David QuinnWhat did Archbishop Diarmuid Martin’s words on family mean, wonders David Quinn
Is Archbishop Diarmuid Martin correct when he says “there is no such thing as the ideal family”? He said this at a conference in Dublin last weekend formally launching the Church’s preparations for the World Meeting of Families. Pope Francis is very likely to attend it when it takes place in Ireland in two years time.
Archbishop Martin also warned against defining the family. He said: “Let me say something about which I feel strongly: do not allow ourselves to be become entangled in trying to produce definitions of the family. Family is such a transcultural value that it cannot be defined simply.”
Is he right about that? He’s right if he means that there is no “ideal” family in that no family is perfect.
However, Archbishop Martin also said, “But this does not mean that we renounce presenting an ideal, which men and women and young people can aspire to and hope to achieve.” He did not set out what the ideal is. From the point of view of children in particular, the ideal is clearly to be raised by their own mother and father, provided they are good parents.
Strange
It would be a very strange world if we could not agree that this was the ideal because it would mean that it had become a matter of indifference whether the two people who brought a child into the world would or would not commit to the vital task of raising their child together.
To put it another way, it would become a matter of indifference whether a society had a low rate of divorce, a high rate of divorce, a high or a low rate of cohabitation, a high or a low number of lone parent families.
Think about what this means. Where there is a high rate of divorce lots of marriages are breaking down with all the pain this inflicts on both the adults and their children.
Where there is a high rate of cohabitation it means that lots of people are reluctant to go the extra step and make the fuller commitment that is marriage. It also means even more relationship instability because cohabiting couples, even when there are children involved, break up more often than married couples.
Where there is a high rate of single parenthood, it means that both parents do not live under the same roof. This will usually be the father. How can it be a good thing if lots of children do not live with their fathers?
It is true, of course, that a married man and woman can be bad parents, and a given married man and woman can do a worse job raising their children than a given cohabiting couple or single parent.
A cohabiting couple or a single parent can give their children all the love in the world. That is why Archbishop Martin was correct when he said: “Family is about love, no matter how imperfect and failing: it is about a love which enriches lives.”
But a single parent cannot on their own offer a child the love of both a mother and a father. A cohabiting couple, for their part, ought to be encouraged by the Church to marry because marriage is the ultimate commitment and because marriage, as mentioned, is more stable than cohabitation.
Environment
Pope Francis himself has said on several occasions that children have a right to be raised by their own mother and father.
In November 2014, for instance, he said: “Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity.”
This is the kind of thing we need to hear said loudly and clearly at the World Meeting of Families.
On his recent trip to Georgia, the Pope didn’t mince his words when he denounced the “global war to destroy marriage”.
He described marriage as “the most beautiful thing that God has created”. He said, “In marriage, man and woman become one flesh, the image of God”, and that “when you divorce one flesh you sully God’s image”.
Also in Georgia, as he has done elsewhere, Pope Francis described gender theory – the belief that we can be any one of dozens of different ‘genders’, not just male and female – as “a great enemy of marriage”.
These are strong words and the Church in Ireland would be failing in its duty to proclaim the entirety of the Church’s message about marriage and the family if it did not echo sentiments such as these.
The Church in Ireland at present is strongly emphasising what the Pope has to say about the importance of mercy.
The Pope clearly recognises that there are many different types of family out there. For example, he has spoken positively about cohabiting couples who love each other deeply and may model love better than some married couples.
He knows that where there is love in a family, God is present in some way no matter what kind of family we are talking about. But he does not leave it there. He still points towards the ideal of marriage between a man and woman and the ideal of a child being loved and raised by their own mother and father joined together in marriage.
What Pope Francis is trying to do is get away from condemnatory language about the various family forms that exist today, while at the same time not losing sight of the ideal and proclaiming that ideal.
These two things have to go together if the Church in Ireland is to be true to the vision of Pope Francis concerning the family.
These two things – pastoral language and clear, unambiguous teaching about the ideal – must be front and centre in the run-up to the World Meeting of Families and at the event itself in 2018.