As we mentioned yesterday, the discussions reported as
taking place in the recent Catholic Synod on the Family seemed remarkably shy
about addressing the needs of plain, ordinary, normal families, whatever
religion or political system within which the family subsists. There seemed to be an over-emphasis on “hard
cases” and what to do about them, and very little attention paid to the
increasingly desperate situation of the Just Plain Old Family, everywhere more
and more being subsumed into, not merely subsisting within, the State.
This seems particularly egregious for an event sponsored by
the Catholic Church. After all, the very
first “social encyclical,” Rerum Novarum,
went on at some length about the need to restore and maintain the integrity of
the JPOF. Since we probably can’t do
better than Leo XIII who issued Rerum Novarum, let’s just quote the relevant
sections, and leave it to you to see if the discussions in the Synod addressed
any of the issues that the pope considered important:
“12. The rights here spoken of, belonging to each individual
man, are seen in much stronger light when considered in relation to man's
social and domestic obligations. In choosing a state of life, it is
indisputable that all are at full liberty to follow the counsel of Jesus Christ
as to observing virginity, or to bind themselves by the marriage tie. No human
law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way
limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage ordained by God’s authority
from the beginning: ‘Increase and multiply.’ Hence we have the family, the
‘society’ of a man's house — a society very small, one must admit, but none the
less a true society, and one older than any State. Consequently, it has rights
and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State.
“13. That right to property, therefore, which has been
proved to belong naturally to individual persons, must in like wise belong to a
man in his capacity of head of a family; nay, that right is all the stronger in
proportion as the human person receives a wider extension in the family group.
It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all
necessaries for those whom he has begotten; and, similarly, it is natural that
he should wish that his children, who carry on, so to speak, and continue his
personality, should be by him provided with all that is needful to enable them
to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this
mortal life. Now, in no other way can a father effect this except by the
ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children by
inheritance. A family, no less than a State, is, as We have said, a true
society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the
authority of the father. Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed
by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at
least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things
needful to its preservation and its just liberty. We say, ‘at least equal
rights’; for, inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well in idea
as in fact, to the gathering of men into a community, the family must
necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the community,
and founded more immediately in nature. If the citizens, if the families on
entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a
commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of
being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of
desire.
“14. The contention, then, that the civil government should
at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and
the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself
in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without
any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met
by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner,
if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of
mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield
to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their
rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them. But the
rulers of the commonwealth must go no further; here, nature bids them stop.
Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it
has the same source as human life itself. ‘The child belongs to the father,’
and is, as it were, the continuation of the father's personality; and speaking
strictly, the child takes its place in civil society, not of its own right, but
in its quality as member of the family in which it is born. And for the very
reason that ‘the child belongs to the father’ it is, as St. Thomas Aquinas
says, ‘before it attains the use of free will, under the power and the charge
of its parents.’ The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and
setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the
structure of the home.”
To summarize Leo XIII’s main points, 1) Get capital
ownership spread out so families can be self-sufficient without relying on the
State. 2) Get the State out of the family business and
back into the governing business, taking care of the common good, not
individual goods.
#30#