Social Doctrine Session 6
(CSDC 209-254)
Having established the groundwork of the nature of man and the principles and values which are inherent in this nature the compendium seeks to apply these truths to various spheres of humankind’s existence. The first of these spheres is that of the family. The centrality of the family in the Church’s teaching as the primary place of ‘humanization’ and the center of social life is highlighted. The family also has central importance with reference to the fostering of the wholeness of personhood, learning the meaning of love, and the foundations of truth and goodness. The family makes a unique and irreplaceable contribution to the good of society keeping the person at the center of attention. The Church affirms the priority of the family over society and the state. Family has its foundation in the free choice of spouses to marry. The value of marriage as an institution is derived from God himself. “No power can abolish the natural right to marriage or modify its traits and purpose” (CSDC 216). The characteristic traits of marriage are totality, indissolubility, fidelity, and fruitfulness. For the baptized marriage is a sacrament, sign and instrument of grace. The family is a “. . . place where an authentic community of persons develops and grows” (CSDC 221). The compendium considers a number of issues related to the family. It admonishes generous attention towards the elderly within the family. It acknowledges that sexual identity is based on physical, moral and spiritual difference and complementarities and not merely a product of culture. The indissolubility of marriage is affirmed. De facto unions are based on a false conception of freedom and individualistic views. Christian anthropology reveals that unions between homosexual persons are incongruous with marital status.
Conjugal love is to be open to life, and a family founded on marriage is a sanctuary of life. Motherhood and fatherhood make an eminent contribution to the social good and are a participation in God’s work of creation. The Church rejects as morally illicit sterilization and abortion, and rejects contraceptive methods as contrary to a correct and integral understanding of the person and human sexuality. Reasons of an anthropological order justify the regulation of births by periodic abstinence during times of the women’s fertility (CSDC 233). “The judgment concerning the interval of time between births, and that regarding the number of children belongs to the spouses alone” (CSDC 234) and should be free of government interference. The Church opposes reproductive techniques which artificially replace the marriage act. On the issue of cloning in the proper sense of reproduction, the Magisterium has judged the technique to be contrary to the dignity of human procreation and raises concerns about the total domination over the reproduced individual by the one reproducing it. Parents are reminded that the spiritual dimension of procreation is to be given the greatest consideration. By performing its mission to educate, the family uniquely contributes to the common good helping the children to grow in personal dignity in all dimensions. Parents have a right and duty to educate their children, including religious and moral education and this is a primary right that they must not neglect or delegate.
Parents are the first educators, not the only educators, of their children. It belongs to them, therefore, to exercise with responsibility their educational activity in close cooperation with civil and ecclesiastical agencies (CSDC 240).
Parents have the right to support and found educational institutions. Out of justice these schools have the right to state financial assistance. Both father and mother are equally important in the education of children and bear the responsibility to provide an integral education. In the area of sexual education parents have a particular responsibility. The need to respect the dignity of children has been a constant theme in the Church’s social doctrine and the rights of children should be legally protected. Family must become active subjects in the responsibility to transform society. On the relationship between family, economic life and work, it is pointed out that work is an essential condition that makes the establishment of a family and its maintenance possible (CSDC 249). For this reason the notion of a “family wage”— a wage sufficient to maintain a family and allow it to live decently” including the possibility of savings that permit the acquisition of property—is essential (CSDC 250). A call is made for great recognition and support to the domestic work of housekeeping within the family. Finally the compendium asserts that states need to recognize the subjectivity and social priority of the family in promoting and respecting family rights.
© Office of Human Rights, and Bishop Helmsing Institute, Diocese of Kansas City~St. Joseph, 2009
