A storm of fake news has hit the World Congress of Families underway in Verona. Never seen such a massive concentration of false news, contemptuous judgments, boycotts, terrorism and intimidation. The family treated as a subversive nucleus, its supporters presented as deniers of violence against women, homophobic and sexist, enemies of the working woman, supporters of the criminalization of abortion, fascists…
No, let's leave aside the false and vulgar controversies, with slogans, offensive placards and banners from a broad spectrum ranging from radicals to progressives, from the Democratic Party to the Grillini, plus the vast majority of the media, and let's ask ourselves instead what the family is today and why it is necessary to support it. To begin with let's talk about natural family and not from a traditional family, otherwise we are already in a pattern that contrasts the modern family with the "old-fashioned" family. The family is not just a Christian-bourgeois convention but belongs to every civilization known so far and to natural law.
From Aristotle who defined it as a "community constituted by nature" to Buffon who believed it to be "the natural state of man", even passing through Rousseau who in the Social Contract defines the family as "the oldest of all societies and the only natural one", the family is the natural structure, before civil and cultural, on which every society is founded. Even the revolutionary Sorel and the socialist Proudhon defended the family (criticizing feminism). Alain de Benoist notes in his Family and Society (ed. Against the current, 2013) that the family is even older than man. Of course it is older than the individual.
Today we know that the family is the first society in crisis, torn inside, attached to the outside. But we also know that it is the only structure that, although torn, it constitutes the first and most important refuge for any discomfort: unemployment, housing need, assistance to the elderly, sick people and children, support and care. The family cushions poverty and social disparities, the contrasts, the violence, evictions. Thousands of families are places where violence and abuse take place. But millions of families today are theirreplaceable asset-refuge. Both are true and so are their proportions: thousands the first, millions the second ones. In addition to the family-refuge and the family-compensation that cushions social contradictions, the family is also the first example of an embodied network, in which interconnection produces real and generally beneficial effects. Beyond the amoral familism that Banfield wrote about in the 1950s, there is a virtuous familism which is a primary and healthy protection and connection network.
The fact remains that marriagesToday, their average duration is increasingly shorter and lifelong marriages tend to become a minority. We must get used to considering the vertical family as a priority and indissoluble, the horizontal family is variable: what can never be revoked is the status of fathers, of mothers, of children, and therefore their relationship based on nature and destiny, while the status of married people and the union of a couple can be revoked. The worst conflicts can arise between parents and children, or coldness and indifference can take over; nevertheless that bond is genetic and indissoluble, and eventually returns. Dramatic remainsthe birth issue, where we live between two opposing pathologies: the fearful demographic growth in the south of the world and the depressing Italian-European birth rate. It is curious to note that the relationship between northern and southern Europe has been reversed: the Catholic and Mediterranean populations, traditionally prolific, they were overtaken with their children by the Nordic and Protestant populations. Structures to support families are also very important. The birth crisis began in the mid-1960s; in those years something radically changed and '68 confirmed it thunderously.
Since then something fell apart and the dominant ideology was overturned; the father figure was demolished, the family was mortified, fertility became an evil, nature, like bonds, they were seen as prisons from which to be freed, rented uterus and artificial insemination are permitted practices, especially to facilitate homosexual couples, sex lost its boundaries, the crime passed from abortion to those who prevent it, i transgender. Thus the family becomes an archaic structure, primitive and those who defend it are loser or medieval (Di Maio said). Yet the family is the primary place of care that accompanies the phases and decisive moments of life: the birth, death, mourning, the memories, the secrets, childhood. The area in which we are most ourselves, the place of authenticity, the first school of life, the first company. Family is caring, free and unconditional love towards someone not for what they have or do, but only because it is, it simply is: your son, your mother… Family is nature, reality, destination, absolute affections. It is our earthly immortality, our living tradition…
The family is recognized as cornerstone of society by the Constitution (art.29) and the Christian family is one of the foundations of our community living. John Paul II spoke of the organic bond between the family and the nation; Monica Cirinnà also considers family, organic nation and religion, but in the sense of waste. The circle closes. Yet the family remains, to remind us of our origins, our true life and our future.
MV, Panorama n.11 2019
Source: http://www.marcelloveneziani.com/articoli/che-resti-in-famiglia/