Moral Problems of the Family

a) The Problem of Stability

We have already studied the family, and have seen its importance as “the social unit” and “the social cell.” Truly has the family been called “the social world in miniature,” and well have sociologists agreed that upon the family and family-life depend all other human institutions. Anything, therefore, which hurts the family or hampers its function, is a social evil of the most radical description. On the other hand, every good agency which makes for the stability of home and family, and which enhances the estimation in which the family and the home are held, is a means and instrument for social action of which the true sociologist will be eager to avail himself. Stable family-life means a firm and sure foundation for all human society. And against the requisite stability, many modern evils are exercising greater and greater influence. Among the most notable social evils which strike directly at the stability of the family are divorce and Birth Control, both of which are rampant at the moment, and are admittedly on the increase. Indeed, there are strong organizations of unchristian people who advocate these evils as means of social welfare and “liberation,” and who, by the spoken and printed word, are daily instructing thousands—and notably the young—in beliefs and practices which, unless checked, will bring ruin and disaster to family-life. We have spoken at length on the nature of these social ills (cf. Book Second, Chap. II, Art. I, c) and have no need to repeat here the evidence which shows them to be intrinsically evil. We mention them now to indicate the fact that they constitute an acute social problem in the domain of the family, and to urge upon the student of sociology the importance of recognizing the true solution of this problem.

The problem is basically a moral problem. For the chief influence at work to promote both divorce and Birth Control is undoubtedly the spirit of godless self-seeking, which manifests itself in an unbridled quest of pleasure and ease, a refusal to submit to inconvenience, a frank determination to indulge animal tendencies, a rejection of responsibility to God, a refusal to think of the hereafter or to take it into account, a debased view of life, and a conviction that romantic and sexual love is the ultimate human happiness. The evil spirit which makes for these low ends is everywhere powerful to-day, and, while its effects are seen in every social field, it constitutes in itself a moral issue. Manifestly, the cure of this social disease is the concern of religion above every other social agency. Modern sociologists, deploring the dissolution and decay of family-life, tell us that education is the one remedy. But education, divorced from religion, is wholly impotent in the field of radical morality. The notion that “knowledge is power” is fallacious, for knowledge is power only in him who wills to use and apply his knowledge; it is the will which requires motive and support, and these are furnished by the true religion. Mere instruction and exhortation can accomplish nothing of lasting value. The world needs Christ and Him crucified; men need to be accustomed to bear the cross of daily duty: in particular, they need to learn to bear the heavy burdens of the married state with unflinching fidelity and life-long perseverance. Only religion can supply men with the knowledge and the power which they need to stabilize the family and save civilization. The problem of the stability of the family will not be solved until the Church is recognized, and her insistent requirement of exclusive, permanent, faithful, monogamous marriage is accepted and observed. The Catholic sociologist must, therefore, endeavor to promote true Catholic life and to promulgate true Catholic morality. In his own life, first of all, he must exemplify the Christian ideal. By word and work and prayer he must be instant in furthering the doctrine of finality and permanence in marriage, and of loyal fidelity in discharging its duties. He must be active in bringing his influence to the support of decency, and to the prevention of evils which make for loose and harmful notions about marriage and sex. He must not tacitly support, but must steadily combat, the customs of our day which strike at personal purity and thereby injure the stability of marriage and the family. Such evil customs are many; it will here suffice to name a few of them: the quasi-promiscuity of the young, which is seen in their free association in every walk and activity of life, particularly in their amusements, in the almost-nude, at beaches and resorts; company keeping merely for thrill; kissing and animal demonstrations of passing affection. All these practices cheapen the self-respect which is the natural basis and support of personal purity; they tend to induce a carelessness and levity which unfit the young for the heavy responsibility of the married state. No Catholic can have part in such things without betraying the cause of Jesus Christ—a cause which perfectly coincides with that of human happiness and social welfare. The Catholic sociologist will keep clear of the attitude of the sanctimonious reformer. He will do his work quietly, manfully, perseveringly, but will never be a mere “preacher” or doctrinaire. In his private life and conversation he will never descend to banalities and the discussion of silly or sentimental subjects. He will not, for example, be drawn into private and personal discussion of such a subject as, “Is kissing sinful ?” He knows well that nine-tenths of it is sinful, even as he knows that more than nine-tenths of those who propound the question are merely seeking to indulge in sentimental talk about a dangerous subject. In his private life the sociologist will avoid “frank” discussions, mindful that many subjects may not be handled without defilement, and that there are things which should not be “so much as named” among decent people. In his more public work the Catholic sociologist may have to mention evil things, to debate them, to combat them. Yet his expression will never be brutal or vile, nor will it cover grossness and boorishness with the assumed name of “frankness.” Further to combat the evils which lead to an unstable and impermanent family-life, the Christian sociologist will seek the help of associations, guilds, societies, sodalities, to inculcate a lively respect for the family and the home, and to foster devotion to true family-life. If he has a gift for clear and persuasive writing, he will make use of it. If he has a ready and eloquent expression, he will not be silent. Yet in all public utterances, written or spoken, he will be careful to avoid the mere airing of opinions, and will make sure that his message is the embodiment of solid and everlasting truth. The world has a right to expect of the graduates of Catholic colleges the doctrine and direction that will save society. And yet many gifted men and women in our colleges have no higher ambition, in the way of literature and expression, than the writing of a cheap story for some magazine, or the composition of a scenario which will prove acceptable in Hollywood, or the mastery of speech that will mean an engagement for stage or platform and the consequent role of public entertainer or secular instructor. This is a grave evil. Let Catholic educators look to it. To the sociological endeavor of personal Catholic life and example, associated effort, writing, and speaking, the sociologist will join the alertness and interest of the loyal citizen. He will be watchful to oppose legislation (and to organize opposition) when measures are proposed which would make divorce easy to obtain, or would give public countenance to marital infidelity, or would permit the dissemination of books and pamphlets recommending Birth Control, or would legalize the manufacture and sale of contraceptive devices. On the other hand, he will be earnest in promoting just legislation for the stabilization of the family. And such legislation is badly needed. Every day and hour we are beset with appeals for justice to the farmer, to the laborer, to the employer. But we seldom hear of justice to the family, or appeals on the part of legislators for measures designed to protect the family, to preserve its integrity in domestic security, and to encourage its fertility. The godless attitude of mind and the loose conduct of life which strike directly at the stability of the family are strongly supported by the current doctrines (almost universally accepted in America) of Individualism and Liberalism. Individualism tends to neglect the family as the basic social unit, and to stress the individual as the only being with which the government has to deal. Liberalism tends to cast off all responsibility to God, all obligations of morality, and in the name of freedom to demand license, for the press, for private utterance, for thought, religion, and conscience. Between them these fallacious systems have pretty well destroyed the popular recognition of the fundamental social importance of stable family-life. They even pretend —as Pope Pius XI indicates in his Encyclical “Casti Connubii” (December X930)—to furnish a scientific justification for loose and immoral living. Against these pernicious systems, the Catholic scholar must take arms. For the intellectual defence and furtherance of true social philosophy is of even greater importance for mankind than the “field work” of the practical sociologist, which seeks direct adjustment of bad social conditions and the establishment of good ones.

