The
great joy with which families from all over the world congregated in
Milan indicates that, despite all impressions to the contrary, the
family is still strong and vibrant today. But there is no denying the
crisis that threatens it to its foundations – especially in the western
world. It was noticeable that the Synod repeatedly emphasized the
significance of the family as the authentic setting in which to hand on
the blueprint of human existence. This is something we learn by living
it with others and suffering it with others. So it became clear that the
question of the family is not just about a particular social construct,
but about man himself – about what he is and what it takes to be
authentically human. The challenges involved are manifold. First of all
there is the question of the human capacity to make a commitment or to
avoid commitment. Can one bind oneself for a lifetime? Does this
correspond to man’s nature? Does it not contradict his freedom and the
scope of his self-realization? Does man become himself by living for
himself alone and only entering into relationships with others when he
can break them off again at any time? Is lifelong commitment
antithetical to freedom? Is commitment also worth suffering for? Man’s
refusal to make any commitment – which is becoming increasingly
widespread as a result of a false understanding of freedom and
self-realization as well as the desire to escape suffering – means that
man remains closed in on himself and keeps his “I” ultimately for
himself, without really rising above it. Yet only in self-giving does
man find himself, and only by opening himself to the other, to others,
to children, to the family, only by letting himself be changed through
suffering, does he discover the breadth of his humanity. When such
commitment is repudiated, the key figures of human existence likewise
vanish: father, mother, child – essential elements of the experience of
being human are lost.
The
Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has shown in a very detailed
and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently
experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father,
mother, and child, goes much deeper. While up to now we regarded a false
understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis
of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being –
of what being human really means – is being called into question. He
quotes the famous saying of Simone de Beauvoir: “one is not born a
woman, one becomes so” (on ne naĆ®t pas femme, on le devient). These
words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term
“gender” as a new philosophy of sexuality. According to this philosophy,
sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and
personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for
ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society. The
profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution
contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a
nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining
element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is
not something previously given to them, but that they make it for
themselves. According to the biblical creation account, being created by
God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature.
This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as
ordained by God. This very duality as something previously given is
what is now disputed. The words of the creation account: “male and
female he created them” (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now
is this: it was not God who created them male and female – hitherto
society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man and woman as created
realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls
his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will. The
manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is
concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is
concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who
chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their
created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are
disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in
creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by
creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied
hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him. Bernheim shows that now,
perforce, from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object
to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain.
When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself,
then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is
stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the
core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And
it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears.
Whoever defends God is defending man.
-from Pope's annual "State of the Church" address to the Roman Curia
12/22/2012
The importance of defending Family
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