Followup to Eduardo's Post

[For Eduardo's post, click here.]

The Tablet [London]
April 22, 2006 

Editorial

What really harms the family

The family is under stress, of that there is little doubt. But there is a realistic way of expressing that crisis, based on what families themselves say; and an unreal one, conjured from the imagination of those out of touch with reality. The most recent example was contained in the prayers used at the Good Friday Stations of the Cross in Rome, brought to the media’s attention by the fact that it was the Pope himself who led the prayers even if he did not write them. “Today we seem to be witnessing a kind of anti-Genesis, a counter-plan, a diabolical pride aimed at eliminating the family,” one such prayer declared. Another spoke of “a slick campaign of propaganda ... spreading an inane apologia of evil, a senseless cult of Satan”.

Perhaps prayers designed to encourage a mood of penance should not be exposed to forensic scrutiny. Perhaps, then, Archbishop Angelo Comastri, Vicar General at the Vatican City, who wrote them, was only doing his job. But real families will not feel such lurid and melodramatic prayers do much justice to their situation. They are harassed by concrete problems like debt, lack of childcare, the high cost of housing, unemployment or excessive hours of work, and the now perpetual juggling act known as the work-life balance. These pressures are often confusing and contradictory, pulling in all directions, sometimes good and bad simultaneously.

The survey called Listening 2004, conducted for the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, analysed many people’s own accounts of their problems, and many of their stories led back to what it labelled the dual-earner economy. In order to meet the high cost of a mortgage on an over-priced house, both partners felt obliged to work. This meant finding affordable childcare, which is often not easy. Many women felt financially pressured to return to work after the birth of a child before they felt they, or their child, were ready. Then they faced managing a home as well as pursuing a career, as even now it is usually the woman who bears the brunt of homemaking. Often they and their male partners were victims of the long-hours work culture that is as much a threat to a healthy family life as anything.

Needless to say, such factors place relationships under strain. Some marriages (and Catholic marriages are by no means immune) buckle under it. But there is no solution in a return to the conventions of the past, nor in inventing implausible scapegoats for present difficulties – gay couples often find themselves unfairly cast in that role. The opportunities available to women with children to fulfil themselves in paid work are good, not bad; and the role of the Church, if it has one here, is to ease the institution of the family into the future by encouraging strategies to mitigate the pain and maximise the pleasure. But any realistic family policy would recognise that the family is still the centre of most people’s hopes of happiness. And there really is no “counter-plan”. That is just paranoia.
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