Section Two - Parental Society
Conclusion
1554. The nature of domestic society is therefore very deep; it has its roots in the very heart of humanity. Is anything more profound than the way in which humanity views itself? Simple and one, humanity touches heaven on the one hand and earth on the other. It is a mixture of a heavenly and an earthly element. The same is true of domestic society: it, too, is simple and one, a mixture of a heavenly and an earthly element. There is nothing more profound, nothing more wonderful in the sight of self-contemplating humanity than this single, extremely simple species, the human-as-idea, which never exhausts itself and yet never realises itself completely despite the number of individuals in whom it takes on subsistence. There is nothing more wonderful than the sight of these innumerable individuals who with inborn eagerness go on renewing the unity of the species through the reality of their union - this species which exists not in space and time, but in the regions of eternity.
The entire human race, scattered over land and sea, divided by mountain ranges, oceans and deserts aspires (without always being conscious of this loving preoccupation in its nature) to come together in the same centre, the same truth, the same virtue, the same good whose proper and hidden source is the supreme Being.
This affectionate tendency of the real, the finite and the multiple to emulate the unity of the idea is explained by the heavenly element of human nature which, informed by ideal being, - unique in all human beings - simply seeks the completion of its own form when it desires to feel the real being actuating and completing what it sees, but does not feel, in the idea.
This is the depth to which thought must penetrate when a person seeks a sufficient reason to explain why the human heart loves everything, loves every reality, and especially its fellows, the most noble and excellent of all the feelable, perceptible realities open to that person. Every human affection, therefore, has its sublime source in that light, that ideal being, that common good which, embraced by the principle of human nature, constitutes the human being, binds together universal society and is the vestige and beginning of theocracy (cf. RGC, 633-670).
1555. This is also the point from which thought has first to move if it wishes to explain the possibility of conjugal society. Marriage, by conjoining the human individual subsisting in two forms, in two halves as it were, presupposes affections already common to human individuals of the same form, and the fount and explanation of affections that we have already illustrated (cf. 997-1028). The indissolubility, the full union between the spouses, can only come from the principle that one human being wishes, through nature, to be united with every other human being. This desire is stronger the more each human being feels and perceives the other with whom he wants to unite in every way permitted by character, conformity, proximity and fittingness. Amongst all these ways, one is offered by the animal condition of humanity where we find the difference of the sexes, the law of communication and of the exaltation of common life, together with the multiplication of the species. This mode of union differentiates conjugal union from all others (cf. 1029-1068).
This mode, however, would not of itself constitute marriage, which is something dignified and human, not merely animal. If intercourse, which concerns the lowest parts of two rational beings, proceeds according to nature, a strand of uninterrupted love rises and makes its way to the most sublime heights where it attaches itself to what is eternal and divine (cf. 1041-1055). Natural affection, which invites man and woman to an undivided communion of life, is itself a tributary of that great fount of all affections worthy to be called `human'. It is a branch of the natural inclination shown in every real, finite being when he receives, as every human being does, the capacity to intuit, in the idea, unlimited being. He is moved to seek everywhere the reality of this unlimited being, and wants to feel it however he can and as much as he can, without ever being fully satisfied, until he finds it and tastes it, infinite and one, just as he sees and desires it in the idea.
1556. Thus domestic society has a religious nature. Its dignity and beauty are given by the union taking place at the apex of the souls of the spouses where they lap against the divine, sublimely simple element which by nature enlightens them and where, lifted by Christ above the created universe, they unite in God himself. Two persons, who live their lives in an identical nature from which emerges a third person, are already a symbol of the divinity; two principles, one passive, the other active, who become fertile in their mutual embrace, were acknowledged even by the pagans as symbols of the Creator who lifts and unites to himself the intelligent creature, whom he then fills with himself.(297)
It was altogether fitting, therefore, for the Christ of God, in whom the divine and human natures consummated their marriage, to make matrimony one of his sacraments (cf. 1102-1103, 1245, 1251-1254). It was also most fitting, granted that marriage of its nature was already a sign of divine things (cf. 1262), that Christ's most powerful love should also render it an efficacious sign bestowing on spouses virtue, constancy and supernatural charity.