b) The Problem of Property

While the subject of property is manifestly a matter of economics, it has moral aspects also, and these we will consider here. Inasmuch as th^ present condition of* familyproperty constitutes a moral problem, it is closely allied with the subject of stability, just now discussed. For the stability of the family is necessarily hurt by forces which prevent the ownership of goods required for the proper support of the family; it is also injured by agencies which keep the family from establishing its own homestead. A man has the right to marry and to found a family. He has the further right to a fair opportunity of earning for himself and his family the means of livelihood, and maintaining a permanent home. The industrial or social forces which keep a man poor, which compel him to live in localities where a privately owned home is neither a possibility nor a desirable thing, which make for a closely centralized city-life and the consequent loss to the family of that freedom, dignity, and independence which come with life on the soil—all these are forces which injure the stability of the family, violate fundamental rights, and in so far constitute a moral problem. It is obvious that the family homestead, owned permanently with its grounds, is a strong support to family-life and a guarantee of stability. Such a homestead gives to all members of the family a sense of security and peace, of self-reliance and seemly independence. It makes for a lively interest, on the part of its members, in the affairs of the community of which the homestead is a fixed and stable part. Families housed in alien dwellings, families which live at the mercy of a landlord, families compelled to huddle in tenements or to grovel in slums, are hampered, and tend to become socially ineffective. For its proper social functioning the family requires strong roots, and such roots are lacking to the floaters, the boarders, the apartment dwellers, and the tenement families. Only the privately owned homestead can supply these necessary roots. Hence the social conditions which prevent the average man, the ordinary citizen, from housing his family in its own homestead, are conditions which are not only economically unsound, but morally bad. Thus we see that the problem of family-property is a moral problem as well as a problem of economics, and as such it presents itself to the attention of the Christian sociologist. If men are to continue to be herded about great factories in crowded cities; if they are to be paid for their work only enough to cover the family expenses of food, clothing, and rent, they will never be able to establish permanent homesteads. There is no room for homes in the crowded industrial centres; there is no desirable site for homes in such places, even if room were available; and the return for factory labor is usually insufficient to enable a frugal and provident family to establish a homestead, even if no difficulty in point of space and location has to be overcome. Some sociologists advocate a general return to the land and the rural home. In these days of fast motors and good roads, such a plan is not wholly impracticable. Even if industry continues to engage the efforts of most bread-winners, it would be possible for the family to have its homestead in a small community, or on a small farm, near the centre of industry, and for the members of the family who work in factory or office to journey daily to and from the city. Indeed, the army of such “commuters” is even now a sizable one. It has been suggested by some sociologists that, if the opportunity for establishing a homestead cannot be at once afforded to every family, some benefits of the stable and rooted home might be accorded to families by establishing a system of gardens on common grounds near the cities. Each family could own or use a definite part of such grounds, and could send members to cultivate them and to reap their harvest. Such a plan, however, could hardly be a permanent thing, especially for the larger cities; but it is a plan that might be tried, and it would have the effect of winning many a convert to the ranks of those who wish to have their own homesteads outside the crowded cities. Whatever the plan suggested or followed, the sociologist must recognize the need of some action to adjust a bad economic condition of affairs and to right a moral wrong. Legislation could do much to favor and foster the establishment of permanent homesteads. Public lands could be thrown open; small properties could be made available at generous terms; taxation could be regulated in such wise as to put the least possible burden on the small landholder; regulation of contracts could prevent the land-grabber from taking the property and homestead of the family in distress. These and other measures might well be advocated, to the end that the problem here discussed may be properly and permanently solved. But perhaps the greatest effort of the sociologist will be exacted in showing to the legislators, and to the citizens, that the problem is a problem, and that its solution is a thing of urgent necessity. Yet this is the case, and any effort which helps men to recognize the fact is sociological effort of the greatest merit.

c) The Problem of Labor

