Part 1 of 6
In the colonial period, Alexis de Tocqueville in his observations about our country wrote: “Religion is often powerless to restrain men in the midst of innumerable temptations which fortune offers. It cannot moderate their eagerness to enrich themselves, which everything contributes to arouse, but religion reigns supreme in the souls of the women who shape mores. Certainly, of all countries in the world, America is the one in which the marriage tie is most respected and where the highest and truest conception of conjugal happiness has been conceived.”
Two centuries later, we do not find the same optimism. In responding to a national survey in 1980 asking Americans if they held the ideal of two people sharing a life and a home together, 96% agreed with this ideal of an enduring relationship. Yet, when asked whether “most couples getting married today expect to remain married for the rest of their lives”, 60% said “No”. Love and commitment are attractive, but difficult.
In his 1994 Letter to Families, Pope John Paul II identifies some of the basic dangers to family life today: a rampant individualism opposed to true personalism, the ethic of utilitarianism that treats persons as an object of use, a dualism reminiscent of the ancient ideologies of Gnosticism and Manicheanism. All these evils encourage selfishness and hedonism, and give rise to the plague of divorce and the anti-life mentality so manifest in the widespread practice of contraception and abortion.
“Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage,” and in some sectors of modern society they are becoming as obsolete as that outmoded form of transportation. The Boston Globe under the rubric, “Goodbye Ozzie and Harriet,” reports that only 7% of American households have stay-at-home moms and working dads.
Even in times of prosperity, our economy is not family-friendly. The same report documents the fact that only 36% of the U.S. households are comprised of married folk; the other 64% are made up of single parents, couples who cohabit, widows, etc.
By the same token, the divorce revolution has taken its toll on family life. Between 1960 and 1990, the number of children who experienced the divorce of their parents increased from less than 1% to more than 50%, and 1/3 of the children born today are born out of wedlock. Divorce was touted as a means to greater equality for woman. Actually, divorce has contributed to the feminization of poverty. After a divorce, mothers and children typically experience a 73% decline in their standard of living, while men experience a 42% increase. In 90% of the divorces, the responsibility of raising the children falls to the women. No wonder a woman in the Irish Dáil said that, “a woman voting for divorce is like a turkey voting for Christmas.”
Violence against women and children has also increased dramatically with the breakup of the family. According to the Surgeon General, the home is often more dangerous for women and children than the streets. On average, 57,000 wives are violently assaulted each year by their husbands, 216,000 by ex-husbands, and 200,000 by their boyfriends. The risk of physical and sexual abuse against children has escalated, often due to the absence of the biological father and presence of boyfriends and other transient males.
The sad statistics of American life in the 90's add up to a typical family with a higher degree of instability, more stress, and greater personal turmoil than is commonly recognized. Often chemical solutions are used to solve spiritual problems and separation is used to solve interpersonal problems.
Believers who are “married in the Lord” have a special role in salvaging society from the free-fall spiral that threatens civilization itself. The grave problems that beset our world today will not find solutions around the great oak conference tables in Geneva, New York, or the Oval Office, but around the dinner tables where loving parents share their life, their faith, their friendship with their children at meal times, when families come together to be nourished by prayer, by conversation, by being together.
Pope John Paul II has said in Familiaris Consortio that the first and fundamental contribution of the family to society is the, “very experience of communion and sharing that should characterize the family's daily life.” By becoming what it is meant to be, the family is the first and most efficacious school of socialization, which takes place through their welcoming of each other, their disinterested availability, their generous service, their deep solidarity.
The Holy Father has written in his letter to families: “It is not an exaggeration to reaffirm that the life of nations passes through the family"and through the family passes the primary current of the civilization of love.”
