How do we define ‘family’ anyway

Our bishops have chosen to make family life a priority for the next three years. The pope has called a Special Synod to address pastoral challenges to families. The government has approved a White Paper as its family policy. The United Nations is commemorating the 20th anniversary of the International Year of the Family.

We should focus on how the family functions, not on how it’s structured. (Photo: ardelfin, Morguefiles)

So there is no doubt that families are in the spotlight. But is there really a family focus in Church or social life?

One certainly hears a lot more about empowering women in the workplace — which, of course, is important — than about strengthening families and examining work-family balance, which is one of the International Year of the Family themes.

As I have been reflecting on the reality of family life from my corner of the vineyard—a comfortable retirement village where I live alone — I have begun to wonder very seriously whether some of us, such as the Church — in the form if its hierarchy, clergy, lay Church workers—are sufficiently in touch with the daily slog of eking out a living, coping with financial stresses, conflict and violence, parenting issues with kids and our own elderly.

Those are some of the negatives, but I like to come back to the opening statement of the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes: “The joys and hopes, the fears and anxieties of the people of this age are the joys and hopes, the fears and anxieties of the followers of Christ.”

There are also joys and hopes. Couples are getting married, new babies are conceived and born, and families celebrate their little and bigger successes as they grow and develop.

A definition of family ministry developed by leaders of family movements some time ago put it like this: “Family ministry is strengthening the living of Jesus’ message in the home.”

In any of our questionnaires are we asking families about what that message is for them and how to go about it. I feel concerned that some of the pastoral challenges like Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics or the use of natural family planning are pretty well off the radar screen for most families, even the divorced.

At the same time I feel disturbed that Catholics appear to be so ignorant of Church teaching. Are they avoiding it because they don’t like it? Do they do so because it is irrelevant for them? Or is it not being taught properly and extensively?

A big difficulty is with the definition of the family.

The idea of the family consisting of a married couple and their children is a beautiful ideal but it’s not the reality of most groups of people who nevertheless see themselves as families. Do they really want to be regarded as “irregular”?

A book that has been a standby for me for 20 years is the US Bishops’ manual “A Family Perspective in Church and Society”. It gives a finely nuanced description of the family as “an intimate community of life and love, bonded together for life by blood, marriage, or adoption”. I have found that definition very useful.

It’s also helpful to focus on how the family functions, rather than on its structure. This is where we become too easily unstuck when we discuss the family.

In my work in promoting a vision of the family as a little church, I am constantly frustrated by the comparative plethora of other resources that are on offer for personal spiritual formation.

Family life is messy and it is helpful to seek spiritual recourse in a difficult marriage or family problem, but if the local churches are not going to focus on the essence of family ministry, the little church of the home will never be the source and locus for spiritual growth. Right?