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produce a sound “family
spirituality”. Family prayer,
above all that which derives
its content and spirit from
the liturgy, and other
devotions, particularly the
Rosary; family reading of the
Scriptures; family attendance
at Mass and reception of
Communion; family retreats,
days of recollection and other
special devotions; the
observance of occasions of
spiritual significance for
members of the
household-all these will
increase the awareness of the
family that it is the “Church
in miniature”.
For these reasons, we
welcome the work of those
theologians who are preparing
a modern and valid ascetical
theology of marriage. We
recall gratefully the spiritual
emphasis in many family-life
programs, national and local,
whose primary focus of
concern has been the
theology of the Christian
family.
To prepare future spouses
more adequately we
recommend specialized
team-efforts in their behalf
on the part of pastors of souls
and qualified counsellors,
including devout married
couples. Such projects will
give engaged couples the
benefit of human wisdom and
of Christian spirituality in the
planning of their home, the
founding of a family, the
education of children, and all
that makes for fidelity and
hope in their lives together.
We endorse the
establishment of diocesan
family life centers throughout
the country so that Christian
couples, physicians,
psychologists, sociologists
and priests may cooperate in
implementing responsible
parenthood in accordance
with the principles
enunciated in Humanae
Vitae. On the national level,
in response to the Holy
Father’s request for scientific
research into effective and
moral means of family
planning, we bishops in the
United States intend to
establish an independent,
non-denominational,
non-profit foundation which
will sponsor scientific
research resulting in
conclusions which will be
helpful to doctors, educators
and, ultimately, spouses in
licit family planning.
The responsibility of our
Family Life Division to
provide information,
educational tools and
guidance in the face of the
mounting problems of family
life will make it an increasing
source of service to diocesan
family programs. We also
hope to see established
centers of education in family
life under the auspices of
local medical schools or
doctors guilds together with
collegiate or adult education
programs, and the chaplain to
students or young-adult
groups. We note the Holy
Father’s tribute to the
promising apostolate which
brings together married
couples who desire to
communicate their
experience to other married
couples and thus become
apostles of fidelity to the
divine law and guides to
fulfillment in love.
Education Of Children
In Sexuality
In accord with the Decree
on Christian Education of
Vatican Council II we affirm
the value and necessity of
wisely planned education of
children in human sexuality,
adapted to the maturity and
background of our young
people. We are under a grave
obligation, in part arising
from the new circumstances
of modern culture and
communications, to assist the
family in its efforts to
provide such training. This
obligation can be met either
by systematic provision of
such education in the
diocesan school curriculum or
by the inauguration of
acceptable educational
programs under other
diocesan auspices, including
the Confraternity of Christian
Doctrine. Parents are those
primarily responsible for
imparting to their children an
awareness of the sacredness
of sexuality; this will
ordinarily be best
accomplished when both
parents discharge this duty in
mutual consultation and
shared responsibility. The
necessity for greater
communication and
cooperation between parents
and teachers is highlighted in
this problem; the consequent
role of Parent-Teacher Guilds
and similar home-school
associations is apparent.
Parents are sometimes
fearful that their right to
teach the norms of sexual
morality to their children
may be usurped or that
programs such as we envision
may lead to the sexual
misdirection of their children
if the teachers involved are
inadequately prepared or
emotionally immature. In the
light of such legitimate
concerns, the careful
selection of instructors for
these discussions is a serious
responsibility to be shared by
priests, school authorities and
parents, perhaps best under
the auspices of parent-teacher
associations.
The content of these
instructions should provide
an appreciation of “the true
values of life and of the
family” (Humanae Vitae, 21),
in addition to a healthy
inculcation, from the earliest
years of moral and
intellectual formation, of
how conjugal love involves a
harmonious response from
the emotions, the passions,
the body and the mind. At
the same time, healthy
Christian attitudes toward life
will be developed in young
people if they are given an
undefstanding, consistent
with their years, of why the
Council insists that those
“actions within marriage by
which the couple are united
intimately and chastely are
noble and worthy ones”
(Gaudium et Spes, 49).
During these early years of
physical growth and spiritual
formation, especially
throughout adolescence, our
young people and their
neighbors should be taught to
appreciate the heroic witness
to divine life and the unique
service to human life given by
those who, with love
undivided, dedicate to God
and their fellow-men the
consecration of their celibacy
and virginity for the sake of
the Kingdom of God. Our
priests, religious brothers and
sisters have bound themselves
to live in persevering
single-hearted commitment as
intimate collaborators with
God Himself, from Whom
every family, whether
spiritual or natural, takes its
name both in heaven an on
earth (Eph. 3, 15). Every
family is therefore in their
debt; the families from which
they come, the families to
which they bear their special
witness of life and love, the
national family they
strengthen, the family of the
Church. No one knows this
more than their bishops; no
one is more grateful.
The New Family
In facing current problems
of the American family, we
welcome the open approach
of the Pastoral Constitution
of the Church in the Modem
World toward marriage and
the family. It provides a
timely and optimistic
overview of the community
aspect of marriage, a
community that functions
best when all its members
understand that freedom is
their birthright and a
developing sense of
responsibility their challenge.
It sets up balances which
provide for the more perfect
personal development of each
family member and, at the
same time, assures the
optimum effect of the family
unit in the larger family of
man. It recognizes the
continual and rapid changes
which characterize out times.
