27 minute read
The primacy of the father
The primacy of
THE FATHER
Advertisement
by SEBASTIAN MORELLO
THE PRIMACY OF THE FATHER IN THE DOMESTIC SOCIETY
There are three elementary societies. That is to say, all societies other than these three are artificial societies. I do not mean to say that artificial societies are bad – in fact in most cases they are very good – but only that such societies simply arise by human contrivance and invention, like any sports club, business, guild, or hobby association for example. Whereas the family and the state arise out of human nature, and are therefore societies properly speaking, just as the Church is a society, but derived not from nature, but from supernature. The family and the state are natural societies for man comes into existence belonging to both, and cannot achieve his proper finality – cannot live a life proper to the human person – independently from these societies. In regard to the Church, man is cut off from his supernatural end, namely participation in the divine life of the Triune God, nor can he fulfil the requirements of nature, without this holy society.
These three, therefore, comprise the elementary societies necessary for man to achieve his proper finality. They relate to each other, ideally, on the model of the human person, for whom they exist. The family is to the state what the cell is to the body, and the state is to the Church what the body is to the soul.
Supposing that these are the elementary societies, how are we to present a definition of the term “society” which is fittingly applicable to all three of these societies? Well, a fairly classical definition of a society does just that:
A society is an aggregate of persons forming an ordered community for the attainment of man’s end, with its own geographical and juridical dominion; its own hierarchy, government and ultimate legislator; its own laws, customs, and right to direct, coerce and punish its subjects. What does this definition tell us when applied to the family? First, the family is a community of persons bound by something beyond mere arbitrary choice; the members live in this society with a disposition of gratitude for this community and the benefits that are derived from it, including the very life of its members. This is what classical thought calls pietas: piety toward one’s parents and domestic antecedents. Also, we see that the family is ordered toward the attainment of man’s end. Being a complex creature – a material animal animated by a spiritual soul – man’s end can be reduced only to complex categories, but to keep things simple we can say for now that the end for which he acts is to attain happiness, that is, to flourish as the kind of creature he is. As we will see in a moment, the family must unite with other families in order to achieve this end for its members.
What else can we learn from the definition given? The family possesses by an inherent right private property in which it can realise its geographical and juridical dominion. This of course means that any state can be called unjust which not only allows, but does not take positive action to prevent the perpetuation of property-renting among families. It belongs to the very nature of any society to have a geographical jurisdiction: a territory. A building and some land has generally been understood to be the proper and basic territory for the average domestic society. It should be noted that by the 19th century the Church was strikingly clear in its social teaching that the right to possess property was intrinsic to the nature of man,
that this right was fortified insofar as he participated in family life, and that he had an obligation therefore to procure property. In 1891, Leo XIII taught the following:
“Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own… That right to property, therefore, which has been proved to belong naturally to individual persons, must in likewise belong to a man in his capacity as head of a family.”1
The right to possess property is not a civic right, of which the state can act as the arbiter. Property belongs by nature to families, and the state must do all it can to come to the aid of families in securing their territories. As I said a moment ago, the family must join with other societies of the same kind, in order to achieve its end. For this reason the family has traditionally been referred to as an imperfect society, for it cannot self-perpetuate, nor sufficiently defend itself against violent attack. It cannot exist independently from the other families which constitute the polity and provide for all its own needs, and nor can its members attain their natural finality without also being members of the political society – the nation, and the nation’s political ordering by the state – for the wisdom of the wider community can only be accessed by participation in the wider community. Unlike the family, the state within itself “contains what is necessary for fulfilling its purpose.”2 Nevertheless, the state is only a perfect society – as opposed to an imperfect society like the family – because it contains within itself families, on which it depends for its own continued existence. There is not merely, and only, a hierarchy of dependence between these two natural societies, but a relationship of co-dependence. As an aside, we can note here that the modern invention of homosexual so-called “marriage” is a direct affront to this reality, and in part arises from a lack of understanding concerning the authority of the state. The state has its own jurisdiction from which the family’s dominion is distinct, and the latter is defined independently from the former. In turn, the state has no right whatever to redefine, and in turn reconfigure, the structure of the domestic society. Such attempts at seizing control of the family indicate tyranny on the part of the state, and for centuries the Church has taught that this particular species of tyranny – that is, usurpation of domestic authority to centralise all power in the state – is the logical development of a liberal settlement.