We have seen that man has the right to life, and the further right to marry and to found a family. Hence, man has the right to the means of livelihood and the support and rearing of his family. Therefore, man has the right to labor; for labor is the sole ordinary means of gaining the necessaries of life. The world, as we have said in another place, does not owe every man a living, but it does owe every man the opportunity of laboring to gain a livelihood. Social conditions and agencies which deny to men this requisite opportunity, are economically evil and morally wrong. Unemployment, or enforced idleness, is a social evil of the worst description. It has been justly called “the most terrible disease which afflicts the body politic.” The very word “unemployment” calls to mind a most distressing picture of families in dire need, of strong men eager for work and finding none, of bodies ill-clothed and ill-nourished, of minds in an agony of helplessness before the menace of a merciless future. The word summons up a picture of upright minds turned base, of manly hearts become angry and rebellious. For when unemployment holds a citizenry in thrall, every thought and impulse and effort of suffering men is pervaded with the maddening conviction that this thing need not be; that the rich earth is still a treasure-house offering store sufficient for the support and comfort of many times*its population; that the lords of business and industry, who have taught all men to admire them, have blundered or sinned, and have botched the management of affairs under their control. During times of unemployment, commoners, who must live by daily toil and are now denied it, feel by the most just of instincts that injustice is being done. No amount of argument, no explanation of cycles and of supply-and-demand, no bosh about the situation being “psychological,” will kill that instinct or quiet its sure conviction. And out of such conviction bitter resentment easily arises, and men are all too likely to repel injustice with injustice, to meet a bad situation with a worse, if only they may make the overlords of finance, who feel no pinch of want, fall with them into a common necessity or even a common destruction. So come revolutions and systems of political and social control which are humanly insupportable and which reduce men to serfdom and even absolute slavery—Communism, Socialism, Sovietism. When unemployment is widespread, we say that we are passing through a season of “depression” or are come upon “hard times.” Economists and sociologists are ever laboring manfully to discover and set down in order the causes of depressions. They commonly reach some such conclusions as these: (a) Good times and hard times follow each other in fairly regular cycles, and at approximately calculable intervals of years, (b) Minor cycles of prosperity and depression are observable within the larger cycles, and indeed within each year, and seem to depend upon seasonal changes more than upon any other discoverable factor, (c) Inventions of new machines, and other industrial occurrences, often turn loose a great number of workmen, and, for the time, the supply of labor is much greater than is needed for adequate production. Now, these familiar statements may be true, but it is surely illogical to regard them as an adequate expression of the causes of depressions. They are not so much causes as characteristics of the movement of industrial affairs. Cycles of employment and unemployment, of prosperity and depression, are not cosmic cycles, like the cycles of stars and the courses of comets; they are movements of business that human activity controls and human activity can change. It is purest nonsense to talk of “cycles” in this connection, as though they were inevitable and uncontrollable. Seasons, indeed, we cannot control, but we can control the activities of industry and contrive to make these less dependent upon seasonal changes. And the third point mentioned—the excess-supply of labor—is manifestly a thing which admits of management and adjustment. It will not do for the blundering captains of industry to tell us that our prosperity is their doing, and then that depressions and unemployment come from inevitable “cycling” of the times. It will not do for the lords of finance to preach up a spendthrift activity to make good times, and then to tell us that we cannot possibly unmake bad times. It will not do because it is not true. We make times good and we make them bad, and if we have a grain of sense, we shall try to see what activities of ours are truly the causes of these things. To explain recurrent depressions in terms of cycles is like explaining the darkness by an elaborate statement of the fact that night comes after day, and day after night. That much we know; the fact of the cycles we know; what we do not clearly recognize is the true cause of the cycles. And until we have discovered that cause, we can make no successful move to adjust or control them. Now, the cause of depressions is discoverable; nay, it has been long recognized by sane men. The cause in question is the greed and ambition of fallen mankind. It is the unbridled lust for gain and power, in those especially who have in possession or control the most of the world’s medium of exchange, and who always want more of it. Pope Pius XI rightly says, in his Encyclical “Quadragesima Anno

