Call to Family, Community, and Participation by Marisa Naryka, Vice President for Mission and Ministry
As we continue our conversation on the 7 themes of Catholic Social Teaching, we will look ahead to our focus for the spring semester on the Call to Family, Community, and Participation.
Each of us were born into or have been brought into a family; traditionally composed of two parents (mother and father) and children. In the Second Vatican II document (1965), The Church in the Modern World, family is described as “the foundation of society” (52). The family is considered the first nuclear society because it is the pattern for which all groups and organizations flow forth from. The family provides human beings with the basis of what society should look like – love, respect, mutual service, obedience, rules, boundaries, organization, etc. This is where children learn what it means to be in the right relationship with one another, grow in virtue, and learn what it means to be a member of society.
The novelist, Sigrid Undset, “saw the household, not the workplace, as the heart of life and of true economy” (Esolen, 2014, p. 78). Her understanding of the family is reflective of Pope Leo XIII’s (1891) description of the family in Rerum novarum, where he writes, “A family, no less than a State, is, as we have said, a true society, governed by a power within its sphere, that is to say, by the father” (13).
From our experience of family, we are called to be part of the large society or community. “A society can only be a society of persons, with the rights and duties that flow from their God-given nature as persons meant to be bound in love” (Esolen, p. 104). Therefore, community should be a reflection of the family. The medieval understanding of neighborhood meant “getting along with and assisting those whom we live most closely” (Esolen, p. 63). This, calling us to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31) and create a community as we are all part of the same human race (1 Corinthians 12:12-28).
Being part of a community requires us to be active participants in it. It is a right and a duty to fully participate in society by seeking the common good. In Faithful Citizenship, participation in public life is noted as both a moral and ethical obligation. This is accomplished through our relationships with others, voting, serving the poor, tithing, and caring for creation, just to name a few. No human family is able to work if the members of the family are not willing to invest in one another, and likewise, no society is capable of flourishing without a mutual investment and level of common care.
The role that families play in our own lives is often pivotal. The use of developmental psychology has anchored itself in discovering how a family of origin has affected one’s entire global perspective, and thus, affects the nature of their day to day decisions and the emphasis that they place on certain values. If we are to then take the wisdom of the Church and project what this nucleus of society (family) does for an individual, how much more of an impact does it have on society as a whole when we live with an intentionality of investing into our commonality using familial terminology and ideology. The farther that we remove ourselves from seeing one another in familial terms, the more difficult it becomes to grasp the common good that we are all aimed at achieving.
Reflection Questions:
- How has family life influenced your engagement with the community?
- How can you contribute to the flourishing of society through your participation?
References:
Esolen, Anthony (2014). Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching: A Defense of the Church’s True Teaching on Marriage, Family, and the State. Manchester, N.H., Sophia Institute Press.
Pope Leo XIII (1891). Rerum Novarum.
Pope Paul VI (1965). Gaudium et Spes.
USCCB (2023). Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.
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