The family, whilst imperfect, is a complete society. Pius XI presented this same position in 1929, claiming that the family is “instituted directly by God for its peculiar purpose, the generation and formation of offspring; for this reason it has priority of nature and therefore of rights over civil society.”3 This position was continually held in Catholic social teaching, and in 1983 under John Paul II the Magisterium issued the Charter of the Rights of the Family.
THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN, 1304–1306, GIOTTO, SCROVEGNI CHAPEL, PADUA.
As I mentioned earlier, scholars have employed a soul-body analogy to convey the desired Church-state relationship. The state-family relationship, in turn, is presented as analogical to that of body and cell. William Newton describes this in the following way:
“The State is a conglomeration of families, as a body is a conglomeration of cells. A very important consequence of this is that the family has rights prior to the State and which are not derived from the State by positive law. This means that these rights are innate (in-born) and are part of natural law; they are not given to the family by the State.”4
Inside the familial society, the father and mother form a government over the children, who are their subjects. Parental rights are sacrosanct. Francisco de Vitoria states that “the father’s rights over his child are given by God and any harm done to the father… is also done to God.”5 For this reason Vitoria, in his lectures on the evangelisation of South American natives, states that “overriding parental consent – even if for such an important matter as baptism – is a violation of natural law, which protects parental rights.”6
Just as a number of cells form a body, so a collection of families form a nation, whose natural and rational ordering is the state. If those belonging to these natural societies are baptised, then they also form the Church, and so the family-state-Church community is a single community constituting three fundamental societal principles, analogous to cell, body, and soul in a single human person.
Finally, what can we say of familial government from our definition of a society? The family has its own hierarchy and government. It is formed not by vote, but by assent to the principles of the marital constitution by two people who can in principle procreate, under whom a hereditary dynasty is perpetuated, traditionally identified by the surname of the male ruler, which his co-ruler takes as her own and is in turn identified with his authority, which they share as a single rule. This government, then, has traditionally been seen to have its foundation in the authority and providence of the husband and father, whom the family must serve in the home, as he serves them outside the home by sacrificing himself and the fruits of his labour for them.
Within the family, the children are ordered toward that which is their good by the directive and coercive laws of the familial government, the parents. This is not a popular way of speaking about family life, and yet I think we all know it to be true, and have indeed lived it in some way. Good parents do not live alongside their children in a perfectly egalitarian and lawless environment, in which the children may do whatever they like. So too, good parents make household rules, and enforce such rules by ensuring that there are consequences to disobeying them. If children are forbidden from doing something, and they do it, parents might withhold pocket money for example. This is because the parental government precisely has a coercive and directive authority, and may legislate and punish in accordance with justice. Furthermore, the family has its own culture and customs, which when good should be defended, and approached with reverence. Within this little society the subjects should have piety, that is, a just gratitude, toward the family’s government.
THE PRIMACY OF THE FATHER IN THE MORAL PERSON OF THE FAMILY Note that above I merely asserted that the man’s authority was foundational, and furthermore that it was an authority primarily over the children, and not over his spouse. I pointed to how tradition and custom support the notion of male authority as primary, but nevertheless, it was little more than an assertion with nothing for its support beyond convention. From the perspective of the family as a natural society, we can well define the family and its structure, but it is difficult to develop a sense of the structure of its government, and how the complementary aspects of its government – man and woman – relate to each other. I have been brief in touching upon the foundational authority of the husband and father, precisely because I am aware that insisting upon this authority from the perspective I have so far taken gives the impression that the primacy of husband-father is somewhat arbitrary. It is not arbitrary, and both nature and Scripture teach us that it is not arbitrary, only it must be considered from a different perspective. In turn, now I will consider the family as a moral person.
Human societies are moral persons, that is, they are moral agents which must seek to realise the good, and can be held responsible and judged guilty, or commended and esteemed, for injustices and praiseworthy acts respectively. Our Lord commands the Apostles to make disciples of all nations precisely because He holds such political communities to be moral persons capable of accepting the Gospel and becoming disciples.7 So too, the family is a moral person, who can be a disciple, by having Jesus Christ reign over the domestic territory.
I want to suggest that in this moral person of the human family, we see the powers and faculties of the human person represented. Paul teaches the following (in what was the mandatory epistle for all nuptial Masses in the Roman rite until the liturgical innovations following the Second Vatican Council):
“Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour.”8
Here the wife is presented as the body, and the husband the head, and the body must be subject to the head. Paul points us to an analogue of this relationship in the order of supernature, namely the relationship of the Church to Our Lord. Jesus Christ sacrifices Himself for the Church, as the Church in turn serves Him. Looking at Ephesians 5, we might want to ask, where do the children fit in? One answer is that the wife and the children together are the body, for the wife is not simply the body, but rather a particular part of the body: the heart. Pius XI takes this approach in the following extended quotation from Casti Connubii:
“Domestic society being confirmed, therefore, by this bond of love, there should flourish in it that ‘order of love’, as St Augustine calls it. This order includes both the primacy of the husband with regard to the wife and children, the ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience, which the Apostle commends in these words: ‘Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, and Christ is the head of the Church.’
