Recent Historical Pressure
on the Family: Damage and Hope
An individual can go along
in life for a time without many apparent temptations. A change in
life can increase the number and pressure of temptation. So too with
times in social history. This article is simply intended to review
some recent historical changes that have made family formation more
difficult. Yet we should not forget that human family life was first
disrupted by our first parents who gave in to the original tempter.
Evil is boring because it is the deprivation of good – no new sins
have been invented, only the rags they wear.
Marriage is a public act
and institution. When a man and woman publicly vow fidelity for life
they create a new society called family. Even if the couple cannot
bear the obvious physical fruit of children they are already a
family. Child-rearing or other contributions to the society as a
whole was seen as a desired or natural consequence of family. In
recent times we are subjected to thinking that would make a divorce
between marriage and family, reducing marriage to a mere going public
with a private friendship or relationship.
The Industrial Revolution
The history of
civilization is largely in the context of agriculture. During
historical times most humans have farmed. When a couple married it
was with the ready-made family business of attempting to grow crops.
The Industrial Revolution began in England with the disruption of
traditional farming. As it increased it furthered the decline of
farming. But it was not the invention of technology in itself that
pressured the family. The way the modern industrial system developed
was injurious. Instead of families, clans, monasteries, or villages
owning the capital necessary to efficiently use the new technology,
private individuals were able to hire those they had no personal
connection with or responsibility for in order to do the work of
their “private enterprise”. Human beings were on their way to
being sexless replaceable parts.
Malthus
His “Essay on the
Principles of Population” was published in 1798. He spent his years
in the 19th century retracting or adding to this work. He
started with basic premises that he readily admitted were unoriginal:
population can rise 2-4-6-8 but agriculture can only rise 1-2-3-4 to
a set limit. Therefore the only real check on “overpopulation” is
malnutrition. Agreement and opposition to Malthus marked economic
thinking for the rest of the 19th century. Arnold Toynbee
(not his nephew Arnold J. Toynbee) in his small but important
“Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England” devotes a
whole chapter to Malthus. The Lectures were the pinnacle of Toynbee's
thinking, published in 1884, a year after his death. What is of
special interest for our topic is the following quote:
“I wish to speak of one
more remedy, which Malthus himself repudiated, namely, that of
artificial checks on the number of children. It has been said that
such questions should only be discussed 'under the decent veil of a
dead language.' Reticence on them is necessary to wholesomeness of
mind; but we ought to face the problem, for it is a vital one. These
preventive checks on births excite our strong moral repugnance. Men
may call such repugnance prejudice, but it is perfectly logical,
because it is a protest against the gratification of a strong
instinct while the duties attaching to it are avoided...It is wrong
to consider this question from the point of wealth alone; we cannot
overrate the importance of family life as the source of all that is
best in national life...Above all, it must be remembered that this is
not a purely economic problem, nor is it to be solved by mechanical
contrivances. To reach the true solution we must tenaciously hold to
a high ideal of spiritual life. What the mechanical contrivances
might perchance give us is not what we desire for our country. The
true remedies, on the other hand, imply a growth towards that purer
and higher condition of society for which alone we care to strive.
{pp 85 – 87; Beacon
Press, The Industrial Revolution, Arnold Toynbee, published 1956}
1930
In spite of the very
English sentiment expressed by the above quote, the Lambeth
Conference of Anglican bishops removed the ban on artificial
contraception in 1930.
Kinsey Report of 1948
The Kinsey report on “male
sexual behavior” was published in 1948. This “report” was used
for at least the next thirty years to claim unnatural sexual behavior
as really not far from the norm. Some historical cultural sense is
needed here: what kind of American male in the 1940's would sit and
answer 500 personal questions about their sexual acts asked by the
Kinsey “researchers”? The problem with the Kinsey reports (a
female version was produced in 1953 and the question asked above
becomes even more pointed) was not only the culturally abnormal
population used for the statistics but the very notion that
statistics can be used to argue for unhealthy behavior. What
percentage of the population in the United States used tobacco in
1950? Since almost all of us have some unhealthy behaviors in other
areas of life perhaps rather than trying to change those behaviors
society should accept them or even promote them. Yet the morally
anchorless world not only accepted the Kinsey facade of numbers but
through the educational system set about to conform social reality to
those numbers.
