Decline of a Catholic journal (Canadian Catholic Review).

In its Decree on the Instruments of Social Communication, the Second Vatican Council stated that the goal of a Catholic press should be to "form, strengthen, and spread public views which are in harmony with the natural law, and with Catholic teaching and precepts" (No. 14).

Until very recently, The Canadian Catholic Review has pursued this goal with distinction. In doing so, it fostered both the letter and spirit of Vatican II. Last year, however, the CCR moved from St. Thomas More College in Saskatoon to St. Joseph's College in Edmonton, and it changed editors and editorial boards. It also changed direction.

The extent of the change is sadly evident in the July 1998 issue, which is devoted substantially to the family. Reading the issue, I could not help lamenting that we who strive to support the Church's magisterium have not only lost a stalwart champion of Catholic truth. We may have seen it transformed into an organ of Catholic confusion.

The new editor, Fr. T. Allan Smith, opens the issue by proclaiming that "in Canada the family is undergoing a renaissance, a type of organizational and emotional rebirth after several decades of decline."

"Fittingly," he says, "a new and inclusive definition of family is asserting itself." This new definition "recognizes the traditional family of father, mother, and children, as well as such units as single-parent families, deliberately childless families, families in which both spouses are of the same sex, multi-generational families."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Fr. Smith points out, states that "a man and woman united in marriage form with their children a family" (No. 2202). But he adds that "the call to be a communion of persons transformed by divine grace can be realized by other types of families as well."

Now it seems to me that to define family in such a way that it includes all the units Fr. Smith mentions would be like defining democracy in such a way that it included Russia under communism, Germany under fascism, and South Africa under apartheid.

There are essential differences between democracies and totalitarian societies, dictatorships, and minority regimes based on race. Similarly, there are essential differences between nuclear families, as defined by the Church, and the other units Fr. Smith includes. Judging by the Church's standard, single parent units, however formed, are substantially incomplete. Childless unions, whether deliberate or otherwise, may be marriages but they are not families. Same-sex unions are not even marriages. Multigenerational units, though different from nuclear families, are nevertheless based on them. We can properly call multigenerational units extended families.

The loose definition of family that Fr. Smith supports is not in harmony with Catholic teachings and precepts. His inclusion of same sex unions in particular clashes with both Catholic teachings and natural law. In this respect, his editorship is at odds with both the letter and spirit of Vatican II.

Nuclear family

Along with feminists Germaine Greer and Shulamith Firestone, Fr. Smith seems to think that the nuclear family is of recent origin. (1) He talks of the "stultifying and narrow definition of family which arose in the late nineteenth century--a very bourgeois ideal in which the husband supported his financially dependent family of wife and numerous children." He also says that this traditional nuclear family "itself is being redefined to express the equality of women and men which characterizes late twentieth-century Western societies."

Fr. Smith is perhaps unfamiliar with the work of Ferdinand Mount and Steven Goldberg. Mount has drawn attention to relatively recent historical and anthropological studies which contradict the belief that the nuclear family is something of a social aberration, unknown in earlier times and in different parts of the world.

He says that in key respects--size, age, sex, and generational composition--family structure has been similar for most people in all known societies. Regardless of other social arrangements, the individual family has everywhere constituted a unit apart from the rest of the community. Monogamy has been the rule almost everywhere, even amidst divorce, polygyny (plurality of wives), polyandry (plurality of husbands) and licentiousness. (2)

The extended family has come under increasing historical scrutiny as well. The conventional view is that it was the norm in northern and western Europe before the industrial revolution gave birth to the nuclear family. Now, however, it appears that "it is only since the Industrial Revolution and pre-eminently in industrial towns that married couples have started living with their parents in any great numbers." The nuclear family has been the standard form in this part of the world and whenever more complex forms have existed, it has been present as well. (3)

The evidence, Mount says, shows that the nuclear family, "based on choice and affection, is neither a novelty nor the product of unique historical forces. The way most people live today is the way most people have always preferred to live when they had the chance." He argues that, "with all its drawbacks, difficulties, and dangers [the nuclear family] is a biologically derived way of living which comes naturally to us and which generates an emotional force of enduring and unquenchable power." (4)

Patriarchy

Goldberg has shown, and Margaret Mead agreed, that despite astonishing differences in human societies, past and present, all have been patriarchal. The differential activity of male and female hormones, which affect the development of the body, the organization of the brain, and the state of the emotions, indicates that partiarchy is not only universal but inevitable. (5)

What this means is that, generally speaking, men more than women are inclined to take charge and women more than men are inclined to take care. Despite heroic attempts to neutralize sex differences, the Israeli Kibbutzim failed to do so and traditional gender roles asserted themselves. Despite the best efforts of social engineers, all modern societies remain patriarchal. They are no doubt more agalitarian than in the past, but men are still the chief rulers in political, social, and economic affairs and women the chief nurturers at home and at work.

Women in all ages have contributed to family wealth through work inside or outside the home. However, despite enormous financial and feminist pressure, they have not significantly encroached on the male role of chief provider. By and large, husbands are still principally responsible for family income and wealth.

Fr. Smith's announcement of the death of the nuclear family is not so much premature as false. It is still alive and though not altogether well, in part because of the assualts of the social engineers, it is biologically destined to survive and flourish another day.

Because of a new appointment in Toronto, Fr. Smith's brief tenure as editor of the CCR is ending. Let's hope and pray that his successor, Fr. Jefferson Thompson, produces a journal more worthy of the name The Canadian Catholic Review.

Joseph Campbell is a freelance writer based in Saskatoon, SK.

(1) . Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (London: Paladin, 1971), pp. 220-1. Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1970), p. 84.

(2) . Ferdinand Mount, The Subversive Family: An Alternative History of Love and Marriage (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1983), pp. 49-51, 54.

(3) . Mount, pp. 53-4.

(4) . Mount, pp. 64, 153.

(5) . Steven Goldberg, The Inevitability of Partiarchy (London: Temple-Smith, 1977). The latest edition of this book, completely rewritten in light of two decades of scholarship and debate, is entitled Why Men Rule: A Theory of Male Dominance (Chicago: Open Court, 1993).