“This subjection, however, does not deny or take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman both in view of her dignity as a human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion; nor does it bid her obey her husband’s every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife; nor, in fine, does it imply that the wife should be put on a level with those persons who in law are called minors, to whom it is not customary to allow free exercise of their rights on account of their lack of mature judgment, or of their ignorance of human affairs. But it forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family; it forbids that in this body which is the family, the heart be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the proximate danger of ruin. For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.”9
The family, then, is the whole body, held in unity through the bond of love between its members. The aspect of government who possesses the chief duty of protecting this bond of love is the wife and mother, who is the heart of the family. Her submission is not a servile submission, but a submission of love.
In the individual, the heart – the rational appetite – cannot rule one’s operations without great disorder arising. Rather, the heart must be rationally ordered by right reason, whilst the intuitions of the former ought not to be dismissed. So too, affectivity in the family cannot be the primary governing principle, but rather must be rationally ordered by the husband and father.
In the individual, both the mind and the heart must govern, and not the lower faculties situated in the body. The person’s governing powers, however, have an inner order, and the heart – the will – must be in union with the primary rule of right reason. These powers must be in union, as the good of the whole person is pursued. So too, the wife must unite herself to the rule of the husband, as together they seek to realise the good of the whole family.
This, then, is not a case of the father ruling by the firmness of his own arbitrary will, but rather the rule of right reason. In the order of grace, this means that the aspect of government which the wife brings to the family, now elevated to the pursuit of salvation for the whole family, must be enforced, supported, and guided by the husband, in his primary rule as head of the family, as Paul teaches:
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.”10
Christ rules the Church by loving Her and sacrificing Himself for Her, and by so doing He blesses Her and makes Her holy, just as the father is also chief minister – “domestic bishop”, as the Greek Fathers put it – in the family when it is elevated by sanctifying grace to the status of domestic church. Between spouses, the husband rules the wife, by loving her, providing for her, giving over the fruits of his labour, “nourishing and cherishing” her; and the wife, like the Church to Our Lord, responds in love by obeying the commandments of the husband.
The mind and the heart must govern together. A society ruled by human reason alone is a society tyrannised by rationalism; it is an authoritarian Stalinist-style mechanical society with no sense of purpose. A society ruled by unfettered affectivity and appetite alone is chaos; it is like the Notting Hill Carnival, but every day, all year round. In contrast to these, a society ruled by right reason, rationally ordered love, and transformed by grace, is like a glorious Christian civilisation, of which the Catholic family should be a miniature, irrespective of whether it happens to subsist within such a civilisation.
Such a position may appear to play into the hand of crude caricaturists, who characterise women as simply emotional nitwits, and men as the logical and rational ones. Such demeaning of women is exactly the opposite of what is presented by the Church. Rather, by attending to a widely experienced difference between the psychology of men and women, and how the recognition of such differences is supported by Scripture, the Church presents a case for the complementarity and union of the sexes, and the collaboration of the sexes in domestic government. Nonetheless, it rejects entirely modernity’s doctrine, so obviously incorrect, that there is no detectible difference between men and women. There is difference, and where there is difference there is hierarchy.
THE PRIMACY OF THE FATHER IN THE ONTOLOGY OF CREATION In Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII teaches that “the child belongs to the father, and is, as it were, the continuation of the father’s personality.”11 The family is the realisation of something intrinsic to the father, and in turn the expression of his own personality. This “something” belongs to him by virtue of what he is, and is not effected by the fact that he has entered the married state, or by his wife conceiving a child. Here I leave behind the initial argument for the primacy of the father, from the family as society, as that which is supported by custom; this is no doubt true, but it is a very weak position from which to advance
our case. So too, I leave behind the argument for the primacy of the father from the family as moral person, which hinges on a view of the sexes as psychologically complementary in such a way as to imply hierarchy. This is certainly a stronger case than the first, but is still somewhat weak. There are many exceptions to the general rule of psychological differentiation, and with further technology any difference might amount to little practically speaking, with such technology increasingly equalising the roles of the sexes.
