IBIYEMI ‘WALE VICTOR
The plethora of the evils, mayhem and pandemonium in
our world calls for a deeper reflection on the philosophies cum ideologies that
govern and direct our societies. It seems that man is in search of his own
death in shades of radical modernism and intellectual insanities. The future of
humanity is the most important thing that must always be placed in view in the
drive for scientific, cultural and ideological successes. The primary evil
which is the thrust of this paper is the modernistic corrosion of the family.
Because once the idea of family is permanently tinted with these false notions,
then, the society is altogether doomed. For the Family is the pillar of
society, the quality of the family determines the quality of the society.
This modernistic interpretation of values has even
rocked the bedrock of the society- the family and that has multiplied the evils
and scandals in the society. Hence, the debacle of family life has occasioned a
more unstable and volatile society. There are crises everywhere. These crises
are launched with the celebrations of unions and marriages that do not have
life in focus. Unions that are aberrations to the traditional understanding of
marriage, unions that are anti-life. For example, homosexuality, transsexuals,
bestiality, lesbianism, lone-parent families, divorce, rape, parenting,
cohabiting e.t.c.
These improper relationships do not promote anything
good. They are the very foundations of discord and disharmony in societal
values. They do not support the dignity of human life, they promote the culture
of death through the acolytes of abortion, euthanasia and suicide. These unholy
unions are deprived of any altruism, the morale in them is selfishness,
selfish-gratifying desires, selfism and hedonistic. Their results are
disastrous. Scandals, unintended pregnancies, abortion, contraception,
imbalanced child care, ignorance of children development and parenting. There
is every need therefore to reinstate the values of the human family as a place
where life is welcomed, protected and nurtured.
Furthermore,
searching deeper into family life, there are some other problems rocking family
life today which translate into the bleakness that society faces in modern
times. They are; Anti-Christian culture, Divorce, Busyness, Absent father
figure, Lack of discipline, Financial pressures, Lack of communication, Negative
media influences, Balance of work and family and Materialism.
These ten
fundamental problems rocking family life affect every member of the family and
therefore affect the society of which the family is a microcosm. Marriages have
been unnecessarily dissolved because of these problems. Homes are broken and
chattered because of the lack of communication, busyness and the inability to balance
work and family. So many others wound other families. These are the reasons why
the society will never be stable unless family life is repositioned to its
dignity and roles in the society.
We need to
constantly remind ourselves of the necessity of the family in the society. The first importance of the family is that, it is the foyer
into the world. The family shapes and moulds the individual.
The family as the first natural society
…Indeed, a person
normally comes into the world within a family, and can be said to owe to the
family the very fact of his existence as an individual. When he has no family,
the person coming into the world develops an anguished sense of pain and loss,
one which will subsequently burden his whole life.[i]
Pope John Paul II notes
that the discourse on family is an indispensable topic in the society. This is because
the family has always been considered as the first and basic expression of
man’s social nature.[ii]
It is in the family that the individual gets the first identity as a human
being, hence, the family is presented in the creator’s plan as the “the primary
place of humanization for the person and society and the cradle of life and
love.[iii]
The family is the sanctuary of life
The family in its proper
sense is the sanctuary of life because by its openness to conjugal love, it
becomes open to the acceptance of life and by that acceptance to life the
family becomes a place in which life- the gift of God- can be properly welcomed
and protected against the many attacks with which it is exposed to and can
develop in accordance with what constitutes human growth.[iv]
It is the role of the family therefore to promote the culture of life.
The family is a communion of persons
The family is a community
of persons whose proper way of existing and living together is communion: communio personarum.[v]
From this understanding of family, Blessed John Paul II says it is possible to
discern how the primordial model of the family is to be sought in God himself,
in the Trinitarian mystery of his life. The divine “We” is the eternal pattern
of the human “we”, especially of that “we” formed by the man and the woman
created in the divine image and likeness. Hence one can discover, at the very
origins of human society, the qualities of communion and of complementarity.[vi]
The family as a domestic church
The Christian home is the
place where children receive the first proclamation of the faith. For this
reason the family home is rightly called “the domestic Church,” a community of
grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity.[vii]
As the
domestic Church, the family is summoned to proclaim, celebrate and serve the
Gospel of life. This is a responsibility which first concerns married couples,
called to be givers of life, on the basis of an ever greater awareness of the
meaning of procreation as a unique event which clearly reveals that human life
is a gift received in order to be given as a gift. In giving origin to a new life,
parents recognize that the child, “as the fruit of their mutual gift of love,
is, in turn, a gift for both of them, a gift which flows from them.[viii]
It is here (in the Family) that the father, the mother, children, and all
members of the family exercise the priesthood of the baptized in a privileged
way ‘by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness
of a holy life, and self-denial and active charity.’[ix]
Thus, the home is the first school of Christian life and ‘a school for human enrichment.’[x]
Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous - even
repeated - forgiveness, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering
of one’s life.[xi]
The family as active participant in social life
The family participates
in social life through solidarity,[xii]
economic life and work. In the societal
formation of individuals, the family plays the fundamental and building roles.
For instance, in the primal aspect of inculcating virtues and character
formation, it is the sole responsibility of the family to satisfy the morality of the child before the child eventually gets
out to inculcate abhorrent virtues. Many parents have lost their children
because they lack skills for proper parenting and this daily hurts and hunts
our nation- Nigeria. Some other parents think that by dumping their children in
boarding schools, they are doing themselves good and by that, avoiding the stress of their obligations. The result
always prove the contrary- how those children turn out to be what they never
expected.
In conclusion, the family is an indispensable part of
the society. Not just an association of persons but good families are needed in
order to re-establish our world and society. We must all together work to
protect our families from shattering. We must always pray for the abundance of
good families in the society. Families must also contribute their own impact in
changing the world through proper formation of the young ones. Our future is
actually in our hands.
[i] Pope
John Paul II, Gratissimam Sane,
Letter to Families (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994), 2
[ii] Pope John Paul II, Gratissimam Sane, Letter to Families, 7
[iii] John Paul II, Post
Synodal Apostolic Exhortation- Christi
Fideles Laici (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1988), 40
[iv] John Paul II, Encyclical
Letter- Centesimus Annus (Vatican
City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1991), 39
[v] We are called, by
creation and from the beginning to enter into a communion of persons so that we
may increase and multiply and to enter into a communion so that the earth might
be subdued. Of course, the first communion is the family, the second is that
found in the workplace. In both communion, the activity of man and woman
reflects the acts of God, not only in the self-gift which established the
communions, but also in the effects of the self-gifts. See, Richard M. Hogan and John M. Levoir “Pope John Paul II on
Love, Sexuality, Marriage and Family” in Marriage:
Readings in Moral Theology edited by Charles E. Curran and Julie Hanlon
Rubio- no 15- (New York: Paulist Press, 2009), 81
[vi] Pope John Paul II, Gratissimam Sane, Letter to Families, 6
[vii] Catechism of the Catholic Church (Nairobi: Paulines Publications
Africa, 1994), 1666
[viii] John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae- on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life, (25 March, 1995)92
[ix] “Lumen Gentium”, Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church in the Documents
of Vatican II- the Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents, Vol.1 edited by
Austin Flannery (Bangalore: Theological Publication in India, 2010),10
[x] Gaudium et Spes”-
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 52
[xi] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1657
[xii] Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace, Compendium Of The
Social Doctrine Of The Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana,
2005), republished by St. Paul Book Centre, 141
No comments:
Post a Comment