“Capital diverts business and economic activity entirely to its own arbitrary will, without regard for the human dignity of the worker, the social character of economic life, social justice and the common welfare.” The rank and file of the people are left in want, while the handlers of wealth plan and plot and wrangle in the effort to corner more cash. The resources of the earth lie undeveloped, or its rich products are so clumsily managed that they are unavailable to persons and families who need them most, while the captains of industry and the kings of business are engaged in the same ugly and inhuman activity. Money, which is meant to serve men as the necessary instrument of exchange, is made an end in itself, a goal and even a god. Here we have the true cause of depressions and unemployment. Only the acceptance of Christian teachings and the general recognition of the requirements of the natural law can bring the problem of unemployment to a final and satisfactory solution. Meanwhile legislation can do much. Civil laws can be framed and enforced to the end that citizens be given a just opportunity for steady labor and the winning of a permanent livelihood. Nor should the sociologist who labors for the enactment of such legislation be deterred from his high purpose by the whining of money-lords or their frantic declarations that “rugged individualism” must be left to its own devices, unhelped and unhindered by intervention on the part of the State. We have seen that the State has the right and the duty of intervening in social affairs when things are come to a desperate pass, and no other means of righting them is to be found. And these conditions for intervention are surely verified in the case of wide-spread unemployment and lasting depressions. In 1933 and 1934 the Federal Government of the United States wisely inaugurated measures—many of which were necessarily tentative and experimental in character—for the employment of millions of citizens. Public Employment through agencies established by the civil power is one means of preventing unemployment. Individual States of the Union have established employment offices at various times, with consistently beneficial effect. Ohio led the country in this worthy movement by setting up such an office in 1890. Another means for curing and preventing depressions is the furthering of Public Works, such as irrigation, reclamation of waste lands, reforestation, building of highways and bridges, construction of dams for water-supply or the manufacture of electric power, dredging of river-channels and harbors, construction of public buildings, etc. A means of preventing the hardships incidental to times of depression is Unemployment Insurance, which guarantees to the laborer whose work is temporarily taken away, some little income to help him through the period of unemployment. Many individual industries have already adopted some form of Unemployment Insurance. By these and other means the State must intervene to help men exercise their inborn right to labor and to maintain their families.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have discussed several problems which affect the family, and which have a notably moral character. We have briefly stated the problems, and have indicated the general direction in which sociological effort must move for their solution. We have spoken of the problem of the stability of the family, and have discussed its causes and its one adequate means of solution. We have studied the question of family property and have shown the urgent social need of permanently established and privately owned homesteads. We have discussed the problem of labor and unemployment, and have indicated the causes of depressions and their only available cure.