We may be tempted to make the argument that women must become the heart of the home, so to speak, because they cannot be fully mothers and fully providers at the same time. In turn, most will naturally opt for motherhood, leading men to provide, and therefore protect, and finally therefore to make the big decisions. This too seems somewhat changeable with technology, however, with many mothers working effectively from their iPads at home whilst raising children. Also, such a position implies that male leadership is contingent upon having children and the wife choosing not to be the primary worker: if the children do not come the spouses are equals.
I have attempted, with the use of Pius XI’s Casti Connubii, to make the case that Ephesians 5 does not exclude children when it speaks of the headship of the man, but it must be admitted that children are not in this passage mentioned by Paul, with the headship of the man presented within the context of the two spouses alone (although children are discussed in the following passage, Ephesians 6:1-4). On what then, at its deepest level, does the primacy of the father depend? I wish now to make an ontological case: I submit that a man, inasmuch as he is a man, is a father.
Fatherhood is the proper identity of man qua man. This is because God’s Fatherhood is not an analogue of earthly fatherhood, an imperfect participation in created fatherhood. Rather, the Heavenly Father has His analogue in the created existence of men. Men cannot exist as anything other than fathers. Of course, there are degrees to which this is realised, dependent on various categories of development, but nonetheless man qua man is father: the intrinsic telos of men is fatherhood. This fatherhood must be realised, and must not be frustrated. It may be manifested via natural fatherhood through marriage and family, or assumed into – and expressed by – priestly fatherhood, or in another spiritual way through the paternal care of souls by consecrated laymen in monasteries and friaries, or even in the case of men whose marriages have tragically been unfruitful, but have realised their fatherhood in care for their spouses, noble professions, and perhaps a special care for younger members of the extended family. However the fatherhood of men is to be realised, it must be realised, for man is father inasmuch as he is man.
John Paul II alludes to this very point when he writes in Familiaris Consortio that “love for his wife as mother of their children and love for the children themselves are for the man the natural way of understanding and fulfilling his own fatherhood.”12 Fatherhood is something which already belongs to him, it is convertible with his own masculinity, which he comes to understand and fulfil through family life. Furthermore, John Paul II continues, by so doing he is “revealing and in reliving on earth the very fatherhood of God.”13
There is a primacy of God the Father, who proceeds from no Divine Person, and from whom the Son and Holy Ghost proceed, via the modalities of begetting and spiration respectively, with the Holy Ghost as the bond of love who unites the Father to the extension of His own personality in the Son, who in turn is the perfect image of the Father.14 God is revealed as male, and only the masculine pronoun may be used for Him, and yet He is also revealed as Father, for there is nothing potential in God, and inasmuch as He is pure act – as the metaphysicians say – He is also the perfect actuation of masculinity. The actuation of
masculinity is fatherhood, and therefore the pure act of the divine substance is perfect and infinite Fatherhood.
So too, man derives his earthly fatherhood from nothing extrinsic to himself, and it is not bestowed upon him by any event in his life; it is purely what he is, and his fatherhood can be realised in a multiplicity of ways. Man is what he is supposed to be when he embraces a state of government by which he seeks to realise the good of those in his care, and that is the essence of fatherhood. I do not desire to give any impression that the family is arbitrary in the realisation of man’s fatherhood, as just one path among many. It is the natural way by which he lives his fatherhood, and, by virtue of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, it is for the baptised a supernatural way of transforming by grace what is proper to him by nature. Nonetheless, it is proper to him by nature, and therefore must be realised whatever the state of life a man embraces. considered the family as a moral person, analogical to a human being, and how the father’s role is that of reason, relating to his spouse as reason to rational appetite in the integrated human person; I suggested that the widely experienced psychological difference between the sexes supports this view. For the deepest case for the primacy of the father, however, I turned to a metaphysical – indeed, theological – case, arguing that human fatherhood is the created analogue of the only true Fatherhood, which is that of the Heavenly Father, whose icons in the world are men. Fatherhood is what man is; masculinity can only be what it truly is by finding its proper expression in paternity, which is the flowering, so to speak, of masculinity.
For this reason, the homosexualisation of our culture is so grave. Homosexuality is the perfect inversion of paternity. Its self-directing, narcissistic, sterile character is the antithesis of all that is truly paternal.
The deepest case for the primacy of the father, then, rests not on the greater physical strength of men, nor on social custom, nor on the psychological difference between the sexes, but upon God the Father Himself, the icons of whom in the created order are men. For this reason Paul writes, “I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.”15 It ought not to surprise us, therefore, that among every nation and culture we find the primacy of the father and reverence for paternity as the norm, for indirectly and implicitly the Heavenly Father is revealed in the book of nature.