The style of family living
is undoubtedly affected by
changing social conditions,
yet the family retains a
resilience and strength that
helps it adapt to change. In
fact, the family has always
been the witness to change as
it passes on the wisdom,
successes and accomplish
ments of one generation to
the next as a patrimony for
the pursuance of its dreams.
Commenting on this
adaptability to change that is
almost inherent in the family,
Pope Paul VI notes that “in a
world in the midst of change,
it would be useless to want to
close one’s eyes to the
adaptations which even the
most stable, most traditional
institutions must accept. No
matter how great the merits
of the family of yesterday
may have been, it is the one
of today and of tomorrow
which must attract the
attention of men who are
really preoccupied with the
welfare of humanity. These
‘new families’ possess many
new characteristics, some of
which may certainly give rise
to legitimate disquietude.
But-we say without fear-the
Church looks with pleasure
upon many of these
innovations: the cessation,
for example, of certain social
or family restrictions, the
freer and more conscious
choice of a spouse, the
greater stress placed upon the
development of husband and
wife, the more lively interest
in the education of children,
and still many other traits
which it is not possible to
enumerate in detail.” (Paul
VI to IUFO)
One of the best examples
of this new type of family
structure is the present-day
American family. It is a
community of individual
persons joined by human
love, and living a community
life that provides for the
greatest expression of
individualism. At the same
time, equalitarian marriage
patterns have so developed
among Americans as to avoid
rigid role assignments within
the family and thus make
possible a deeper family
unity.
The family unit develops
apart from the parent-fami
lies, yet not totally isolated.
In our technological culture,
transportation facilities and
communications media
provide new systems of
mobility and yet fortunately
allow for a strengthening of
human bonds among families,
despite the distances in
geographical location.
The educational
attainment of women and a
new emphasis on legal and
social equality between men
and women create further
tensions but also
opportunities for more
eifective partnership in
marriage. This adds a further
reason why a Catholic
theology of family life must
be spelled out to match the
changing patterns of the
American family. A relevant
theology will reinforce the
efforts of spouses to achieve
conjugal maturity; it will
enable them to realize the
more profoundly the
difference between romance
and love and to understand
that only gradually will they
achieve the harmony between
healthy individualism and
mutual self-giving in which
Christian personalism
consists.
New Tensions,
New Needs
Technological and cultural
change? bring with them
complexities not easily
resolved. Some of these set
up pressures on the family
from outside, some from
within. For example, even the
family today finds itself
under the necessity to
develop new channels of
“communication”; this seems
a formidable word to describe
relations within the intimate
community that a human
family should be. However,
the problem is made real by
the profoundly changed
circumstances under which
each family member now
seeks to establish an identity
while preserving a warm sense
of family unity and pride.
Family harmony in our day
will depend on just such
“communication” as parents
attempt to solve the
authority-obedience dilemma
with their growing children.
Moreover, reformed
“communication” within the
family is needed if the
manifold educational
resources of family life itself
are to complement the formal
schooling of children.
The individual family is
now challenged to new
responsibilities toward the
plurality of families which
comprises the nation, the
human community and the
Church. And so Christian
families, conscious of their
part in the progress of the
wider human family, will
wish to share not only their
spiritual heritage with
families less privileged but
also their material resources.
They will seek by their own
initiatives to supplement
government action, being
painfully aware that in our
own country many families
are victims of poverty, disease
and inadequate living
standards.
Informed social critics are
asserting that family
instability in the urban areas
of America is the result, in
part at least, of our national
failure to adopt
comprehensive and realistic
family-centered policies
during the course of this
century. The break-down of
tne family has intrinsic
causes, some of them moral,
but these have been
aggravated by the
indifference or neglect of
socity and by the
consequences of poverty and
racist attitudes. The object of
wise social policy is not only
the physical well-being of
persons but their emotional
stablity and moral growth,
not as individuals but,
whenever possible, within
family units.
In principle, American
social theory has always
recognized that the normal
family enjoys a real
autonomy; only the abnormal
inadequacy of a particular
family places its members
within the competency of our
courts. Even then, whenever
possible, it is the disposition
of our public agencies to
supply the defects of nature
by providing the neglected,
delinquent or homeless child
with the nearest possible
approach to life and training
in a family setting. Americans
have tended to prefer,
particularly recently, the plan
of foster homes where the
role of natural parents can be
somehow supplied in the
development of the person
within a human family. Our
theory in all these respects
has been admirable; its
implementation in legislation
and in practice has not always
kept pace with the problems
testing the theory. The
present urban crisis is but one
evidence of this.
Though families, like man
himself, do not live on bread
alone, without bread they
suffer and die. Food
programs still need a family
orientation. Poor housing, for
further example, has an
adverse effect on family
stability. We urge an
expansion of home ownership
programs for low and
moderate-income families,
especially the larger families
frequently neglected in these
plans, as well as programs for
low-rent housing and housing
rehabilitation.
Programs devised to assist
less advantaged families
should at all costs avoid
disruption of the family unit.
A major disruption occurs
when mothers are required to
separate themselves from
their young children for the
sake of added income.
Disruption has too often been
the result of certain welfare
policies which, whether
consciously intended or not,
have destroyed rather than
supported family stability;
one such policy we
pinpointed in our reference
to the “man in the house”
rule when we spoke in a
recent statement on the