Technology and Medicine
All of the preceding is
joined with the general developments in machinery and medicine that
make the average life easier and longer. But this has been mostly a
20th century event. When Queen Victoria died in 1910 the
average life expectancy for American men and women was just under 49
and 52. Which was not much more than during the Roman Empire. That
meant that at 25 or 26 half your expected life was over. As discussed
elsewhere in this blog, this puts off maturing to a later time in
life and puts us in greater disconnect with our biological potential.
1960 Hormonal
Contraceptive Pill
The FDA approved the first
contraceptive pill in 1960 and many women since have been harmed by
this “treatment”. It took over twenty years for the profit makers
to lower the dosage enough to remove the most obvious side-effects.
Damage
When family formation is
no longer seen as the reason for marriage, shifts in society take
place. Rather than union and procreation as the meaning of the
marital act, the reassurance of companionship and sexual satisfaction
are intended. That means, in other words, the marital act becomes
merely a private pleasurable experience between companions. The
entire biological structure of reproduction is defaced. Why even need
public marriage?
Then why should anyone,
even “married” men and women, resent or object to homosexual
couples who are doing under the temptation of their mental health
problem the same as they – engaging in bodily acts solely to
produce sexual pleasure and re-enforce the ties of companionship?
In this unnatural view of
human sexuality pregnancy becomes an “unwanted outcome”. Those
brainwashed by our diseased cultural attitudes then continue to deny
the biological reality of the presence of another human being.
Shortly after the legalization of hormonal artificial contraception,
nation after nation in the 1960's began to legalize abortion.
Casti Connubii and Humanae
Vitae – Guidance Now and Hope for the Future
When the Anglican Lambeth
Conference approved artificial birth control in 1930 the Catholic
Church had an immediate response. Pope Pius XI by the end of that
same year issued the encyclical Casti Connubii. In this apostolic
letter he re-affirmed the constant Christian teaching that anything
that deliberately tried to remove procreation from the act of
marriage was immoral. Thirty years later hormonal artificial
contraception was embraced by the society that gave us trench
warfare, atheistic communism, nazi concentration camps, the
conventional and nuclear mass burning of Japanese civilians. Humanae
Vitae in July 1968 was issued in the face of much misunderstanding
and opposition. Even loyal members of the Church thought the new
invention of the hormone pill could be viewed as a “regulation”
of the menstrual cycle and not as a direct intervention in the
marital act. Pope Paul VI with the help of the Holy Spirit saw
clearly through this mistake. His encyclical has provided a guide for
all subsequent Church teaching in the medical revolution we have been
subjected to.
Throughout the Church's
history challenges to faith and morals have been met by true and
inspired prophetic teaching. Pius XI's Casti Connubii and Paul VI's
Humanae Vitae are in that Tradition. They give us a blueprint and
hope for the future. When our present culture is swamped by history
these encyclicals will remain. Just as St. Augustine's thought in
“The City of God” in the fifth century as the Roman Empire
collapsed shaped the culture of Europe in the Middle Ages, so will
these and other Church documents help us to survive and flourish as
this culture passes away.
Addendum
This article was published April, 2013. On July 11, 2013 The Catholic Light of the Diocese of Scranton published a column by Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, Ph.D in which he highlights the perversion of marriage and the role of contraception. He includes an apropos quote from Sigmund Freud: "The common characteristic of all perversions...is that they have abandoned reproduction as their aim. We term sexual activity perverse when it has renounced the aim of reproduction and follows the pursuit of pleasure as an independent goal."
Addendum
This article was published April, 2013. On July 11, 2013 The Catholic Light of the Diocese of Scranton published a column by Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, Ph.D in which he highlights the perversion of marriage and the role of contraception. He includes an apropos quote from Sigmund Freud: "The common characteristic of all perversions...is that they have abandoned reproduction as their aim. We term sexual activity perverse when it has renounced the aim of reproduction and follows the pursuit of pleasure as an independent goal."
