familiaris consortio, and especially to Nos. 42-48? Let me answer that with another question. How many of you have had someone tell you, "What marvelous work the Church does in housing the homeless, feeding the poor, and helping migrant workers; it's too bad she's so hung up on the sex stuff." Buried in a remark like that is the idea that over here, Catholics have all this wonderful social doctrine -- but over there Catholics have a slightly nutty fixation on abortion, contraception, and monogamous heterosexual marriages. And if somehow Catholics could just lighten up on the sex issues, the world would open its heart to our social teaching. But it can't happen. It could never happen -- because the issues surrounding sexuality and the family connect intimately with the dignity of the human person. And the dignity of the human person is what all Catholic teaching seeks to advance. We learn this first and most fruitfully in the "school of Love" which is the family. We can't remove abortion and contraception from our priorities in Catholic social teaching anymore than we can forget about our duty to ensure proper food, clothing and shelter for children once they're born.

Vatican II described the family as "the first and vital cell of society" (AA, #11). It stressed that "the well being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life" (GS, #47). But let's go back even further, to 1891, and reread 'Rerum Novarum'; then after that to 'Quadragesimo Anno'; and 'Mater et Magistra'; 'Pacem in Terris', 'Populorum progressio', 'Laborem Exercens', 'Sollicitudo Rei Socialis', 'Centesimus Annus', right through to 'Evangelium Vitae' in 1995. Again and again, over a hundred year period, we see the family either explicitly or implicitly present as a key element in all the social teaching of the Church. Here's just one example. Paul VI's great encyclical, 'Populorum Progressio', focuses mainly on issues of international development. But it includes this line: "The natural family, stable and monogamous -- as fashioned by God and sanctified by Christianity -- 'in which different generations live together, helping each other to acquire greater wisdom and to harmonize personal rights with other social needs, is the basis of society'" (#36). Why add that reflection in a document on global development? Because as the U.S. bishops observed two years ago in their statement on Everyday Christianity, "Our families are the starting point and the center of the vocation for justice." The habits we learn and live in the family are the habits we bring to the public square, and finally to the world arena.

So let's take a look at what Nos. 42-48 actually say. Then we can turn to some implications for families. The message of this section of Familiaris consortio is simple. I can sum it up in a saying I first heard as a child: "The greatest gift a father can give his children is to love their mother." What separates Catholic social teaching from every revolutionary movement for justice is the rejection of violence and the affirmation of the power of love. Real love -- love that involves a complete commitment to understand and meet the real needs of the person we love -- is very hard work. Nothing is more demanding, and nothing takes more care and self-sacrifice, than love within a family. Loving "humanity" is easy. Loving family members, friends and neighbors as God wants them to be loved, day in and day out -- that's what separates the wheat from the chaff. Words are cheap. Actions matter. And nowhere is that truer than within a family.

No. 42 has two key points. First, "it is from the family that citizens come to birth, and within the family that they find the first school of the social virtues that are the animating principle of the existence and development of society itself." What are those virtues? Justice, charity and a love for freedom and truth as God means freedom and truth to be understood. Second, "far from being closed in on itself, the family is by nature and vocation open to other families and to society, and undertakes its social role." This means that families can't be fortresses or enclaves. God created us to engage and sanctify the world, not withdraw from it.

No. 43 describes the family as "the most effective means for humanizing and personalizing society." The family builds up the world "by making possible a life that is, properly speaking, human." This reminds me of a passage in Pius XI's 1937 encyclical, 'Mit Brennender Sorge'. Pope Pius wrote this encyclical to contest the Third Reich's persecution of the Church in Germany, and the Nazi harassment of Catholic young people, families and schools. He wrote that, "every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men" (#33) He said that "personal sanctification" is the crucial first step to sanctifying the world by extending the kingdom of God. And that makes perfect sense. Most of us learn how to seek God and hunger for holiness from our parents and within our families.

Familiaris consortio encourages families to become involved in forms of social service, especially those which favor the poor; to cultivate the practice of hospitality and to engage themselves politically. The Pope especially encourages families to "be the first to take steps to see that the laws and institutions of the state not only do not offend, but support and positively defend the rights and duties of the family." The Pope also reminds us that in many places around the world, the family is under siege from a hostile society and state. And in response to these abuses, he outlines a charter of 14 family rights that range from the right to political and economic security, to freedom of education, of worship and of movement to seek better living conditions.

John Paul II closes this section of Familiaris consortio by reminding us that "[I]nsofar as it is a 'small-scale church,' the Christian family is called upon, like the 'large-scale church,' to be a sign of unity to the world, and in this way to exercise its prophetic role by bearing witness to the kingdom and peace of Christ, toward which the whole world is journeying." In other words, in the name of Jesus Christ, every Catholic must in some sense be an internationalist -- and so must every Catholic family.

C. S. Lewis once wrote that "There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan." John Paul II once said that, "Against the spirit of the world, the Church takes up anew -- each day -- [a] struggle for the soul of the world." And the great French theologian, Henri de Lubac, once wrote that "The Gospel warns us that salt can lose its flavor. And if we -- that is, most of us -- live more or less in peace in the midst of the world, it is perhaps because we are lukewarm."

God doesn't need lukewarm Christians. He doesn't want lukewarm families. The mission of the Church is sanctifying the world; and all of us as her sons and daughters -- especially those of us responsible for forming and nourishing families -- share in her mission. "Go and make disciples of all nations" is still the mandate. So let's pray honestly, work honestly, love honestly and live honestly so that others will see and believe.

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