Domestic society is religious for yet another reason: it stimulates and nourishes at an ever more vital and deep level the feeling denoting humanity's incessant need for a loving Providence. God's intervention immediately makes itself felt in that mysterious activity, of which the spouses are ministers and through which a third, intelligent individual begins from them.
What will become of this precious fruit that God moulds in their loins?(298) Will it have a base or generous character, mind and heart? How will it have been made by the One who models human beings as a potter moulds the clay? Everything is uncertain; the child lives, yet he could have been still-born; people are happy, as though some great adventure were over. But will the child go on living? His thread of life could be cut any day; every day his suppliant, thankful mother asks again and receives that child from God's almighty power. She knows perfectly well that it is God alone who daily gives back the child to the embrace which binds him to her breast. About the future of the new-born she knows nothing, despite her longing for an inkling of light which God alone can give. All is darkness, and she can only hope and pray that the divinity will lead the child through the uncertain and dangerous journey of life, protected from woe and blessed with happiness, until he in turn can leave behind blessed and happy offspring.
These and other natural affections, present in domestic society, continually turn the parents' thoughts to the power and providence of God. They give rise to humble prayer, domestic worship, and sacrifices to the eternal God on whom rests, as parents clearly acknowledge, the uncertain lot of their own life together, the preservation of what is most dear to them, and, in a word, the prosperity of the whole family. Christ, in succouring this pious, human feeling, gave spouses sacramental grace, that is, a power which comforts the hopes and trust they naturally place in protection from on high. This power nourishes their religious affections, is a pledge of blessings to come and a solid shield and sure guide against adversity in human life and the uncertainty of events.
1557. The Right that we have expounded has sprung from our efforts at a thorough and intimate investigation of the nature proper to domestic society. I have divided the treatise into two distinct sections because domestic society results from two lesser, interwoven societies, conjugal and parental. Domestic society begins with the former and ends with the latter. The conjugal society produces and nourishes the parental society without losing its own first unity. The children who extend and perfect conjugal society (its new members, members of a new nature adhering to it with new bonds) remain within it. Conjugal society blessed with children is indeed conjugal society, but enlarged; it is like a tree which endures as a tree even when heavy with fruit.
1558. The deduction of the Right proper to both societies was simple enough when considered as a consequence of two very simple principles. One, the principle of conjugal Right, states: `Conjugal society is the full union of two human beings of different sex.' As far as we can see, there is neither duty nor right of the spouses which is not logically, clearly and justifiably derived from this simple definition (cf. 987 ss.) The other, the principle of parental Right, was concerned with the specific relationship of the collective person of the parents amongst themselves, and the specific relationship of the collective person of the parents with the children. From the analysis of these specific differences flowed the equally spontaneous, ordained duties and rights of each of the parents, and of the children.
1559. I examined each of these Rights, conjugal and parental, founded in nature and consecrated by religion. We saw that the primitive, most noble end of conjugal society, obscured by the great shadow of sin, had been placed once more in the light, and elevated even higher by JESUS Christ, the great restorer of humanity (cf. 1231-1296). We saw that paternity, established in the primitive design as the great principle of unity in the human race, had remained, after the introduction of death in the world through the ancient fault, as the sole principle of unity for each of the divided families (cf. 994). Later these families were recalled and gathered from their separation and dispersal into a new and much happier unity within a sublime theocracy, the family of the divine Father from whom proceeds all paternity in heaven and on earth. The Father rules this family through his great first-born, the Word incarnate.
The direct connection between theocratic and domestic society is the greatest honour of the latter, the most solid foundation of its development and final happiness. Every right and every duty is fulfilled in preserving this precious connection. Yes, let families, which are religious through natural feeling, be so of their own free will; let them be so in their way of life and in their Christian faith. Then they will be happy. Religion sanctions the Right of domestic society, promotes its observance and is itself its greatest honour; Right in civil society collapses with the collapse of family Right:
| Centuries fertile with evil |
Notes
(297) The Indian monuments, in which we see how the whole of the ancient Orient regarded the conjugal union as a symbol of the union between God and man, have been collected and illustrated by Kistemacher in his admirable booklet on the Song of Songs.
(298) The feeling expressed by the mother of the Maccabees is natural and common to all mothers. Encouraging her sons to die courageously, she said to them: `I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I that gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you' (2 Mac 7: 22).
(299) Horace, bk. 3, ode 6.