CLOSING REMARKS I began by reflecting on the family as a natural society. I think it is necessary to understand this, as fathers can take charge of what belongs to them only if they understand the nature of their own jurisdiction. I then Indeed, there is a growing body of psychological data – which has met with great opposition – suggesting that homosexuality arises out of a paternal deficit in one’s upbringing, or an overly matriarchal domestic milieu. The direction of our culture is making a once exceptional phenomenon the norm, and I do not only speak of explicit attempts to normalise such corruptions of masculinity, through particular efforts to have children’s playtime with drag queens, or gay-pride celebrations for a whole month of the year in every city, or every television sitcom or drama having at least one homosexual theme. I speak also of accepted currents far older and more wicked, like divorce, which enables a man to cut himself off from the realisation of his own masculinity when difficulties arise; or the use of contraception, which has transformed natural sex into a sterile and sodomising act; or abortion, enabling a man to abandon his responsibilities and return to
an infantilised life by taking the infant’s life. All this I call the homosexualisation of our culture, of which so-called “gay culture” is just the theatrical expression. If men are not absolutely aware that they live within the context of a gay-integralism then they will to some degree accept its doctrines, and be corrupted by them.
Sensitivity, elegance, a love of beauty and education, these are not the enemies of masculinity: masculinity is not a synonym of machismo. The enemy of masculinity is homosexuality; that is, the enemy of masculinity is the corruption of nature and its expression in the paternal principle. One of the most subversive and subtle ways in which men have been homosexualised is through the corruption of male emotion. Men are expected either to display little emotion other than aggression, as in the machismo view of emotion, or they must reduce emotion to mere self-directed sentimentalism, with adolescent demonstrations that they are feminists or “on the right side of history” in some other way. Real male emotion is paternal emotion; it is the rational pursuit to realise the good of those in one’s care, and for this to be felt.
Perhaps the most tragic consequence of this process of homosexualisation is to be found in the Catholic priesthood. Priests who have truly realised their masculinity through spiritual fatherhood seem to be in the minority. I do not claim that all those who have failed to do so are homosexual, but it is undeniable that the clerical hierarchy has become a refuge for men with this disorder, and this internal problem together with the influence of the surrounding culture has deeply wounded the sacred priesthood.
The modern false dichotomy between doctrine and pastoral practice, with which we are often presented, arises from an un-fatherly spirit in the clerical hierarchy. Every good father of children knows that inconsistency between parental teaching and the daily life of the home is down to bad parenting. Effeminacy, inconsistency, and sentimentalism are all prominent characteristics of the contemporary Catholic priesthood, and are all signs of a homosexualist spirit corrupting the sacred priesthood of the New Covenant.
What can be practically drawn from what I have said? An answer to the problem with which I have concluded can only be found in the order of supernature, for fallen human nature can only be restored and transformed by grace. My own advice (for what it is worth) regarding cooperation with this grace is as follows, and is directed at fathers of families, though could equally be for spiritual fathers too. Pray with your children; bless your family; catechise at the dining table, sitting yourself at its head; ensure your family attend worthy liturgy; have piety toward the traditions which have been handed down to you, and protect those traditions; instruct, discipline, and praise your children; cancel your TV licence.
Sebastian Morello is a lecturer and formator in London, a visiting lecturer for a number of academic institutes, and a frequent speaker at Catholic events across the UK and abroad. He is a contributing author of a number of publications, and the author of a book on St Thomas Aquinas's metaphysics and aesthetics, The World as God's Portrait, which is to be published by Angelico Press in March 2020. Sebastian has lived in countries throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia,and converted to Catholicism from Anglicanism in India in 2009. He now lives in rural Bedfordshire with his wife and two children.
ENDNOTES:
1. Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 6, 13. 2. Bernice Hamilton, Political Thought in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1963), p. 33. 3. Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, 12. 4. William Newton, A Civilization of Love (Leominster: Gracewing, 2011), p. 58. 5. Hamilton, Political Thought, p. 118. 6. André A. Alves and José M. Moreira, The Salamanca School (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 56. 7. Matthew 28:18-20. 8. Ephesians 5:22-23. 9. Pius XI, Cast Connubii, 26-27 (italics added). 10. Ephesians 5:25-30. 11. Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 14. 12. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 25. 13. Ibid. 25. 14. John 14:9. 15. Ephesians 3:14-15.
