Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

the family. Its origin is not of the state or society. Against these anti-family utopias Christian
social teaching posits the family as an unrenounceable community of life that has two tasks to
fulfil: care for physical needs and cultivation of spiritual, moral, and religious values. In daily
family life, the two tasks can hardly be separated from each other, since the organization of
the household has simultaneous educational consequences.
1. The Family's Care for Physical Needs
The family naturally grants the child a capital of life and security; it protects him or her from
anxiety and gives him or her leeway, so that he or she can grow in a carefree manner. The
sheltering, protecting, caring, and providing function of the family is of a threefold kind:
a) The common home
The family gives man a house, a dwelling, a home. Since most people perform their professional
work in factories, administrative organizations, offices, and stores they have an especial
need nowadays of a home to return to at the end of the day which offers them peace and privacy.
The architectural structure of the dwelling unit should give genuine expression to the
meaning of the home, though unfortunately this is frequently not the case. In many dwellings
the rooms go off from an often ugly entrance hall, which thus becomes the centre of the
dwelling, so that, sociologically speaking, the family is broken down into its individual members,
each of whom leads his or her own life. Instead of this, the 'nuclear meaning' of the
dwelling must be recognized again and considered in project planning; this will lead to clusterings
of space „that are ordered in horizontal and vertical extension around a central, communal
space.“ In this way, the family is understood as a whole which possesses in its living
room „the meaningful focus of its gathering and development, without hindering the growth
of the individual“(R. Gieselmann) 70
The dwelling may fulfill its function as a home in the form of an occupier owned home as in
the form of a rented dwelling. Whereas for the affluent citizens of the nineteenth century it
was almost disgraceful to start a family before one owned a home, today a certain rhythm of
living has become common. Young married couples usually move into a minimum-sized
apartment; when they are ready to give life to more children, they seek a larger dwelling, often
doing so several times. In old age, when their children are married, the parents again retire
into a smaller dwelling, so that five household arrangements follow one another: the household
of the married couple, the household with small children, the household of the mature
family, the household of the elderly couple, and the final household. Nevertheless, the importance
of a home of one's own for the rootedness and inner cohesion of the family should not
be underestimated. Man is more integrated into the landscape, homeland, community, and
neighborhood through a home of his own than through a rented dwelling. Pius XII emphasized
that „of all the goods that can be private property“ nothing corresponds to nature more
«than the soil, the plot of land, on which the family dwells and from whose fruits it lives
wholly or at least in part.“ The desire for a home of one's own is fortunately strong in all social
strata, even among workers, so that one can speak of a continually expanding movement
to own one's own home, which has nothing to do with social romanticism, but is connected
with the change in awareness of life in the working population and represents an important
step in the social and economic integration process of wage-earners.
b) The common table
The living community of parents with their children finds a particularly intimate expression in
the common table. At the family table, an apportionment is made in a selfless way to each one
according to his or her needs. The small child who does not yet 'bring in' or 'earn' anything
receives everything he or she needs for healthy growth. In this way an understanding is awak-
70 In Werk 41 (1954):8ff.
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